Michael Pietsch

Michael Pietsch, Jamie Raab and Megan Tingley all dodged a bullet five years ago. For a moment there, it looked like their owners were going to sacrifice them, and the rest of the Time Warner Book Group, to Bertelsmann Inc., the German-based multimedia company that owns the largest publishing house in the world.

Mr. Pietsch, at least, could have expected to keep his job. Little, Brown & Co., the shop he’d been running for about two years, would have been a crown jewel for Bertelsmann, which is to say it was a big part of why the conglomerate wanted Time Warner’s publishing properties in the first place.  read more »

Earlier this week Media Mob spoke to Gerry Howard, who acquired David Foster Wallace’s first novel and published it as a trade paperback original as part of Penguin’s Contemporary American Fiction line. Wallace stayed with Mr. Howard for his second book, a collection of short stories called Girl With Curious Hair, but when it came time to do something with his second novel, Infinite Jest, his agent Bonnie Nadell—an interview with her can be found here—decided the responsible thing to do was to submit the manuscript to several editors and see how much it could draw. Thus David Foster Wallace came to Little, Brown & Company, where he remained until his death last Friday night.  read more »

The National Book Awards were held last night at the Marriot Marquee, bringing hordes of agents and editors--along with authors like Toni Morrison, Jonathan Franzen, and Joan Didion, who received a lifetime achievement award--to Times Square.

As widely predicted, Denis Johnson won the fiction prize for Tree of Smoke. Mr. Johnson’s wife accepted the award on his behalf because he is on assignment in Iraq.

In non-fiction, New York Times reporter Tim Weiner won for Legacy of Ashes, and in poetry, Robert Hass won for Time and Materials. Sherman Alexie won in the young adult category for The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.  read more »