Marion Garner. Image: Penguin Random House Canada
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
‘Thrilled She Was Able To Be Persuaded’
The CEO of Penguin Random House Canada, Kristin Cochrane, has announced today (December 5) that, effective on January 6, Marion Garner will take over the role of Penguin Canada publisher.
The position was vacated in April when Nicole Winstanley left to become president and publisher of Simon & Schuster Canada.
Since then Cochrane personally directed the unit for seven months, and today exits raving about the staff’s capabilities, noting that this year alone, Penguin Canada books have “held the No. 1 spot on bestseller lists eight times, receiving 47 award nominations, winning nine, and appearing six times on the Globe and Mail’s annual ‘Globe 100’ list” of the year’s best books.
In her memo to the staff, Cochrane writes that her months working in such close proximity to the Penguin Canada team gave her the insight she needed, “thinking deeply about what sort of leader this very successful division needs. As I undertook the search for a new publisher, these needs were top of mind; as the search progressed, it became clear to me that the depth of both experience and relationships required might be most fully found in our midst.
“That thinking brought me to Marion,” she writes, “one of the most trusted and accomplished publishing talents at Penguin Random House Canada, and someone highly regarded by colleagues globally and in the wider industry. I’m thrilled she was able to be persuaded, and I’m hugely grateful as well.”
A Thought Process
Cochrane, while an accomplished and seasoned executive is also an admirably forthright thinker and has a knack for sharing a kind of warm authenticity in her statements about her work. It’s not every CEO who announces that her key hiring decisions may have to do with doing a stint at running a unit herself to see what’s needed.
Kristin Cochrane
Her reference to Garner’s international regard, of course, has to do with our coverage of this new appointment, our key parameter is always that such a personnel note may be one that our international trade publishing readership will encounter in one way or another going forward: potential international influence, in other words.
At one point, Cochrane notes that Garner’s positions with PRH Canada and its previous units mean that “When we learned audiobook retailers were preparing to launch in Canada, she [Garner] worked with speed and command to launch a homegrown audiobook program that’s now an award-winning part of our core publishing and a priority growth area.”
Several leadership changes will follow in the new year as Garners new role takes effect.
And for clarification to press agents, our own key criterion for coverage of a personnel change has to do with whether the international sphere of trade book publishing may in some way(s) be a result of a such news. Touching on so many countries’ markets as our internationalist coverage does, we’re unable to carry more than a fraction of the announcements we get , and this potential for cross-border effect is a key part of what drives our decisions.
More from Publishing Perspectives on Penguin Random House is here, more on the Canadian market is here, and more on international publishing is here.