A press release from Paula Guran:
September 30 is my last day as editor of Juno. Juno remains an active imprint for Pocket. What plans they have for the future of Juno, I am not privy to. That will be between them and co-publisher Wildside Press.
The web site will remain active and I will continue to announce releases (like the upcoming Virtual Virgin by Carole Nelson Douglas) and post reviews of Pocket Juno books and author news on the editorial blog and tweet posts via Twitter. This eddress (editor [at] juno-books [dot] com) will remain active, but the one for submissions (submissions [at] juno-books [dot] com) will be dropped. My Facebook account will just be me, and no longer representing Pocket Juno. (So, unfriend me if you are only there for Juno. It’s cool!)
I will edit and coordinate Linda Robertson’s Shattered Circle—the sixth in her Circle series, which is due out in December 2012—on a freelance basis. As most of you know, submissions have been closed since May 2010. Robertson’s fifth (Wicked Circle) and sixth Circle novels were the last I contracted.
I’m very proud of what Pocket Juno’s authors have accomplished. It was a privilege to work with them. We set out to publish great, entertaining contemporary fantasy with female protagonists. And we did. On that basis Pocket Juno has been a huge success.
Yes, I’m saddened that some wonderful series will not be continued. If I hadn’t loved them, I never would have bought them to start with. But publishing is a business and decisions concerning what to publish are made for business reasons, not from emotional attachment.
Juno was my editorial “baby”. First as part of a team that included Sean Wallace and Stephen H. Segal—at its inception in 2006 as a small press imprint then as an imprint of Simon & Schuster’s Pocket. It was an often hectic, sometimes frustrating, but usually wonderful and always enlightening experience. I’m very grateful that John Betancourt of Wildside allowed Juno to be born and continued supporting it as co-publisher with Pocket.
Jennifer Heddle who coordinated and supervised Juno (and me) for Pocket was fantastic to work with. Completely coincidently, Jen has recently left Simon & Schuster (and New York) for a dream job editing Star Wars (which she loves) adult books and comics for Lucasfilm in San Francisco. I’m sure Jen will perform brilliantly—as she always has.
Everyone at Pocket, including publisher Louise Burke and Vice President/Deputy Publisher Anthony Ziccardi, has worked very hard on the behalf of Juno. Those I worked with most directly along with Jen—especially Jen’s assistants [first Emilia Pisani and then (and still) Julia Fincher], publicist Erica Feldon, art director Lisa Litwack, and copy writer Eliza Shallcross—were all super professionals and kind people. Special thanks to them all.
Not to get too personal but, frankly, Juno saved my life. That may sound dramatic, but it is also probably true. I started working as its editor at a time in my life when a great deal was falling apart yet I had to remain a solid rock for others. Both financially and psychologically, editing Juno allowed me to keep it together. My path (starting almost exactly seventeen years ago) to a career in publishing is not just atypical, it is unique. The fork into Pocket Juno was near miraculous.
This is not the only departure for me right now, I’m also no longer editing nonfiction for Weird Tales. I’ve bid farewell to WT on its website.
Not to get too philosophical, but if you have any awareness of the publishing industry you know these are very interesting times. I’m a publishing junkie—especially genre publishing—so I’m aware of its history. Change and upheaval is to be expected and it has always been so.
Although sorry to be leaving Juno, I’m also excited about my next direction. I’ve been working on projects with Prime Books for the last year or so. I will be continuing on as Senior Editor there. (Prime was once part of Wildside and its publisher, Sean Wallace, was part of the original Juno team; so the path also comes full circle.) I’ll also have a YA anthology, Brave New Love, published in the UK by Constable-Robinson and in the US by Running Press early next year.
If you want to keep up with what I’m doing, check out the Prime site (www.prime-books.com), I’ll soon be blogging there, so sign up for its mailing list, follow us on Twitter (http://twitter.com/#!/PrimeBooks) and/or its RSS feed (http://www.prime-books.com/feed/). My eddress there is paula [at] prime-books [dot] com.
Thank you all for your interest in Juno. Please don’t forget Pocket Juno still has great books available—with more to come—for your reading pleasure.
Best,
Paula Guran
Related articles previously published on SFScope:
Promotions at Weird Tales (25 January 2010)
More on Juno joining Pocket, and updated submission guidelines (28 January 2009)
Juno Books joins Simon & Schuster’s Pocket Books (23 January 2009)