Revolving Door

Carolyn Reidy, the CEO-designate at Simon & Schuster, announced two executive appointments yesterday afternoon. First, Michael Selleck, the current senior vice president for sales and marketing in the S&S adult division, has been promoted to executive vice president for sales and marketing for the entire publishing company. The newly created position gives him oversight over the entire sales division, including the international branches, as well as key market stategy responsibilities.

Reidy also created a new executive vice president's position for Dennis Eulau, who will now be in charge of operations for the entire company. Before the promotion, Eulau was the senior vice president and general manager for the adult publishing division.

Andrew Wheeler (left), the former editor of the Science Fiction Book Club, reports on his blog that he's now a marketing manager at John Wiley. "I have fallen to the dark side," he jokes, "and I have to tell you, it feels great." Joining Wiley after a four-month period of unemployment (following various upheavals when Bertelsmann acquired Bookspan's book clubs), Wheeler will be responsible for marketing books about accounting. "It's not much like science fiction," he admits, "but SF wasn't much like hunting & fishing, large print, or playscripts, and I worked on all of those for years at a time at the bookclubs." In any event, he adds, it pays more to be in marketing than it does in editorial.

All I have to say about the hiring of Paul Muldoon as the new poetry editor for The New Yorker, now that Alice Quinn is ending her 20-year tenure in the position come November, is that if it spares readers from enduring such godawful train wrecks as Joni Mitchell's rejected song lyrics ever again, it will all have been worth it.

(Seriously, though, I'm hardly a poetry expert, but I really dig Muldoon's stuff—for one thing, nobody else had written an alternate history science fiction epic poem before Madoc, and I don't think anybody has since. So I'm thinking he'll do okay in this new gig, as long as he still has time to bust out the electric guitar.)

Graphic novel specialists Drawn & Quarterly have hired Jamie Salomon as its controller. Salomon, depicted at left by cartoonist Julie Doucet, had been balancing the D+Q books for several years while working at a Montreal chartered accounting firm. "As D+Q has grown from a comic book company to a book company in the past decade, our financial reporting needs have increased. Jamie has been our most valuable behind-the-scenes player in this process," said publisher Chris Oliveros in a statement announcing the hire. "Furthermore, his genuine appreciation and knowledge of the comic book medium makes him an integral part of the D+Q team in understanding why we do what we do."

The Bookseller's Joel Rickett reports that Caroline Michel, the former managing director of HarperPress, has left her current post as m.d. of William Morris UK for a chief executive position with rival literary agency PFD. Michel has been brought in over the heads of the PFD management team, who have been attempting to negotiate a 4m pound buyout from parent CSS Stellar.

Michel's appointment was made by David Buchler, the new executive chairman of CSS, who has promised to reshape PFD. It is likely to scotch any possibility of a management buyout at the literary and talent agency, as well as the 8m pound offer from Chorion. The reaction of the 14 lead PFD agents to the news is not known (though the internal rumor mill must be humming bigtime.) Michel is meeting her new team this afternoon.

Wiley released its 10-Q financial report over the weekend, reporting that revenue for the first quarter of fiscal year 2008 of $388.6 million increased 48% from $263.4 million in the prior year's first quarter, or 46% excluding the favorable impact of foreign exchange. Gross profit margin for the first quarter of fiscal year 2008 decreased to 63.8% from 67.7% in the prior year mainly due to a lower gross margin on Blackwell sales and the adverse impact of a $6.2 million acquisition accounting adjustment to revenue and gross profit. Excluding the acquisition accounting adjustment, Blackwell's gross margin was approximately 57.8%. Excluding Blackwell and the effect of foreign exchange, gross profit margin declined 40 basis points to 67.3%.

Operating and administrative expenses increased 37% over the prior year mainly due to $43.7 million of incremental operating expenses related to Blackwell. Operating and administrative expenses excluding Blackwell and the unfavorable impact of foreign exchange increased 4%, principally due to employment costs to support business growth. Amortization of intangibles increased $6.1 million, principally due to acquisitions. The Blackwell acquisition contributed approximately $5.6 million of the increase.

