Simon & Schuster

In a memo sent out this morning mere hours after the publishing world was stunned by news of a major reorganization at Random House, Simon & Schuster C.E.O. Carolyn Reidy told staff that 35 jobs would be cut in what she called an unavoidavble response to the "current bookselling marketplace and what may very well be a prolonged period of economic instability."

"We have literally examined our budget line by line to find those areas large and small where we might further economize," Ms. Reidy's note said.

Those affected have been informed, according to our sources, and while most of the cuts affect people holding administrative positions in sales and operations, at least one editor, Denise Roy, who has been an editor at S&S for more than 13 years, has also lost her job.  read more »

Jodi Sweetin, who played middle daughter Stephanie Tanner on Full House from 1987 until 1995, has signed on to write a book for Simon Spotlight, Simon & Schuster's pop culture imprint, about the years she spent addicted to and recovering from drugs. According to the description that just ran on the Publishers' Marketplace deal-wire, literary agent Kirby Kim at Endeavor sold Ms. Sweetin's book at auction for a sum in the six figures.

If anyone can make Ms. Sweetin's book a hit, it's Simon Spotlight, a team that has come closer than anyone else in town to inheriting the throne of Judith Regan, having racked up several massive best sellers this year, including a memoir by Tori Spelling and Chelsea Handler's Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea.

Not long ago Media Mob reported that The Washington Post’s David Maraniss is in talks with Simon & Schuster about writing a book on President-elect Barack Obama. Now comes word that Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter is, too.

The two books will be quite different: Where Mr. Maraniss means to write a retrospective biography in the tradition of his Bill Clinton book First in His Class, Mr. Alter is planning to look at President Obama's first year or so in office, starting at his inauguration and ending "at some point midway through 2009."

Speaking from his phone in Chicago, Mr. Alter said he plans to write about the Obama administration the way one might write about an internet start-up company.  read more »

Fans of David Maraniss's classic Bill Clinton biography First in His Class, rejoice! According to his D.C.-based literary agent, Rafe Sagalyn, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post editor is planning to write a biography of President-elect Barack Obama.

"He'll do for Obama what he did for Clinton," Mr. Sagalyn said. "That's the model."

Mr. Sagalyn cautioned that a contract with Mr. Maraniss's publisher, Simon & Schuster, has not yet been finalized, but sounded sure that the ongoing conversations would soon lead to an agreement.

That doesn't mean the book is around the corner, though: According to Mr. Sagalyn, Mr. Maraniss is going to take his time, and not worry about any of the other people working on Obama books.  read more »

David Rosenthal at Simon & Schuster announced today that he will be publishing a biography of Norman Mailer written by the late author's literary executor and longtime friend Michael Lennon. The book was sold at auction by Boston lawyer Ike Williams, who recently sold the memoirs of Mr. Mailer's widow, Norris Church, to Mr. Mailer's old editor at Random House. There were reportedly seven houses interested, with several offering advances worth more than half a million dollars.

Random House, Mr. Mailer's publisher starting in 1984, was interested in the book but was not willing to pay as much for it as Simon & Schuster.  read more »

With the exception of a few small presses, publishers in the United States were caught out cold when this year's Nobel Prize for literature went to the French novelist Jean-Marie Le Clezio. Back in the 1970s a handful of Le Clezio's books were published here by Atheneum, but they didn't stay in print long, and Atheneum—which is now owned by Simon & Schuster—essentially no longer exists, so reissuing them was not a simple matter of re-upping on the rights.

The rights director at Gallimard, which publishes Le Clezio's books in French—charged now with the task of finding an American publisher for her client's books—nevertheless liked the idea of staying with Simon & Schuster, and after a lot of negotiation has closed a deal with its president, David Rosenthal, for the 1965 novel The Interrogation.  read more »

Last week, Media Mob wondered whether Simon & Schuster Inc. would be taken to task for allowing Threshold Editions, its conservative imprint, to publish The Obama Nation, Jerome Corsi's bestselling hit job on the presumptive Democratic nominee.

