An Agent & A New Digital Publisher

Christine LeBlond has rejoined Susan Schulman Literary Agency as an agent. She began her career there as executive assistant and was a junior agent before joining Periplus Books as rights manager, where she worked for the past 10 years.

Senior marketing manager at Grove/Atlantic and Mysterious Press Jason Pinter will leave the company on July 19 to launch Polis Books, a digital publishing startup focusing on new and backlist fiction from contemporary authors in crime fiction, science fiction & fantasy, and romance/erotica/commercial women's fiction. … Polis will offer authors "modest advances to begin with," as "it's important that our writers know we are investing in them" and royalties beginning at  at 40 percent of net receipts, increasing at various sales benchmarks.

(Excerpted from Publisher's Lunch)