Though novelists who are also doctors (Chekhov, Maugham, Vincent Lam) get the most attention, there have been a few creative writers who have occupied lofty positions in the business world, too. Criminally underrated novelist Henry Green, for example, owned and ran a factory.

Aaannnd, that’s about all we can think of right now. (Feel free to suggest others in the comments.)

The Globe and Mail does bring to light a much more contemporary example of a writer-executive: Anne Giardini, author of Advice for Italian Boys, and, as of last fall, president of Weyerhaeuser Co..

From the Globe Q&A with Giardini:

Are you a weekend writer?

Weekends, evenings, trips. I don’t dislike business travel because if I’m uncommitted for an evening, I have time to write. I don’t know what people do when they are travelling for business and not writing a novel – that’s what I want to know.

Do you write in hotel rooms?

And airplanes. First, I catch up on whatever reading I have, and then my reward is to do a bit of writing.

Is there something about you that likes precision – in law and in prose?

I think that’s true, and the two careers reinforce each other. I’ve always believed that language in the wrong hands can be dangerous, and it’s a powerful tool both for law and for creative writing.

[...]

Will you eventually move into full-time writing?

I think I would hate that. What would worry me is the tyranny of the empty page. I can ignore that now because I’m busy at work. I really believe I do my best writing when I’m working on other things – so that when I come to write, I’ve worked a lot of it through. I have what I want to say fully formed. It more or less cooks on the back burner.

Your mother must have been proud to see a child become a writer.

I would think. Sadly, she died before my first book came out, but I think she felt confident there would be one.

NB: That last question is not a complete non sequitur – Giardini’s mother was the late Carol Shields.

• Borders announces more layoffs, cutting 136 jobs at their corporate offices
• After bowing out of the Emirates Airlines International Festival of Literature in Dubai earlier this week over concerns of censorship, Margaret Atwood decides she’ll attend after all – via videolink
• Literary Kicks takes a look at a new book of stories inspired by Sonic Youth. The verdict? It’s a teenage riot!
• Tools of Change roundup: A transcript of Jason Epstein’s keynote speech, thoughts from James Long over at the digitalist, and an address by Canadian Bob Young of lulu.com
• U.K. magazine The Bookseller unveils its shortlist of the year’s oddest book titles. Curbside Consultation of the Colon clearly has the edge with its alliteration and gentle surrealism

• Canada’s Sun Media is cutting 600 jobs in Ontario, Quebec, Western Canada — about 10 percent of the workforce (CBCnews.ca)
• Amazon U.K. employees are being forced to work seven days a week; they are given penalty points for taking sick days, and face dismissal after accumulating six penalty points (the U.K. Times)
• The total number of layoffs since Nov. 1, 2008, at America’s 500 largest public companies is 178,961, according to the Forbes Layoff Tracker (Forbes.com)

Black Wednesday saw three of the largest U.S. publishers announce massive layoffs and restructuring, and it seems there will be no end to these types of changes as the economy continues to spiral downward.

Macmillan, which publishes authors like Thomas Friedman and Janet Evanovich, is cutting 64 jobs — just under four percent of its work force.

From the Associated Press:

“Going forward we are tightening our belts in response to the current recession, but we are also reorganizing and rethinking our business to position ourselves for the long term,” Macmillan CEO John Sargent wrote in a company memo, a copy of which was obtained Monday by The Associated Press.

In a move he said the publisher had been looking into for months, Macmillan will combine its seven children’s companies into a single division, the Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group, effective Jan. 1. Macmillan also plans reductions through a “centralized business and production group for its adult and children’s publishing companies,” according to the memo.

The Associated Press also reports that Macmillan’s presence at BookExpo America will be reduced, while the use of digital technology will increase in an effort to cut costs.

One of the worst weeks in U.S. publishing history has left the book trade facing a grim tally. Just to sum up, on Wednesday three of the biggest publishers south of the border announced massive restructuring and/or job losses: Simon & Schuster laid off 35 employees, or 2% of staff; the Nashville-based Christian publisher Thomas Nelson cut 55 jobs, a whopping 10% of its workforce; and the behemoth Random House folded five divisions into three, eliminating the jobs of two top staffers, with more rounds of layoffs seemingly unavoidable.

Now, more bad news is emerging for the industry, with HarperCollins and Pearson, the parent company of Penguin, announcing immediate wage freezes. (Pearson’ decision will presumably affect some Canadian employees.) The Associated Press reports:

“This is the most challenging economic environment that any of us has ever experienced,” Penguin Group chairman John Makinson wrote in a company memo that circulated Thursday, in which he announced that raises worldwide would be held off for Pearson employees making $50,000 or more and said he could not promise there would be no job losses in 2009.

Meanwhile, things are going from bad to worse at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, which announced a freeze in new acquisitions last week. The firm has just announced more layoffs as it streamlines its educational division.

To give you a sense of the chilly atmosphere, GalleyCat has posted an e-mail from a “senior level” staffer affected by HMH cuts, who says that nearly 200 employees are being let go. The memo warns things are going to get a lot worse before they get any better:

The adult trade division has been crippled to the extent that books in production cannot be attended to and are now “frozen,” something that I’ve never heard of before (and this is my third layoff in a twenty-year publishing career). Many here are surmising that the adult trade division is rapidly being dismantled and discarded.

