Laurence "Larry" Kirshbaum is the former chief of publishing for Amazon Publishing.
Biography
Born to a
American Jews family in
Chicago in 1944 and raised in the Lincoln Park neighborhood.
[ Chicago Tribune: "The Man Who`s Betting Millions On 'Gone With The Wind II' by John Blades October 03, 1988] In 1966, Kirshbaum graduated with a B.A. from the University of Michigan.
[ Vanity Fair: "The Book on Publishing" BY Keith Gessen October 2011] After school, he worked for Newsweek.
In 1970, he co-wrote a book with Roger Rapoport about student protests,
Is the Library Burning? In 1970, he accepted a job as a salesman for
Random House selling to drugstores, small groceries, and gift shops.
In 1974, he went to work for
Warner Books where he became a publisher in 1985, working with
Jack Welch and
Michael Eisner on their memoirs.
He then became
CEO of the Time Warner Book Group.
In 2005, he left Time Warner to found his own literary agency.
In 2011, he went to work as the chief of publishing for Amazon Publishing;
which was striving to build its own publishing business. He signed numerous authors including actress and director
Penny Marshall and best-selling writer
Timothy Ferris.
[ Wall Street Journal: "Publishing Executive Larry Kirshbaum to Leave Amazon - Kirshbaum, Who Made Waves by Signing Big-Name Authors, to Leave Early Next Year" By Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg October 25, 2013] In 2012, his efforts were crushed after bookseller Barnes & Noble stated that it would not sell books published by Amazon in its stores.
In October 2013, it was announced that he was leaving Amazon and will be replaced by Daphne Durham.
Personal life
He is married to the former Barbara Feder of Highland Park, Illinois; they have two children.
In 2013, he was accused of sexually assaulting a woman.
