Surprise replacement found for Random House boss

A replacement for Peter Olson, who recently stepped down – or was pushed, depending on who you talk to – from his post as Random House U.S. CEO, has been found. The New York Times reports that the German media conglomerate, Bertelsmann, handed the reigns over to Markus Dohle, the head of its printing press. Apparently, experience was not a prerequisite.

The appointment of Mr. Dohle, 39, an outsider to the publishing industry, is likely to rattle insiders at Random House and comes at a time when both Random House and the wider publishing industry are suffering from a slowdown.

The appointment of Mr. Dohle is Bertelsmann’s most significant move since Hartmut Ostrowski took over as chief executive of the company in January.

Mr. Olson, who worked for Bertelsmann for 20 years, had been under pressure due to financial difficulties in the industry and within the company.

Mr. Olson’s position was not helped by a weak performance in 2007, when the weakening dollar and lackluster consumer spending drove down sales at Random House by 5.6 percent. Operating profits declined 4.9 percent, despite a run of bestsellers that included “Playing for Pizza” by John Grisham and “Women & Money” by Suze Orman.

Engel’s Benny Cooperman gets a new look

Author Howard Engel’s novels starring private investigator Benny Cooperman have been given an updated look and will be revisiting bookstore shelves, Robert Fulford reports in the National Post.

Penguin has re-launched the first 11 Cooperman books in paperback with a lively new design and a number emblazoned on the spine of each volume, so that obsessive Cooperman fans can shelve them in order of their creation, from No. 1, The Suicide Murders (1980), to No. 11, Memory Book (2005). This is an exceptional publishing event, something the French might do while promoting someone for a shot at the Nobel. Nobody has done it before, on this scale, for a Canadian.

Engel himself suffered great tragedy – a stroke left him unable to read and struggling with memory problems, as happens to his main character in Memory Book.

By now Engel’s own story has been well told. In 2001, he had a stroke in his sleep and awoke to discover he couldn’t read anything, even The Globe and Mail. He had a rare condition: Aside from the loss of literacy, his memory was damaged, but he could still write and talk. Ever since he’s been re-learning to read while maintaining his literary career. It seemed natural to give Benny his own disabilities, though Benny had to acquire them through violence because no PI, even Benny, has anything so boring as a stroke.

Atwood and Rowling write postcards for charity

The next works from Margaret Atwood and J.K. Rowling won’t be page-turners – they’ll be printed on postcards and sold by a major British bookseller named Waterstone’s to help raise money as part of the What’s Your Story? charity auction in London this June.

Thirteen well-loved authors will be participating in the event, and the complete set of their original storycards will later be reproduced and sold to the general public, with proceeds also going to charity.

Gerry Johnson, the managing director at Waterstone’s, says:

“It’s impossible to say how much this charity auction will raise, but with the calibre of authors involved then really the sky is the limit. Owning an original piece of work by a favourite writer is the ultimate limited edition for fans, so with the names we have involved in What’s Your Story? I think we could see some very large sums being bid – all the better for English PEN and Dyslexia Action!”

Teen pop celebrity, China-style

The New York Times recently reported Guo Jingming to be the most successful writer in China. This may come as a shock to some, but not to star-crazed Chinese teenagers, who flock by the thousands to his book signings.

The pop singer turned author has seen three of his four novels sell over a million copies each, earning him $1.4-million last year.

Guo is the most successful of a dozen young celebrity authors who make up the “post-’80s” generation, some others of whom have also achieved book sales in the millions. This group includes the high school dropout and professional car racer Han Han, 25, who derides China’s inefficient educational system in his novels and regularly insults older, more established artists on his blog, and Zhang Yueran, 26, whose novel “Daffodils Took Carp and Went Away” features a bulimic girl who falls in love with her stepfather, is mistreated by her mother and is sent off to boarding school.

While the Chinese government frequently jails dissident writers or forces them into exile, it mostly ignores the antics of Guo and the other post-’80s writers. For all their flamboyance, they exemplify the social ideals of the new China — commercialism and individualism — said Lydia Liu, a professor of Chinese and comparative literature at Columbia University. They “don’t pose any threat,” Liu said. “They collaborate.”

Web to the rescue

In his latest column, David Milofsky, Book Beat author for the Denver Post, says he understands the frustration of authors who are unable to get their books reviewed in local papers.

Because a book editor can receive upwards of 10,000 books annually, of which perhaps one-tenth can be reviewed, there is a good deal of pressure applied by publicists and authors competing for review attention. Given the resources of New York publishers, it’s not surprising that most books reviewed by major publications are by well-known authors.

So how do unknown authors compete? They turn to the online world, where space is limitless, and, most importantly, where many people look for news and entertainment information.

Perhaps the most significant new outlet for reviews is the Barnes & Noble Review, which was launched just last October. In addition to being more nicely designed, the Review has the added advantage of many brick-and-mortar B&N bookstores to help promote it.

Jim Mustich, editor in chief of the B&N Review, said in an e-mail message, “We run one new 1,000-word review every weekday. In addition, we also review six titles in our Spotlight section and feature 50 titles with brief annotations in our Long List Section.”