Yesterday a disgruntled Penguin staffer knocked Bernadette Malone by referring to her as “Penguin’s Judith Regan;” today Page Six says, “Forget Regan—the new female publishing powerhouse in town is Leigh Haber.” The context? This time, apparently, it’s strictly positive: The Rodale executive editor has been given her own imprint, called Modern Times. (The version we heard from another source includes a promotion to vice-president.) P6 adds that “she’s already signed up O magazine columnist Martha Beck and Newsweek chief of correspondents Marcus Mabry.” A quick peek in the Publishers Marketplace deal archives indicates that those particular book deals were announced in March 2006 and August 2005, respectively. If you want to talk about what Haber’s done recently, why, just last week she bought a Nancy Pelosi bio from SF Chronicle bureau chief Marc Sandalow.
On the Malone front, by the way, Penguin colleague Rachel Kahan was moved to write us a note lambasting the comparsion as “both a vicious personalattack as well as completely nonsensical.” The Putnam senior editor adds, “I’m a feminist liberal who has been a registered Democrat since I turned 18, yet I recognize that Bernadette is a fine editor and a passionate, knowledgeable advocate for her books… She has been picked at by outraged publishing liberals since she moved back to New York, and yet she’s always handled the criticism—much of it personal and undeserved—with patience and class.”