In the front of this week's New Yorker, Hendrik Hertzberg does exactly that. "On a foundation of small, medium-sized, and extra-large falsehoods," Mr. Hertzberg writes, "'The Obama Nation' erects a superstructure of innuendo, guilt by (often nonexistent) association, baseless speculation, and sinister-sounding but irrelevant digression."

He goes on to say that Mr. Corsi's last book—Unfit for Command, re: John Kerry—was published by Regnery, a publisher whose "sole raison d’être.  read more »

Jerome Corsi, author of the 2004 Anti-John Kerry book Unfit for Command, has taken a lot of heat for his latest effort, a grouchy little volume called The Obama Nation that puts forth the notion that Barack Obama might be and probably is a drug addicted Muslim-lover. So far, Simon & Schuster, the company that published Mr. Corsi's book through its conservative Threshold Editions imprint, hasn't been asked to defend their decision to put it out.

Ben Smith at the Politico raises the issue today on his blog, asking a "series of Simon & Schuster authors—including Michael Moore, Alexandra Pelosi, and Paul Begala" how they feel about getting their paychecks from the same place as Mr.  read more »

Simon & Schuster announced this morning that Bob Woodward's new book—his fourth on the Bush Administration—will be called The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008, and that The Washington Post will excerpt it on Sunday, Sept. 7, the day before it goes on sale. They're printing almost a million copies of this thing, according to the announcement, in which Mr. Woodward's editor, Alice Mayhew, is quoted as saying, rather boldly, that the book offers the most "authoritative and intimate account of presidential decision making since the Nixon tapes and the Pentagon Papers."

Naturally, seeing as Mr. Woodward's books are always full of electrifying little news breaks, The War Within is embargoed until the day of its release.  read more »

The AP reported this morning that Simon & Schuster is suing rappers Foxy Brown and Lil' Kim, both of whom were under contract with the publishing house for books that were due several years ago. The deals were done separately: Foxy Brown got $75,000 in 2005 for what was supposed to be a memoir, and Lil' Kim got $40,000 in 2003 for what was supposed to be a novel.

According to Simon & Schuster's corporate spokesman Adam Rothberg, the lawsuits were not filed simultaneously for any particular reason.

"They're just two cancel-and-collects that happened at the same time," he said, adding that in both cases, Simon & Schuster had just "exhausted all other avenues on recouping the money on a manuscript that wasn't delivered.  read more »

The Media Mob has learned that conservative radio and television host Glenn Beck has just finished signing a huge new two-book deal with Simon & Schuster imprint Threshold Editions. According to a source with knowledge of the deal, the agreement will net Mr. Beck, the host of Headline News' "Glenn Beck," approximately $3 million. The initial print run will be a whopping 750,000 copies.

This past fall, Threshold Editions published Mr. Beck's "An Inconvenient Book," which immediately debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list.  read more »

Media Mob got an e-mail a few minutes ago from a publicist at Simon & Schuster informing us, in the subject line, that "Facebook is subject of new S&S acquisition." Holy cow, we thought! Mark Zuckerburg finally agreed to sell? To Simon & Schuster? They've had a pretty good year, sure, but what would a publishing house want with Facebook? Maybe someone up high thought they were really buying a book?

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Liz Perl has resigned her post as the publisher of Rodale Books and taken a senior marketing position at Simon & Schuster's adult publishing group. Ms. Perl, who served at the helm of Rodale from the spring of 2006 until last March when former Bloomsbury USA head Karen Rinaldi was installed as general manager and publishing director, became well-known in the publishing community during the 1990s, when she worked at Penguin as director of publicity and later as director of marketing.

In her new capacity as senior vice president of marketing, Ms. Perl will oversee advertising and promotion at S&S's flagship imprint, as well as Atria, Free Press, Pocket Books, Scribner, and Touchstone-Fireside. She will report to Michael Selleck, S&S's executive VP of sales and marketing.

Calls to Ms. Perl and Ms. Rinaldi have not yet been returned.

