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Two Weeks ago I featured John Mander on Illustrator Saturday. John was busy getting ready to attend the Reuben Awards dinner in Pittsburgh, PA. and didn’t have time to finish the answers for his featured post. John won the Best Illustrated Children’s Book Award that Saturday night for illustrating Jack and the Giant Barbecue. .Here is the link to read john’s interview answers that were added duribg the week: http://kathytemean.wordpress.com/2013/05/25/illustrator-saturday-john-manders/  Congratulations John!

Bloomsbury Children’s Books has promoted Caroline Abbey and Mary Kate Castellani to senior editor, while Brett Wright and Laura Whitaker move up to associate editor. Both Castellani and Whitaker move over from Walker Children’s, which will shift its focus to that of a boutique imprint under publishing director Emily Easton, publishing 18 titles per year with an emphasis on nonfiction and select fiction for preschool through young adult.

Phoebe Yeh will join Random House Children’s Books as vp, Publisher, Crown Books for Young Readers on June 21, reporting to Barbara Marcus. Yeh was most recently editorial director at HarperCollins Children’s. ““I have known Phoebe for many years and admire her as a highly creative and versatile editor with an excellent track record for discovering and nurturing new voices,” said Marcus in a statement. “I am so pleased to welcome her to Random House, where her expertise in nonfiction and commercial middle-grade books will perfectly complement and further strengthen our list.”

Sarah Harrison Smith has been named children’s editor at the New York Times Book Review. She was most recently on the paper’s metropolitan desk.

Tara Gelsomino has joined F+W Media’s Crimson Romance digital/POD imprint as executive editor. She was most recently executive marketing manager at AudioGO.

At BEA, HarperCollins announced their new in-house program to provide and manage digital galleys as well as promotional copies of their ebooks (including providing authors with multiple ebook “copies” of their books). Called the e-Insider Program, it works from a new website — e.hc.com — and uses Adobe Digital Editions (and thus requires a free Adobe ID to read the ebooks).

Authors will be given a set of one-time use of codes, each good for a single ebook download. For trade shows, like this one, “rather than distributing physical copies of books, HarperCollins can now provide a code that will bring promotional finished e-books or galleys directly to key constituents.” They used the platform to provide titles from Avon, Avon Impulse, Harper Teen and Harper Teen Impulse at the convention.

On Friday at BEA, the Publishing Hackathon awarded first prize to Evoke — which maps how characters in fiction are emotionally similar to each other as a way of discovering new books (and characters) to enjoy. The founders described it at the event as a “social recommendation algorithm that associates characters with each other based on reader preferences.”

Talk tomorrow,

Kathy