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| Maryann Palumbo | |
Long-time publishing marketer Maryann Palumbo died on April 3. She had been recovering from open-heart surgery and was 75.
She began her publishing career at In-Text Publishing and moved to World Publishing, which was owned by the Times Mirror Company, which also owned paperback publisher New American Library. Palumbo later transferred to NAL, where she began in the publicity department. She quickly moved up to become publicity director. She was there when NAL, known for its paperback reprints and Signet Classics, launched its first hardcover line, NAL Books, in the early 1980s. During this period, she oversaw the publicity campaigns for some of NAL's biggest authors, including Stephen King, Ken Follett, Erica Jong, Mario Puzo and Robin Cook.
In 1984, Palumbo was named director of advertising, promotion and publicity and was named a v-p in 1985. She became known for her marketing programs, staging a gambling casino party for attendees of the American Booksellers Association show to promote the Signet publication of Mario Puzo's Fools Die, for example. Perhaps her best-known campaign was the six-volume "serialized" publication of Stephen King's The Green Mile, with each volume reaching the top of bestseller lists and the special boxed set selling 250,000 copies. For this campaign Palumbo was included in Advertising Age's "Marketing 100" in 1997. Signet was the only publisher included in a group featuring Starbucks, Energizer batteries, Coca-Cola, The X-Files and Beanie Babies.
She and her team also created consumer and trade campaigns for titles such as Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions by Gloria Steinem, Growing Up by Russell Baker and Weight Watchers cookbooks, as well as Donnie Brasco: My Undercover Life in the Mafia by former FBI agent Joseph Pistone.
Palumbo left Viking Penguin to establish her own firm, Maryann Palumbo Marketing Concepts, in 1998. She set up her office at Jericho Communications, where she worked on her own projects, such as The Guinness Book of Records, Ripley's Believe It or Not, and Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins, as well as corporate clients. She retired in 2016.