Larry Kirshbaum | |
---|---|
Born | 1944 (age 79–80) |
Alma mater | University of Michigan |
Occupation | Book publisher |
Known for | Chief of publishing at Amazon.com |
Spouse | Barbara Feder |
Children | 2 |
Laurence "Larry" Kirshbaum is the former chief of publishing for Amazon Publishing.
Born to a Jewish family in Chicago in 1944 and raised in the Lincoln Park neighborhood. [1] In 1966, Kirshbaum graduated with a B.A. from the University of Michigan. [2] After school, he worked for Newsweek. [1] [2] In 1970, he co-wrote a book with Roger Rapoport about student protests, Is the Library Burning? [1] [2] In 1970, he accepted a job as a salesman for Random House selling to drugstores, small groceries, and gift shops. [2] In 1974, he went to work for Warner Books where he became a publisher in 1985, working with Jack Welch and Michael Eisner on their memoirs. [2] He then became CEO of the Time Warner Book Group. [3] [4] In 2005, he left Time Warner to found his own literary agency. [2] In 2011, he went to work as the chief of publishing for Amazon Publishing; [5] [3] which was striving to build its own publishing business. He signed numerous authors including actress and director Penny Marshall and best-selling writer Timothy Ferris. [6] In 2012, his efforts were crushed after bookseller Barnes & Noble stated that it would not sell books published by Amazon in its stores. [6] In October 2013, it was announced that he was leaving Amazon and will be replaced by Daphne Durham. [6]
He is married to the former Barbara Feder of Highland Park, Illinois; they have two children. [1]
In 2013, he was accused of sexually assaulting a woman. [7] Catherine Redlich, Kirshbaum's attorney, stated that the incident was a "consensual relationship from a decade ago which turned sour". [8] [9]
Brett Ratner is an American film director and producer. He directed the Rush Hour film series, The Family Man, Red Dragon, X-Men: The Last Stand, Tower Heist, and Hercules. He is a producer of several films, including the Horrible Bosses series, as well as executive producer on other projects, including the films The Revenant and War Dogs and the television series Prison Break.
Barnes & Noble Booksellers is an American bookseller with the largest number of retail outlets in the United States. The company operates approximately 600 retail stores across all 50 U.S. states.
Ain't It Cool News (AICN) is an entertainment news website founded by Harry Knowles and run by his sister Dannie Knowles since September 2017, dedicated to news, rumors, and reviews of upcoming and current films, television, and comic book projects, with an emphasis on science fiction, superhero, fantasy, horror, and action genres.
Jeffrey Michael Tambor is an American actor. He is known for his television roles such as Jeffrey Brookes, the uptight neighbor of Stanley and Helen Roper in the television sitcom The Ropers (1979–1980), as Hank Kingsley on The Larry Sanders Show (1992–1998), George Bluth Sr. and Oscar Bluth on Arrested Development and Maura Pfefferman on Transparent (2014–2017). For his role in the latter, Tambor earned two Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series out of three nominations. In 2015, he was also awarded a Golden Globe for his portrayal of Pfefferman.
Simon & Schuster LLC is an American publishing company owned by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts. It was founded in New York City on January 2, 1924, by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. Along with Penguin Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins and Macmillan Publishers, Simon & Schuster is considered one of the 'Big Five' English language publishers. As of 2017, Simon & Schuster was the third largest publisher in the United States, publishing 2,000 titles annually under 35 different imprints.
Harvey Weinstein is an American former film producer and convicted sex offender. In 1979, Weinstein and his brother, Bob Weinstein, co-founded the entertainment company Miramax, which produced several successful independent films including Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989); The Crying Game (1992); Pulp Fiction (1994); Heavenly Creatures (1994); Flirting with Disaster (1996); and Shakespeare in Love (1998). Weinstein won an Academy Award for producing Shakespeare in Love and also won seven Tony Awards for plays and musicals including The Producers, Billy Elliot the Musical, and August: Osage County. After leaving Miramax, Weinstein and his brother Bob founded The Weinstein Company (TWC), a mini-major film studio. He was co-chairman, alongside Bob, from 2005 to 2017.
James Lee Toback is an American screenwriter and film director. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1991 for Bugsy. He has directed films including The Pick-up Artist, Two Girls and a Guy and Black and White.
