Adam Rothberg has been promoted to senior vice president of corporate communications at Simon & Schuster.

Rothberg has served as VP of corporate communications at the publisher since 1999. He first joined the company in 1985, working as a publicity assistant and then director of publicity at Pocket Books.  In the mid-1990s, he joined Villard Books/Random House, serving as director of publicity and then as associate publisher before returning to Simon & Schuster.

CEO Carolyn K. Reidy praised Rothberg: “He is cool under the pressure of deadlines, and brings to the job a diplomat’s ability to reconcile disparate agendas when working on projects with multiple partners. His well-deserved reputation as a straight shooter has made him a trusted counselor on communication and general business questions in every corner of Simon & Schuster, from our publishing and operations units to our corporate staff and international companies, and at CBS, where he works closely with his communications counterparts at both corporate and divisional levels.”

In her annual holiday letter to staffers, Simon & Schuster CEO Carolyn K. Reidy singled out the Children’s division for achieving its best year ever.

Here’s more from the letter: “Our Children’s Publishing division is booming and their results this year are the strongest in their history.  Much of the groundwork they have laid is now paying off, and the strength of their publishing, in particular in the teen, fantasy and middle grade categories with authors such as Cassandra Clare, Rachel Renee Russell, Becca Fitzpatrick and Thomas Sniegoski, is indicative of their ability to adjust to and benefit from the quickly changing tastes of our younger reading audience.”

The letter also noted that the publisher counted 154 New York Times bestsellers in 2010, with 14 titles climbing to the number one spot on the list. In addition, the publisher celebrated 15 titles on the New York Times Book Review’s 100 Notable Books of the Year.

Simon & Schuster named Mark Gompertz executive vice president of digital publishing. In the new post, Gompertz will coordinate digital publishing efforts at all levels of the company, from editorial to sales.

Since 1993, Gompertz been the publisher of Touchstone Fireside, working with bestselling authors like Philippa Gregory, Ursula Hegi, and Bethenny Frankel. During his tenure, he doubled the size of the publisher.

Here’s more from Simon & Schuster CEO, Carolyn K. Reidy: “As we explore these new digital formats, complications will inevitably ensue, and Mark will help all of us at Simon & Schuster, as well as our authors and our accounts, to find solutions to these complex issues. His job will also entail originating and acquiring digital content, developing policies, working out processes, and educating and informing us so we can all learn as we seek new revenue streams.”

So the Sobol Awards are toast, and the winner of that “contest” won’t be published by Simon & Schuster‘s Touchstone/Fireside imprint. But that hasn’t stopped the imprint from trying again on the contest front, this time with Gather.com (which recently inked a deal with Borders), described in Julie Bosman‘s NYT piece as a “social networking site for grownups.” The idea for the contest was hatched on a Gather.com literary cruise in October, when S&S marketing executives casually brainstormed with Gather.com employees on how the companies might combine their efforts. The publisher was looking for new ways to recruit literary talent, and Gather.com executives were trying to supplement their popular short-story contests with a contest for a full-length work of fiction.

And so the contest, called First Chapters, was born. Unpublished writers can enter free by submitting a manuscript for a full-length work of fiction. Each entry’s first chapter will be posted on Gather.com and voted on by members of the site. In the next round, the second chapters of the top 20 manuscripts will be posted, followed by a vote; a subsequent round will post the third chapters of the top 10, followed by a vote. In the fourth and final round, the entire manuscripts of five finalists will go before a “Grand Prize Judging Panel,” to include Carolyn Reidy, the president of the adult publishing group at Simon & Schuster, and George Jones, the chief executive of Borders. The winner will receive a book contract from Touchstone and $5,000 from Gather.com. “It is akin to an ‘American Idol’ for thinking people,” snarked Tom Gerace, the chief executive of Gather.com. We’re thinking it’s rather akin to the UK’s Lit Idol which garnered headlines a couple of years back.