Simon & Schuster announced a major restructuring today, bringing together all its imprints into four publishing groups. Free Press publisher Martha Levin and Free Press editor-in-chief Dominick Anfuso will both leave the company as part of the reorganization.

Judith Curr will helm Atria Publishing Group, and the Howard Books Christian imprint will be part of this new group. Susan Moldow will lead the Scribner Publishing Group, which now includes Touchstone Books. Touchstone publisher Stacy Creamer will report to Moldow.

Jonathan Karp will direct the Simon & Schuster Publishing Group, adding the Free Press into this new group.  Louise Burke will lead the Gallery Publishing Group, a group that now includes Gallery Books, Threshold Editions, Pocket Books, Pocket Star, MTV Books, and Karen Hunter Publishing.

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Actor Kevin Costner has signed a book deal with Simon & Schuster’s Atria Books imprint for an adventure series. It begins with The Explorers Guild, Volume One: Passage to Shambhala in 2014. The book is aimed at a broad group of readers, ranging from “young adult to more mature mystery and adventure enthusiasts.”

Writer and art director Jon Baird (pictured, left) also worked on the project with Costner (middle), which will be illustrated by Rick Ross (right). Rob Weisbach and Fonda Snyder at Rob Weisbach Creative Management negotiated the deal with publisher Judith Curr. Atria senior editor Sarah Durand and assistant editor Daniel Loedel will edit the book.

Here’s more from the release: “Behind the staid rooms of an old world gentlemen’s club operates a darker, more mysterious organization: The Explorers Guild, a clandestine group of adventurers who seek out the places where light gives way to shadow and reason is usurped by myth … Set against the backdrop of World War I, with Western Civilization spiraling into chaos, the first installment in The Explorers Guild series, A Passage to Shambhala, concerns the Guild’s quest to find Shambhala, the golden city of Buddhist myth. Each member is driven toward the City for a different reason: one believes that finding it will save his brother’s life; another hopes that it will reveal a path to spiritual enlightenment. Some believe the power of the city can be used to restore peace, while others are certain that Shambhala is responsible for bringing mankind to the brink of apocalypse.”

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Under this new partnership, Atria intends to bring “the best in contemporary British writing” to North American readers. The new imprint, Marble Arch Press, will launch in fall 2012. Each year, 12 titles from Short Books’ UK list will be selected for publication within the US and Canada in both print and digital format.

Here’s more from the release: “This is the first international co-publishing agreement for Atria. Under the Marble Arch banner, British authors including Justin Webb, Emma Craigie, Betsy Tobin, Sofka Zinovieff and Jane Fearnley-Whittingstall will now see their titles appearing in the US market. The name Marble Arch Press refers to the well-known London landmark near Hyde Park, and is also a nod to Atria’s own Washington Square Press imprint (Washington Square having its own “marble arch” monument).”

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Emily Bestler

During her 16 years at Simon and Schuster, Bestler has worked with a range of authors (counting 79 NYT bestsellers): John Connolly, Jodi Picoult, Sister Souljah, and Liza Marklund. Atria Books will hire a new editor for the imprint as well.

Atria Books publisher Judith Curr had this statement: “Emily has an eye for discovering talented authors, nurturing their careers and growing their sales to bestselling levels.  An Emily Bestler Book will signal to both the reader and the bookselling community that between the covers they can expect to find many hours of entertaining reading … I’m delighted to launch her new endeavor here at Atria, to salute her past accomplishments and look to many more future bestsellers from her.”

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One day after the company announced a major imprint restructuring, Simon & Schuster’s Atria imprint unveiled four new “vooks” that combine video and text within a digital book.

In that Beet.TV interview above, Altria Books publisher Judith Curr outlines her plans for these vooks and talks about the skill set necessary to work in her imprint. Today the NY Times reports that the imprint will release four titles, a blend of both fiction and nonfiction. The titles include: Jude Deveraux‘s “They are Promises,” Pete Cerqua‘s “The 90-Second Fitness Solution,” Richard Doetsch‘s “The Embassy” and Narine Nikososian‘s “Return to Beauty.” The titles retail for $6.99.

Here’s more from the article: “These new editions, also called’vooks,’ can be viewed on any browser-based device such as a laptop, net-book or desktop computer as well as the iPhone. (They can’t be read on dedicated electronic readers like Amazon’s Kindle or Sony’s Reader because these devices don’t support video.)”

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Judith Curr, the publisher of Atria, acknowledged that bad things do happen in TURNDOWN TALES, which was originally scheduled for publication in early June. Some people die and others, perhaps, do not behave as well as they might. “But I’m not going to go back to Jodi Picoult and tell her, ‘This woman can’t leave her children for the weekend,” Curr said. “I’m keen on doing a collection to reach readers, but I’m not going to compromise my authors’ integrity to do so.” But in the end, compromise was reached between Atria and Ritz-Carlton. The collection will be available in hotels this fall with “some of the swearing toned down,” according to Curr.

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