Publishers Weekly Magazine

Mondo Times editors    Boulder Colorado USA

Posted at 10:43am on Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

Publishers Weekly Cover Ignites Twitter Controversy, Gallycat reported on December 15, 2009:

"This evening, the Twittersphere pounced Publishers Weekly for running an image by on the front cover of the most recent magazine--a picture of a woman's head covered with countless hair picks.

Entitled "Pickin'," the image was photographed by Lauren Kelly for the new book, "Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present" by Deborah Willis.

Hoping to ease the controversy, Calvin Reid, the senior news editor at Publishers Weekly, responded via the magazine's Twitter feed. He picked the hashtag #afropw to archive the ongoing discussion about the picture.

"I admit that I love afro picks! In the 1970s I had many just like them also stuck in my massive afro ... and it's a story about 'picking' books. I love dumb jokes," Reid wrote on Twitter. He concluded: "While I respect everyone who may be offended, I think the photo is a delightful and wry expression of historical Afro Americana."

UPDATE: Reid writes GalleyCat, via Twitter: "Obviously many people dislike the image. Perhaps I shouldn't have used it but I believe its a fine & beautiful & funny image."

Eric Kallgren    Boulder, Colorado USA

Posted at 2:40pm on Wednesday, February 4th, 2009

On February 3, 2009, the New York Observer interviewed Sara Nelson, who has just been laid off as editor of Publishers Weekly:

“I think these people are rock stars, I always did,” Sara Nelson said. “I think they’re cool. I’m much more interested in hearing about what’s going on in Sonny Mehta’s head than I am in George Clooney’s.”

This was Friday afternoon, and Ms. Nelson, 52, was in her office at Publishers Weekly, where until the end of last week she was editor in chief. Surrounded by boxes of books that she’d been packing since being told the previous Monday morning that she was being laid off, Ms. Nelson was battling an unforgiving cold, sneezing and sniffling emphatically.

She talked about how much she loves the book business. After nine years on the beat—four of them as editor of PW—she speaks of her subjects with warmth, and describes their sorrows as if they were her own.

“There’s so much written about how publishers don’t know what they’re doing,” Ms. Nelson said. “But how do you know what to do? You’re making a bet on who’s gonna like something a year and a half from now. That’s without even getting into the economy or anything—just, ‘What’s the mood of a number of people going to be a year and a half from now?’ If you thought too much about that, you’d shoot yourself.”