Simon & Schuster announced this morning that Jack Romanos, President and Chief Executive Officer, will retire at the end of the year. Carolyn Reidy, currently President of Simon & Schuster's Adult Publishing Division, will assume the role of President and Chief Executive Officer upon Romanos' retirement. Romanos, who joined the company in 1985 as president of Pocket Books and became President and CEO in 2002, will continue to serve in an advisory capacity to CBS Corporation President and CEO Leslie Moonves through 2009.

"The past 22 years have been especially gratifying to me," Romanos said in a statement. "Simon & Schuster has enjoyed a period of tremendous growth as it has evolved from its foundation imprints of S&S and Pocket Books into a multi-faceted, truly world class international publishing company with a well-deserved reputation for publishing excellence, and a roster of top bestselling and award winning authors." Added Reidy: "As I step into this new role at Simon & Schuster, I am grateful to Jack Romanos, who has done such a remarkable job leading us to many years of record breaking sales and profits, and positioning us for the future. He leaves a company that will continue to excel in every aspect of publishing."

A few years back, Holly Bemiss left her position as the manager at San Francisco's A Different Light bookstore and came east to tackle book publicity. Starting out at Simon & Schuster, she made her way up the career ladder to the assistant director's desk at Houghton Mifflin—until, earlier this summer, she decided it was time for another change. She's now working at the Susan Rabiner Literary Agency, where she has an eye out for young authors and narrative non-fiction, as well as graphic novels. "Though I'll miss certain aspects of publicity, like escorting Richard Dawkins to [The Colbert Report] and accepting awards on behalf of Alison Bechdel," Bemiss said when she emailed me the news, "I'm thrilled to begin working on books at their earliest stage, rather than doing that final publicity push." Rabiner is also excited by her new hire: "Holly has real star power," she said when contacted yesterday afternoon. "She'll have the freedom here to do her very best work. We think authors are going to love working with someone with such a keen sense of the marketplace."

So what happens to Bemiss's old job at Houghton? Andy Heidel, a former publicity manager at Dutton and Gotham, was tapped for the position two weeks ago, and he's "thrilled" with his new responsibilities. "With titles like Maynard and Jennica, Tolstoy Lied, or Proust was a Neuroscientist, you just have to smile when you show up to work," he says, already working the "subtle" plugs. "Plus, there's nothing like a stroll through the farmers market on the way to work to shake off a hectic morning commute."

Just as folks on the East Coast were getting ready to ditch their offices and start the long weekend, the Endeavor Talent Agency sent out a press release from Los Angeles announcing that it had just hired Shawn Coyne (left) as the third member of the New York literary team created when Richard Abate joined the agency earlier this year, followed by Rebecca Oliver. Coyne was most recently the publisher at Rugged Land; before that, he did stints at Dell, St. Martin's, and Doubleday. His first major editorial accomplishment was to sign up Harlan Coben as an editorial assistant at Dell, while his nonfiction side flourished at Rugged Land with books from the likes of Joe Namath, Brett Favre, and Chris Wallace until the company ceased operations earlier this year.

"I think Shawn has proven to be one of the most dynamic people in publishing," Abate said when contacted by phone Sunday afternoon. "We're thrilled to have him, and looking forward to growing with him."

David Roth-Ey, the editorial director for both HarperPerennial and the Harper paperback imprint, is heading to HarperCollins UK, where he'll be the director for that house's audio and e-book lines. Replacing him at East 53rd Street is Cal Morgan, who will retain his current title as an executive editor for Harper, continuing to acquire for the hardcover division while overseeing the trade paperback strategy.

"I just love and adore David," said HarperPerennial publisher Carrie Kania when I called her yesterday about the personnel changes, "and I'm so excited that he has this opportunity to move to London, even though it's devastating to me personally. When I started to think about who I could replace him with, the first person I thought of was Cal." I asked Kania what the new duties for Morgan, who built his reputation for cultivating bestsellers as the editorial director at ReganBooks, meant in terms of the company's plans for the paperback line. "HarperCollins is dedicated to trade paperbacks as an important format," Kania said, "and Cal's experience in marketing and packaging is going to be invaluable to us. Bringing him in underscores everything we've been saying about our commitment, and I'm really looking forward to working with him." Morgan and Roth-Ey both assume their new responsibilities on September 10.