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Novelist Alice Hoffman has inked a deal for a middle grade novel. Random House Children’s Books will publish Nightbird in spring 2015.

Tina Wexler at ICM negotiated the deal with Random House Children’s Books publisher Barbara Marcus. Wendy Lamb will edit the book for her Wendy Lamb Books imprint. Hoffman has written 21 novels and eight YA and children’s books. Here’s more from the release:

Nightbird is a work of modern folklore set in the Berkshires, where rumors of a winged beast draw in as much tourism as the town’s famed apple orchards. Twig lives in a remote area of town with her mysterious brother and her mother, baker of irresistible apple pies. A new girl in town might just be Twig’s first true friend, and ally in vanquishing an ancient family curse.

(Author photo by Deborah Feingold)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The Biggest Children’s Gathering Yet on Tuesday January 15 we’ll kick off Digital Book World Week with our second-annual Publishers Launch Conference focused on the digital transition in children’s publishing–giving this vital segment the deep and focused consideration it deserves.

The major themes of the event are the power of platforms; the challenges of marketing and selling to children in a digital age (including specific case studies for picture books, middle grade and YA books); rethinking children’s book intellectual property and the new ways in which publishers are creating, controlling and licensing IP; and the latest data and critical analysis of what it means.

You can come for just the day, or in a new twist, the DBW Children’s Package adds the opening day of Digital Book World–with general keynotes in the morning, and three more children’s-track sessions in the afternoon, including their exclusive new report from PlayScience on The ABC’s of Kids and E-reading at a package price.

We keep adding to the program www.publisherslaunch.com/2012-2013/launch-kids/program which finishes with a panel including Barbara Marcus of Random House, Karen Lotz of Candlewick, and conference chair Lorraine–but here is some of the diverse and talented group of publishing executives, technologists, innovators, educational specialists and librarians speaking:

Mara Anastas, Simon & Schuster Children’s
Jess Brallier, Pearson/Protropica
Todd Brekhus, Capstone Digital
Gretchen Caserotti, Darien Library
Devereux Chatillon, IP Attorney (Callaway and Zola Books)
Rachel Chou, Open Road Integrated Media
Christian Dorffer, Mindshapes/Magic Town
Deborah Forte, Scholastic Media
Corinne Helman, Harper Children’s
Lisa Holton, Classroom, Inc.
Eric Huang, Penguin (UK)
Carl Kulo, Bowker
Swanna MacNair, Creative Conduit
Kristen McLean, Bookigee
Tina McIntyre, Little, Brown Children’s
Asra Rasheed, Reading Rainbow/RRKidz
Terri Lynn Soutor, Brain Hive
Andrew Sugerman, Disney Publishing Worldwide
Jonathan Yaged, Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group
Our one-day program kicks off Digital Book World Week on Tuesday, January 14 in New York City.

Here is a $200 code: Code: DBW13 Register here (prices go up again on December 8), or use the code PUBLUNCH for a 5 percent discount on any ticket option.  Be prepared for sticker shock.

Talk tomorrow,

Kathy

Chip Gibson has stepped aside from his position as president/publisher at Random House Children’s Books. Barbara Marcus will take Gibson’s place.

Random House Chairman/CEO Markus Dohle made the announcement in a memo sent to Random House employees this morning. He praised Gibson’s work. He wrote:

Chip has transformed the workplace culture at Children’s and impacted young readers everywhere – not just with their beloved books but also with their genuine commitment to philanthropy and community service. With Children’s enjoying a successful 2012, and well set for the future, Chip feels he has accomplished almost everything he originally set out to do professionally.  Now, he wants to take an extended break from work. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

That’s me with the antenna. Wait, no, I’m in the middle.

I started at Scholastic as a Junior Copywriter for $12,500 a year, hired partly because of a writing sample, an opinion piece I wrote about the subway shooter, Bernie Goetz (no lie), and also because I was the first young, heterosexual male to enter the building in the past six years — besides the mail room guys, of course. There were three other copywriters working on the book clubs: Bill Epes, Karen Belov, and Cynthia Larkins. I may have muffed those spellings. My primary responsibility was the K-1 SeeSaw Book Club. I sat in a cubicle and banged away on a typewriter. Computers came in less than a year after I arrived, a transition that caused great upheaval. We threw away our little bottles of liquid white-out, learned how to boot up with an MS-DOS 5 1/4 floppy disk, and so on.

An aside: I just breezed through the brilliant biography, STEVE JOBS, and it so captured the changes of technology through my life. If you are around my age (51 yesterday), or maybe any age, you’ve got read it. The author, Walter Isaacson, also wrote the biography, EINSTEIN, that I raved about previously.

At Scholastic, in the old 730 Broadway location, I worked in-house for almost five years, rising all the way to lower-middle obscurity. Another memory: I remember when they instituted a new policy no longer allowing people to smoke at their desks. Suddenly you had to go down to the 8th floor to the “smoker’s lounge.” Many of us feared that our old-school copyeditor, the chain-smoking Willie Ross, would lose her mind completely. Such a violation of personal liberty, an outrage perpetrated by the PC police, and I was  sure the laughter I heard came from the belly of Big Brother.

I continued on with Scholastic as a consultant and favored freelancer. Launched and ran the Carnival Book Club out of my home in Albany, as both editor and promotion manager. Wrote some books, started doing Jigsaw Jones in 1998, and on and on. I assumed my time at Scholastic would go on forever. But not quite. I used to really, really love that place, and I know I’m not alone in that regard.

The man on the left of the photo is my great pal Craig Walker. In life you don’t get to know too many people who become mentors, people you respect and admire and love, and for me Craig heads that very short list. He was one-of-a-kind. There was a long stretch of about 15 years or so when we were really, really good friends. We probably ate lunch together three times a week for four years, usually in the cheapest, no-nonsense dives we could find. Or was that the bars we frequented? The truly remarkable thing about Craig is that so many people felt that way about him. Our relationship was special. Our friendship was unique and powerful. Dozens upon dozens of people could make that same claim — and they’d all be correct. He was just one of those guys that made you think, “I wish I could be more like him.” Craig is gone now, but as I’ve written before, I