This year’s BEA is featuring a “Book Expo Challenge” contest focused on start-ups that’s a hybrid of floor display space and a chance at two prizes. For $599 registrants/contestants get a table and two chairs in a little “Startup Alley” section of the trade show floor (inside the Digital Discovery Zone). Registered companies also get to pitch their propositions to a panel of judges — Dawn Barber (NY Tech Meetup); Brian Cohen (NY Angels); Dominique Raccah (Sourcebooks); Jordan Bettman (Bain Capital Ventures); and David Roland (Ingram Content Group Ventures — on Thursday, May 29. The judges can award a $10,000 […]
BEA13
People, Etc.
Today’s Penguin Random House announcement presents a unified cross-company executive team in the US finance group (and associated services), under cfo Coram Williams. Random House’s Milena Alberti takes the new position of svp, head of global corporate finance for Penguin Random House. A number of others now formally have responsibilities across Penguin Random House, including: SVP, corporate director, business affairs, John Schline (responsible for contracts and permissions) SVP, worldwide reporting and planning, James Johnston Group controller, Tom Stefanik SVP, royalty operation, Pauline James SVP, credit, payroll & disbursements, William Sinnott SVP, corporate services, Mariella Molloy Meanwhile, executive director, publishing contracts […]
BEA Shrinks, With Some Growth
Book Expo show director Steve Rosato posted preliminary, unverified numbers on attendance for last week’s convention, with the data showing some kind of decline in various ways — though growth as well. BEA reports that total attendance was 19,615 people, down a marginal 79 people from a year ago. But “attendees” — people coming to see something at the show, rather than those associated with exhibitors — grew by 7 percent, to 11,101 people (compared to 10,417 in 2012). That’s a similar pattern to what BEA reported a year ago — basically flat overall attendance, with a gain of about […]
Grumpy Cat Has His Day, But Pig In A Wheelchair Is Next with Three-Book Deal
As previewed last week, Grumpy Cat emerged as one of the biggest celebrity draws at BEA last week, with convention-goers lining up by the Chronicle booth for almost two hours. “Just 15 minutes into the event, the crowd was so anxious to get close to Grumpy Cat that the BEA organizers called for two extra security guards to maintain the peace,” the WSJ blogged. By their account the cat, whose actual name is Tardar Sauce, “seemed unphased” and “managed to sleep through most of her event” (though witnesses told us they thought the cat looked drugged rather than just sleepy/grumpy). […]
People, Awards, Etc.
Wiley has hired John Kritzmacher as evp, chief financial officer, starting July 1. Current cfo and chief operations officer Ellis Cousens, who previously announced his retirement at the end of fiscal 2014, will “retain responsibility for certain global operations and oversee the company’s $80 million restructuring program.” Kritzmacher, 52, recently served as svp, business operations and organization planning at WebMD and was previously cfo of Lucent Technologies and Global Crossing. On Friday at BEA, the Publishing Hackathon awarded first prize to Evoke — which maps how characters in fiction are emotionally similar to each other as a way of discovering […]
A BEA Round-Up; During and After Hours
Malcolm Gladwell deftly moved on from his Wednesday remarks at BEA’s IDPF conference at a party thrown by publisher Little, Brown for his forthcoming book David and Goliath on Thursday night. He referred to his “disaster of yesterday” when he apparently “said I was in favor of turning the New York Public library into condos,” remarking facetiously “who knew that people would be offended by that?”Gladwell was pitch-perfect in telling his own retelling of the David and Goliath story that sets the theme for his next book. As with the Paul Revere story that was one of the signatures of […]