By Kat Stoeffel 2/22 9:19am

books

SMendelsonPBogaards_040407

Bogie’s Burn Book: There’s a Tumblin’, Tweetin’ Bull in the Knopf China Shop

A few weeks ago, Paul Bogaards did something few good publicists, let alone the head of public relations at New York’s most patrician publishing house, would suggest their client do.

In the early hours of Jan. 24, the 51-year-old executive director of publicity and marketing for Knopf posted “The Hierarchy of Book Publishing,” a top-100 ranking of his colleagues and competitors, on his personal Tumblr. Far from a fawning Forbes-style list, Mr. Bogaards’s blog post was a gallows-humor-inflected schematic of an industry in collapse. Books are so screwed, it suggested, that a self-published genre geek (J.A. Konrath, #2), the father of a 4-year-old child who has purportedly been to heaven (Todd Burpo, #4) and the intern running the company Twitter feed (#6) all faced sunnier futures than a feared industry veteran like Andrew Wylie (#11).

A couple hundred publishing-industry observers liked and reblogged the post, including the official Tumblr accounts of Vintage/Anchor, Penguin Press and Pantheon Books.

“It’s funny because it’s true,” Kathryn Ratcliffe-Lee, a HarperCollins assistant, commented.

“AHHHHH PERFECTION,” wrote Emma Straub, the bookstore-clerk-turned-fiction-writer. “And I don’t even get half the jokes.” Read More

By Emily Witt 10/26/11 8:00am

orthography

Greenman, spelling champion.

Ben Greenman Beats Nancy Franklin and Jonathan Burnham in Literary Spelling Bee, Occupies Alphabet

The contestants represented New York’s spelling elite. Many of them had whole careers’ worth of spelling behind them, elevated reputations and steady salaries underpinned by the public’s faith in their agility with words.

Now, sitting in two rows before an audience on the third floor of the Standard Hotel, wearing comically large name tags and sparkly bumblebee antennae that bobbled gently as they fidgeted, they awaited the bloodletting. Read More

By Michael Miller 10/27/09 11:58pm

Burnham, Baby, Burnham: Harper Honcho Falls at Literary Bee

Village Voice columnist Michael Musto, Harper publisher Jonathan Burnham, artist Maira Kalman, author James Frey, Vogue editor Sally Singer and others gathered at Diane von Furstenberg’s studio beneath the High Line on Monday, Oct. 26, for a spelling bee to support the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses and independent publishing.

“I’m so damn, Read More

By Leon Neyfakh 5/13/08 7:20pm

Burnham Banked on Frey, Expands Office, Revives Rep

Some time before it became crystal clear that, despite all laws of nature, James Frey’s Bright Shiny Morning would be an unqualified hit, there was a moment when agents and editors wondered if the man who’d agreed to publish it might have reason to worry for his job. Back in September, Harper publisher Jonathan Burnham Read More

By Lizzy Ratner 8/21/06 12:00am

Long Live Mary of Tribeca

Back before Tribeca became the sun-dappled playground of New York’s Hollywood-on-the-Hudson set, Mary Parvin was running things down there. And when news of her death from cancer early Sunday morning at the Beth Israel Medical Center at age 58 spread through downtown’s literary and artistic community, the grief sounded a particularly deep note, as if Read More

By Shazia Ahmad, Lizzy Ratner, Lauren Collins and Jake Brooks 6/14/04 12:00am

Cries of Le Dernier Cri

After walking up the oyster-hued carpet leading to the Council of Fashion Designers Awards at the New York Public Library on June 7, style mavens discussed the sartorial sins of summer.

“Flip-flops on Fifth Avenue!” groaned double nominee Michael Kors, his arm around aspiring starlet Molly Sims, whose fringed frock swept the floor. “I’m Read More