For Immediate Release
Contact: Heather Freeman (800) 987-9806
Heather@Heatherfreeman.com
Lindley Thornburg (703) 593-5503
Lindley@Heatherfreeman.com
Washington, DC (October 19, 2009) — Long-time literary publicist Mary Kate Maco has been tapped to head up the new Boston office for DC-based Hooks Book Events (www.hooksbookevents.com), a minority women-owned business that specializes in providing low-cost book and author events to U.S. government agencies, non-profit organizations, trade associations, and corporations of all sizes.
An admirer of strong women in literature since first encountering Nancy Drew at five, Maco has worked in book publishing for nearly 20 years. An English Literature major at Mount Holyoke College, she got her start at Simon & Schuster in New York. Her career as a literary publicist included further stints at Avon Books and at university presses including Yale, Oxford, Princeton, and Harvard University Press, where she was most recently Director of Publicity.
Her work included orchestrating and executing sophisticated media campaigns for a wide range of authors, including Catharine MacKinnon, A.S. Byatt, James McPherson, Judge Richard Posner, Camille Paglia, Mary Beard, Stephen Jay Gould and Cass Sunstein.
“This is a very exciting time to be working in the world of books,” Maco believes. “The media and the methods of delivering content may change, but there will always be a market for new ideas. As Publisher’s Weekly noted in an August 31 article about Hooks Book Events, a new breed of booksellers is finding success by altering the traditional independent bookselling model www.publishersweekly.com. I believe Hooks Book Events has developed a business that is unique and special, and I’m thrilled to now be a part of it.”
Why Boston?
Hooks Book Events president Perry Pidgeon Hooks says the decision to open an office in Boston was the obvious next step for the firm she founded in 2007 with former banker, Loretta Yenson.
“The local talent pool in Boston is off the charts,” Hooks explains. “We are bringing increasingly more writers from MIT, Harvard and Harvard Business School to the DC area for private events with our clients. It seemed only logical to also find places where these authors could speak about their books and share their good ideas at corporations and other organizations located in and around Boston.”
The plan is to discover clients, both government and corporate, in the Boston area who have not had the opportunity to take advantage of the amazing brain trust all around them, and to facilitate mutually beneficial relationships between them.
Boston has a vibrant business community and established sectors in targeted areas in which Hooks Book Events is interested in expanding, including financial services, academia, government and biotech firms. And, HBE Boston is partnering with another of the country’s premier independent bookstores – Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, MA, www.harvard.com – to have all orders and sales processed through a local and independent store, much as HBE works with Politics & Prose Bookstore in Washington DC.
Why Mary Kate Maco?
Hooks and Yenson have long worked with Maco, and when they decided to expand, she was a natural choice to run the Boston office.
“We are very pleased that Mary Kate was available and wanted to start working with us to expand into Boston,” Hooks says. “Like Loretta and me, she has a tremendous love of books and a desire to get thought leaders in front of corporate and government executives. She also brings her wonderful reputation and experience working in the book industry.”
The media agree. “No one in the publishing industry has more discerning taste than Mary Kate Maco. I trust her judgment implicitly,” says Benjamin Schwarz, literary and national editor, The Atlantic.”
Hooks adds that Maco also has a deep knowledge of and passion for the city of Boston. “Best of all, she is as hardworking as she is fun and vivacious. We are looking forward to watching our business grow in the Boston area with Mary Kate leading the way.”
For more information or to interview Perry Pidgeon Hooks, Loretta Yenson or Mary Kate Maco, send an email to perry@hooksbookevents.com.
