People

Irv Myers will join Publishers Group West February 6 as chief operating officer. Myers has been managing director of National Book Network's international division. Chip Franzak, NBN's CFO, has been named the new managing director of NBNi.

Three employees are climbing the ladder at Harcourt this week: Michelle Blankenship has been promoted from senior publicist to publicity manager; Jenna Johnson from editor to associate editor; and Stacia Decker from assistant editor to associate editor.

Matt Barnes has been promoted to v-p of sales and marketing at the Oregon-based Blackwell's Book Services. Barnes, who joined the company in 2002, was director of market development.

Juliette Shapland and Seth Fleischman have been promoted at HarperCollins. Shapland, a former literary agent, has been bumped up from associate director of foreign rights to director of foreign rights. Fleischman is leaving his post as a national account manager for the role of marketing manager at ReganMedia.

Five employees have been promoted this week at Random House Children's Books. Melanie Chang has been bumped up from associate director of publicity to director of publicity at Random House Children's Books; Michelle Frey from senior editor to executive editor at Knopf and Crown Books for Young Readers; Schuyler Hooke from editor to senior editor of Random House Books for Young Readers; Krista Marino from associate editor to editor at Delacorte Press Books for Young Readers; Lisa Findlay from associate editor to editor at RH Books for Young Readers. Claudia Gabel, formerly with Alloy Entertainment, joins Bantam Delacorte Dell Books for Young Readers as an editor.

Eric Major, former publisher of Hodder & Stoughton and v-p of religious publishing at Doubleday, died January 14 at his home in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, England. Major began his career as a publicist and in 1975 went to Hodder & Stoughton, overseeing the launch of Hodder's commercial fiction list. He was managing director of the company's religious publishing program from 1993 to 1996. Major headed Doubleday's religion publishing division from 1996 to 2002, when he strengthened the program's traditional emphasis on Catholicism while broadening it to include evangelical Christian books, overseeing the WaterBrook Press unit. Said Doubleday head Steve Rubin, "Eric became a beloved elder statesman. There was nothing pretentious or stuffy about him—he was wise, dear, sweet and funny."