QVC publishing, a subsidiary of the QVC cable shopping network, has appointed Ellen Bruzelius general manager and Sarah Butterworth editorial director as the unit prepares to launch its own titles. The two women join vice-president and publisher Jill Cohen in the publishing group.
Bruzelius was previously a division vice-president in the direct marketing group at Random House, where she oversaw the development and marketing of the Best of Gourmet cookbook series. At QVC Publishing, she will develop and supervise a cooking series and head the direct-mail and advertising campaigns for the titles.
Butterworth was previously vice-president of development and marketing at CMD Publishing; the best-selling titles she worked on there were The Pill Book and Johns Hopkins Health Book. She is developing QVC Publishing's beauty, fashion, fitness and home decor titles.
QVC Publishing's initial projects--planned to launch in November--are two hardcover cookbook series: Cook's Essentials and In the Kitchen with Bob, the latter by QVC senior program host Bob Bowersox. (Bowersox's first cookbook, In the Kitchen with Bob, published by Hearst Books, sold 155,000 copies in one day on QVC.) The QVC 2000 Desk Diary is also set to be published this fall.
The titles will initially be sold on QVC and its Web site (www.iQVC.com), then continued through a direct-mail campaign. Butterworth told PW that negotiations are still continuing to find a distributor to sell the titles into the retail market.
In 1998, QVC's book sales grew by approximately 20%, which exceeded the overall company growth of approximately 12% to $2.4 billion. Book sales in 1999 are currently ahead of last year's pace, due mainly to bestselling author Suze Orman's book The Courage to Be Rich (Riverhead).