Memo to Rodale staff from Ms. Rinaldi after the jump.  read more »

The Culture Czar is never one to pass up a hearty dose of ‘90s nostalgia. And what’s more nostalgic than a Guided By Voices tribute band pumping out lo-fi jams at the paperback release party for John Sellers’ Perfect From Now On: How Indie Rock Saved My Life? The event, which goes down March 1 at Don Pedro in Williamsburg, will also feature performances by Times New Viking, Matthew Friedberger of the Fiery Furnaces, and Guided By Voices member Doug Gillard (Mr. Sellers is a massive fan, natch), Pitchfork reports. The hardcover edition of Mr. Sellers’ fan memoir was published last March by Simon & Schuster, which will release the paperback version on March 4. More: Mr. Sellers, whose journalistic credits include contributions to GQ, The Atlantic Monthly and the New York Times, as well as a TV editor stint at Time Out New York, will read from the book on March 26 at Book Court in Cobble Hill, where he will be accompanied by Luna’s Dean Wareham.

About a week after ex-Time editor Priscilla Painton was named the new editor-in-chief of Simon & Schuster, three editorial staffers at the imprint have been promoted, according to industry newsletter The Book Standard.

Both Kerri Kolen--who has been at the imprint since 2002-- and Sarah Hochman--who has been there since 2004-- have been made full editors, while Nina Schwartz, who was hired in 2006 as S&S publisher David Rosenthal's assistant, has been made an assistant editor.

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Priscilla Painton, who was most recently the deputy managing editor of Time, has been named editor-in-chief of Simon & Schuster's flagship imprint, it was announced today. Simon & Schuster has been without an editor-in-chief since Michael Korda left a little over two years ago; during that time, editorial director Alice Mayhew was the highest ranking person at the imprint below publisher David Rosenthal.

Ms. Painton, who will start on March 3, spent almost 20 years at Time, where she started as a reporter in 1989. She served as the magazine's national editor for six years before becoming assistant managing editor and then executive editor in 2002. She quit this past October; according to a memo from Time editor Rick Stengel sent to staff at the time, Ms. Painton said she wanted a "Second Act."

The press release from Simon & Schuster quotes her as saying, "After a lifetime in journalism, it is a grand opportunity to enter the world of book publishing."

After weeks of speculation, it's finally official: Karl Rove's memoirs will be published by Threshold Editions, the conservative-minded imprint of Simon & Schuster's Pocket Books overseen by GOP strategist Mary Matalin.

Earlier this week, Mr. Rove and his representative in the deal, DC lawyer Robert Barnett, were deciding between Threshold and Free Press, another imprint of Simon & Schuster.

In the press release announcing the deal, Mr. Rove is quoted as saying, "I look forward to writing about my role in George W. Bush's campaigns and in his consequential and contentious Presidency. The book will be a candid, careful look at how he got there and what his Administration did once in office. It will tackle and shed light on important events and big controversies, spell out their implications for America and set the record straight."

Naturally, the announcement made no mention of how much Threshold is paying Mr. Rove for the book, but you can be sure there will be plenty of guessing in the next few days.

The reason Karl Rove's memoirs do not have a publisher a full week after the auction ended last Wednesday is that Mr. Rove and his representative, DC lawyer Robert Barnett, want to meet with the editors who are pursuing the book and are running into scheduling difficulties because of the holidays, according to a publishing source who would not speak for attribution.

Mr. Rove wants to ask questions about their intentions regarding promotion, timing, editing, etc.--questions he has already asked in prior meetings, but is revisiting now that he's faced with a decision.

Because the holiday season is so busy, the source said, meetings have been hard to arrange.

As previously reported, Mr. Rove is considering two imprints, both of which are part of Simon & Schuster: Threshold Editions, a conservative shop run by GOP strategist Mary Matalin, and Free Press, which used to be aggressively conservative but has since refashioned itself as a general interest operation.

Reached for comment this morning, Mr. Barnett said, "Mr. Rove is taking the time to make an informed decision."  read more »

Bestselling presidential historian Michael Beschloss, most recently the author of Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How they Changed America, has left Simon & Schuster to sign a deal with Crown, a division of Random House, according to several publishing sources.

Mr. Beschloss' last book for Simon & Schuster was edited by Michael Korda, who has since retired. Before that, he worked with Alice Mayhew. At Crown, sources said, he will be edited by Sean Desmond.  read more »