Random House

Here’s a fairytale: A 28-year-old Columbia M.F.A. student named Reif Larsen wrote a novel about a whimsical child from Montana who likes maps, and suddenly all kinds of famous editors in New York were calling his agent, Denise Shannon, and telling her they really wanted to publish it.

Norton offered to preempt with an advance in the neighborhood of $400,000 if Ms. Shannon took the book off the market and sold it to the publisher right then and there. The editorial director of Dial Press, an imprint of Random House’s Bantam Dell Doubleday group, offered to pay half a million for the same privilege.  read more »

Los Angeles – Markus Dohle looked happy to be there, he really did. Clean-shaven and dressed in a stripey, light-gray suit, the sunny but intense 39-year-old walked around and smiled broadly at every person who shook his hand, and whenever anyone made a joke, he laughed with his whole body, sometimes even rocking back and forth. His auburn hair, punctuated with a playful blond streak, was slicked back and parted carefully on the side. He looked a little like a news anchor, with his tough jaw and dimples.  read more »

39-year-old Markus Dohle was installed as the new CEO of Random House yesterday morning; today, he sent a letter to his staff affirming his excitement and declaring his intention to preserve the company's "longstanding support for the independence of our publishers." There wasn't much in the letter besides that, except a short description up top of the weekend he spent in Los Angeles at the Book Expo. Mr. Dohle flew to L.A. from Germany on Friday, because, as he writes, he "couldn't wait I just couldn't wait" until his official start date "to begin [his] new job."

More on Mr. Dohle's time in LA in tomorrow's edition of Pub Crawl; in the meantime, the full text of Mr. Dohle's note after the jump.  read more »

Random House has a new CEO today. Markus Dohle, 39, officially started this morning after a weekend spent at the Book Expo in Los Angeles. Mr. Dohle has already spent some time here in New York since being appointed to his new position by the head of Random House corporate parent Bertelsmann, spending a week in introductory meetings with Random’s division heads and other executives during the week of May 18th. The meetings, during which Mr. Dohle is said to have used mostly to ask questions, added up to an informal crash-course in the book trade, which is new territory for the industrial engineering and economics major.  read more »

The New York Times is reporting that Peter Olson, who has been C.E.O. of Random House since 1998, will step down "in the next few weeks." Two unnamed executives from Random House's parent company Bertelsmann tell the Times' Mark Landler that pressure on Mr. Olson to vacate his post is coming from Bertelsmann's recently-appointed chief executive Hartmut Ostrowski, who "has lost patience with the performance" of Random House's U.S.  read more »

Jon-Jon Goulian, the bewildering intellectual androgyne who spent four years assisting Bob Silvers at the New York Review of Books, has sold a memoir to Random House for what a publishing source said was a sum in the high six figures.

Executive editor Kate Medina acquired the book in a preempt; literary agents Edward Orloff and Sarah Chalfant of The Wylie Agency, who submitted the proposal to several houses around town before receiving Ms. Medina's offer, brokered the deal.

Mr. Orloff said Mr. Goulian's book is tentatively titled The Man In the Gray Flannel Skirt: A Memoir Of Androgyny, presumably a reference to his days as a cross-dresser.

Though he hails from La Jolla and looks more like a street-tough surfer than a member of New York's delicate and droopy intelligentsia-in-training, Mr. Goulian's menacing tattoos, skin-tight tanktops, and frenetic manner have made him one of the most recognizable unknowns in New York letters. And although he has never published a book and has been more or less unemployed since he left the New York Review in 2005, he has achieved nothing short of iconic status in the publishing community here.  read more »

You know that funny Web site Stuff White People Like, the one with the jokes? The Canadian guy who runs it just sold a book to Random House for an advance that publishing insiders said had reached at least $350,000 when it was at auction last week. Unclear how high it ended up climbing, but frankly, $350,000 is already a staggering sum for a paperback inspired by a faddish blog that launched just over two months ago. UPDATE: Barbara Fillon, the publicist from Random House who is working on the book, called this morning to say that the dollar amount we have is wrong. She would not specify whether the real number is higher or lower. 

The book, sold by William Morris literary agent Erin Malone, will be edited by Random House editor Jill Schwartzman, but according to a source familiar with the situation, Kurt Andersen—who serves at Random as editor at large—has taken an active interest in it and will play a role in its development.  read more »

Norman Mailer's widow, Norris Church Mailer, is writing a memoir that will be published by Random House and edited by David Ebershoff, Publisher's Weekly reports. Mr. Ebershoff also edited Mailer's last four books, including his last, The Castle in the Forest.

The book was sold to Random House by John Taylor “Ike” Williams, who works in the literary and dramatic rights branch of Boston-based lawfirm Fish & Richardson, and who has served as Ms. Church Mailer's literary agent for years. Mr. Williams, who did not immediately respond to request for comment, is also one of the legal representatives for the Mailer Estate.  read more »

Less than six months after leaving his job as executive editor-in-chief of the Random House Publishing Group, Daniel Menaker has signed a book deal with his former colleague, Twelve publisher Jonathan Karp, to write A Good Talk, a primer on how to hold a good conversation, Publishers Weekly reports. 

Mr. Karp served under Mr. Menaker at Random House for about two years before leaving to start his own imprint at Hachette Book Group USA.  read more »