There’s some scary stuff going on at Random House in the U.S. today. Industry observers anticipated changes to the company’s organizational structure after new CEO Markus Dohle took over earlier this year, but few could have anticipated the thorough restructuring he has just announced, which involves eliminating the imprints Bantam Dell and Doubleday.

According to the business website Crain’s New York:

The Random House Publishing Group will incorporate Bantam Dell, publisher of Dean Koontz’s thrillers. The Bantam group’s boutique literary imprint The Dial Press and Doubleday newcomer Spiegel & Grau will also become part of Random House.

Irwyn Applebaum, Bantam Dell’s publisher and a 25-year veteran of the company, is leaving Random House. Doubleday Publisher Stephen Rubin is stepping down from his current post to assume an as yet undetermined role elsewhere in Random House, according to the letter sent out companywide from Mr. Dohle Wednesday morning.

The Knopf Publishing Group will become the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group as it absorbs the Doubleday imprint and Nan A. Talese Books, which was also part of the Doubleday group.

The Crown Publishing Group will get the rest of Doubleday, which includes Broadway—home of Bill Bryson and Bill O’Reilly—Doubleday Business, Doubleday Religion and spiritual publisher WaterBrook Multnomah.

Meanwhile, in other bad news down south, there have been layoffs at Simon & Schuster and Thomas Nelson.

Becky Saletan, senior vice-president and publisher of the U.S.-based Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, has quit, effective Dec. 10. From The Canadian Press:

Saletan had served in the job since January 2008, when she was appointed to head the newly merged Harcourt and Houghton Mifflin divisions.

The company has been in the news for an alleged freeze on acquiring new books. Blumenfeld has offered conflicting statements, saying the publisher of authors such as Philip Roth and Günter Grass had “temporarily stopped acquiring manuscripts,” but later acknowledging the policy didn’t apply to education and children’s books and a mystery book imprint.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has reportedly been hit hard by the tight credit market and any halt on acquisitions is widely believed to be in anticipation of a possible sale.

News broke yesterday that Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Random House U.S., is laying off 16 employees – a 10% cut in staff.

While David Drake, a Doubleday spokesperson, denies that the cuts have anything to do with the delay of Dan Brown’s next novel (originally scheduled for 2005), that hasn’t stopped The New York Observer from speculating about how the disappointing performances of some other titles may have contributed to the firm’s woes.

The cuts come on the heels of a painful year during which several of Doubleday’s big bets did not pan out, among them Andrew Davidson’s The Gargoyle, which famously drew an advance of $1.25 million but failed to ignite the bestseller list upon publication this summer, and Jon Krakauer’s biography of Pat Tillman, which the author unexpectedly canceled after promotion had already gotten underway.

(The Observer also confirms the identities of four of the people laid off.)

In a vivid example of the dangers of writing history while it’s being made, the New York Observer reports that right-wing broadcaster Hugh Hewitt’s proposed book, How Sarah Palin Won the Election… And Saved America, has failed to land a publisher.

When the erstwhile Alaskan governor and Tina Fey lookalike was first named as Presidential hopeful John McCain’s running mate, her anti-abortion, pro-gun credentials made her the great white hope for the Republican party’s right wing nut jobs ultra-conservative base. But subsequent gaffes in media interviews and the vice-presidential debate have diminished Palin’s glow, and called into question whether she can save her own political skin, let alone the entire country. This has made publishers understandably reticent to sign up a book with a title that presupposes a Republican victory on Nov 4.

Literary agent Curtis Yates, who has stopped trying to sell the book for the moment, said that the change in Palin’s fortunes have played a role in the book’s marketability:

“The book obviously presumed [a McCain-Palin victory],” Mr. Yates said, “but the theory was that her impact on this election will have a lasting effect regardless — that she’s not gonna go anywhere, that she’s just gonna be a figure in G.O.P. politics going forward.”

The title of the book, Mr. Yates said, “went through a couple of different iterations.”

At one point it was How Sarah Palin Won the Election. At another point it was How Sarah Palin Won the Election … And Saved America.

“If they were to lose the election it would have just been How Sarah Palin Saved America,” Mr. Yates said. “We were trying to cover our bases depending on what may happen.”

There is no word on the future potential of the book, or of the other books in Yates’s stable, which are rumoured to include How Conrad Black Won His Case… And Saved American Justice and How the U.S. Army Uncovered WMDs in Iraq… And Saved the World.

Longtime Toronto Star book critic Phil Marchand, who switched jobs with former Star film critic Geoff Pevere at the beginning of this year, has now begun what is being promised as a weekly books column in the Saturday edition of the National Post.

The film beat never quite suited Marchand – as he himself admitted in a first-person piece in a recent issue of Q&Q. If nothing else, it was always a head-scratcher to see his byline, which had previously come at the end of long, thoughtful reviews of new books by Joseph Boyden, Alice Munro, Ian McEwan and the like, now accompanying bemused takes on movies like Troll 2, The Happening, and Tyler Perry’s Meet the Browns.

It’s also good to see more original book content in the Post, which tends to fill out its review section with work taken from British newspapers and its fellow CanWest publications.