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| Ed Park | |
Ed Park, hired as a senior editor by Amazon Publishing in 2011 when it aimed to become a house to rival the big New York houses, is joining the Penguin Press as executive editor, the New York Times reported. It called the move "the latest setback for Amazon's publishing aspirations."
Although the publisher has 15 imprints, it has been most successful publishing genre fiction.
Park, "a fixture of New York's literary scene for 20 years," was given his own imprint, Little A, and published, among other titles, Actors Anonymous by James Franco and Godforsaken Idaho by Shawn Vestal, which won the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction.
But, according to the Times, Park found it difficult to acquire the books "in a publishing ecosystem that largely views the online retailer as a rapacious competitor." Park said this wasn't the main reason for his move, but said, "I will not miss those obstacles."
He added: "There were times when I felt like what I was doing was a bit of an outlier. To Amazon Publishing's credit, any book I felt strongly about, they let me pursue, and that kind of autonomy was rare in that climate."
Other departures from Amazon Publishing's New York operations have included its head, Larry Kirshbaum, and Julia Cheiffetz, who hired Ed Park and left Amazon in July and is now executive editor of Dey Street Books.
Amazon indicated that Little A will be led by Tara Parsons, former head of Harlequin Mira.
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Amazon's editors have picked the 100 best books of 2014. The best book of the year is Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng (Penguin Press), which senior books editor Chris Schluep described this way: " 'Lydia is dead.' From the first sentence of Celeste Ng's stunning debut, we know that the oldest daughter of the Chinese-American Lee family has died. What follows is a novel that explores alienation, achievement, race, gender, family, and identity--as the police must unravel what has happened to Lydia, the Lee family must uncover the sister and daughter that they hardly knew. There isn't a false note in this book, and my only concern in describing my profound admiration for Everything I Never Told You is that it might raise unachievable expectations in the reader. But it's that good. Achingly, precisely, and sensitively written."