Jane Wood, currently Orion‘s editor-in-chief, has announced she will be moving to Quercus in the summer of 2007 to build up the independent publisher’s general and women’s fiction list, the Bookseller reports. Her job title will be publisher, and she will work alongside Sue Freestone, Jon Riley and Nic Cheetham. Wood, whose authors at Orion include Michael Connelly and Chris Simms, previously worked with Quercus chairman Anthony Cheetham at Orion and Century. She said: “I’m thrilled to be joining Quercus at this exciting time. I’m hugely looking forward to helping them build the trade fiction list. It’s a wonderful opportunity for me.”
What’s particularly interesting is that the buzz at Orion for months was that Wood was on the slow boat to retirement. Guess that’s been delayed now…