Hachette Book Group (HBG) is a publishing company owned by Hachette Livre, the largest publishing company in France, and the third largest trade and educational publisher in the world. Hachette Livre is a wholly owned subsidiary of Lagardère Group. HBG was formed when Hachette Livre purchased the Time Warner Book Group from Time Warner on March 31, 2006. Its headquarters are located at 1290 Avenue of the Americas, Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Hachette is considered one of the "big five" publishing companies, along with Holtzbrinck/Macmillan, Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster. In one year, HBG publishes approximately 1400+ adult books, 300 books for young readers, and 450 audiobook titles. In 2017, the company had 167 books on the New York Times bestseller list, 34 of which reached No. 1.
Andrew Kreisberg is an American television writer, producer and comic book writer. He is best known as the co-creator of the television series The Flash, Arrow, Supergirl and Legends of Tomorrow.
Skyhorse Publishing, Inc. is an American independent book publishing company founded in 2006 and headquartered in New York City, with a satellite office in Brattleboro, Vermont.
Jeffree Star is an American internet personality, makeup artist, and former singer-songwriter. He is the founder and owner of Jeffree Star Cosmetics.
Max Landis is an American filmmaker and the son of director John Landis. He wrote scripts for the films Chronicle (2012), American Ultra (2015), Victor Frankenstein (2015), and Bright (2017). He wrote and directed the film Me Him Her (2015), produced the first two seasons of the Syfy series Channel Zero (2016), and created the series Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (2016) based on the novel, for BBC America. He has also written limited series published by DC and Image Comics.
Amazon Publishing is Amazon's book publishing unit launched in 2009. It is composed of 15 imprints including AmazonEncore, AmazonCrossing, Montlake Romance, Thomas & Mercer, 47North, and Topple Books.
The Goldfinch is a 2019 American drama film directed by John Crowley. It was written by Peter Straughan, who adapted the 2013 novel The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. It stars Ansel Elgort as Theodore Decker, whose life changes after his mother dies in a terrorist bombing at a museum and a dying man convinces him to take a famous painting called The Goldfinch from the museum. Oakes Fegley, Aneurin Barnard, Finn Wolfhard, Sarah Paulson, Luke Wilson, Jeffrey Wright, and Nicole Kidman appear in supporting roles.
Trump: Surviving at the Top is a 1990 book written by businessman Donald Trump and journalist Charles Leerhsen, and published by Random House. In 1991, Warner Books purchased the paperback rights to the book and re-released it as The Art of Survival.
Roger Hobbs was an American writer. He was the author of Ghostman and Vanishing Games. In 2011, Hobbs sold the adaptation rights to his crime fiction Ghostman to Warner Brothers. In 2014, Hobbs was nominated for the Edgar Award for Best First Novel by an American Author. Roger Hobbs died of a drug overdose in Portland, Oregon, on November 14, 2016.
The Weinstein effect is a phenomenon in which sexual harassment allegations of powerful figures get disclosed.
Amazon is an American multinational technology company which focuses on e-commerce, cloud computing, and digital streaming. It has been referred to as "one of the most influential economic and cultural forces in the world", and is one of the world's most valuable brands.
Virginia Louise Giuffre is an American-Australian campaigner who offers support to victims of sex trafficking. She is an alleged victim of the sex trafficking ring of Jeffrey Epstein. Giuffre created Victims Refuse Silence, a non-profit based in the United States, in 2015, which was relaunched under the name Speak Out, Act, Reclaim (SOAR) in November 2021. She has given a detailed account to many American and British reporters about her experiences of being trafficked by Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.
David Steinberger is an American businessman, publishing executive, current Chairman of the National Book Foundation, and Executive Chairman of Open Road Integrated Media Inc. His career has involved the acquisition, management and sale of a number of publishers and publishing-related companies as well as the application of digital technologies to publishing companies. He previously was CEO of Arcadia Publishing and CEO of the Perseus Books Group, following leadership roles at HarperCollins. In January 2021 he announced a succession plan at Arcadia, handing over day-to-day management to a successor and moving to Arcadia's board of directors. In December 2021, Steinberger led an investor group in the acquisition of Open Road Integrated Media inc., which utilizes data science technology to market eBooks, with Steinberger being named Executive Chairman, along with the role of CEO to be added in January 2022.