Farrar, Straus and Giroux online marketing manager Ryan Chapman will serve as the new marketing director at Penguin Press.

He starts on April 23rd. Chapman blogged about the new position:

Penguin Press has a great list of authors (*cough* Zadie Smith Clay Shirky Nate Silver Thomas Pynchon *cough*) and a truly impressive roster of editors and publicists. I’m looking forward to painting with a bigger brush, as it were, and launching some nonfiction-driven pilot projects. If you see me at happy hour in the next few weeks, I apologize in advance for my nerdy enthusiasm. (And be sure to keep an eye out for some big Penguin Press news in the next month or two.) (Via Sarah Weinman)

Today’s edition of our Booked feature includes monster mash-up writers and publishing optimists in two events located hundreds of miles apart.

Tonight Guy LeCharles Gonzalez, Ami Greko, and Ryan Chapman will host another 7x20x21 event, giving seven industry innovators a chance to show off their projects in quick slideshows. Click here to RSVP for the event at the Bowery Poetry Club in NYC.

If you live in Chicago, check out Quirk Book’s Monster Mash-Up Panel at the C2E2 festival on Friday. Here are more details: “Seth Grahame-Smith, Ben Winters, Steve Hockensmith, and Jason Rekulak: all the masterminds behind the Quirk Classics in one place, for the first time. Ever! If you’re going to C2E2, come by Room E351 on April 16 at 8PM. They will all be there to talk zombies, kraken, robots, more zombies, ninjas, and Jane Austen.”

Booked features the best events that come across our literary radar. Got any suggestions? Send them here. (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of The Dreadfuls image via)

Are you having fun in publishing? Earlier this week, GalleyCat covered Digital Book World‘s 7x20x21 event, a series of presentations by seven industry professionals, each given seven minutes, the chance to choose 20 slides, and 21 seconds to talk about each picture.

All seven presenters were optimistic, but Stephanie Anderson from WORD Brooklyn earned cheers with her manifesto about having fun at your publishing job. Ryan Chapman from Farrar, Straus and Giroux followed her theme with an excellent joke about unreliable narrators.

We’ve collected the best moments from both speeches in this fun little video…

Macmillan’s Ryan Chapman (pictured) has transitioned from the publisher’s central online marketing department to now serve specifically as the online marketing manager at Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Here’s more about his new job: “I felt it was time to specialize, to work closely with authors and titles in a way I couldn’t before. And since I grew up reading FSG’s authors and greatly respect the people who work there, it was a natural fit … I’ve come up with a list of a dozen experiments for 2010, all in the service of navigating the changes in reader’s habits. These are not grand, expensive ideas. But they are easier to implement with a focused list and an equally focused team of editors and publicists.”

His post about the job also includes a reference to Destroyer’s literary tune, “Farrar, Straus and Giroux (Sea of Tears)”–a late addition to GalleyCat’s Best Writing Music list.

The release date for bestselling author Dan Brown‘s new book is somewhat like a baby born with a whopping trust fund and daunting expectations–it deserves a media nickname. Brown’s last book sold about 81 million copies worldwide, the September 15th release of “The Lost Symbol” promises to be one of the most over-hyped and over-scrutinized release dates of 2009.

In other words, the media needs a slogan, catchphrase, or some other kind of cultural shorthand to describe this event. Sara Nelson suggested “DB-Day” in a Daily Beast article. On Twitter, GalleyCat readers weighed in: Sarah Wendell suggested these: “The This-Ain’t-Fixing-Publishing Code” and “Accounts Payable and Demons.” Sean Ferrell added this suggestion: “Releasavalations Day.” Unmoved by the hype, Ryan Chapman proposed calling it “Marco Polo’s birthday.”

What do you think? Add your catchy slogan in the comments section. The winner will see their name and catchphrase floating around this site as GalleyCat reports on this As-Yet-Unnamed-Dan-Brown-Publishing-Event.