News Briefs

Jeff Abraham, executive director of the Book Industry Study Group, will move to Random House February 1 as president of its distribution services division. RH currently has 15 distribution clients, with billings of more than $100 million. Abraham will report to Josh Wright, v-p of publishing operations. John Groton, v-p, client relations, and Kevin Mailloux, director, operations, will report to Abraham.

Brenda Marsh, v-p of content and merchandising at B&N.com, has been named v-p of author relations for Barnes & Noble. In the newly created position, Marsh will work on creating new author programs and initiatives.

Backlist sales rose 8% in 2005 at Simon & Schuster, according to CEO Jack Romanos's year-end letter to employees. The strong performance will help S&S increase both sales and earnings in the year, Romanos said.

Judith Curr has named Gary Urda associate publisher of Atria Books, succeeding the departed Karen Mender. Urda is being promoted from his position as v-p and director of distributor sales and retail marketing at S&S. Anne Zafian, currently sales director at S&S, will slide into Urda's old v-p slot.

Hilary Schupf has stepped down as director of publicity at Pocket Books to join Sirius Satellite Radio, where she will be senior director, public relations. In that role she'll handle publicity for Howard Stern, Martha Stewart and all of the other talk and entertainment channels at the company. Until a permanent replacement is hired, Ben Petrone will serve as interim director of publicity for Pocket.

Richard Nash, publisher of Soft Skull Press, was named the 2005 recipient of the Miriam Bass Award for Creativity in Independent Publishing. Nash was singled out for taking a financially struggling independent house and bringing it into the black while publishing a number of notable books in the process. The award, which is bestowed on an innovative industry member from an independent house annually by the AAP and brings with it a cash award of $5,000, will be handed out at the AAP's annual meeting in March.

Amazon reported that its top-selling books over the holiday period were Harper Trophy's The Chronicles of Narnia Box Set (paperback), The World Is Flat and Rachael Ray 365: No Repeats—A Year of Deliciously Different Dinners.

Finland's second largest media company, Otava, recently acquired the independent publisher Like. The move brings further consolidation to the country's publishing industry, now dominated by three major houses. For Otava, the merger adds edgy authors, including Naomi Klein and James Ellroy, to a more established lineup.