Simon and Schuster CEO Jonathan Karp in the London Book Fair 2024 mainstage keynote. Image: LBF
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
‘A Shaper of Books’
The week’s news that Simon & Schuster‘s Jonathan Karp intends to step down from his role as CEO clearly caught many by surprise. Discussion among industry players has tended to focus on the “so soon” assertion, referencing the fact that Karp has been in the role since Carolyn Reidy’s untimely death in May 2020.
Those five years had been preceded by Karp’s work for a decade as publisher of Simon & Schuster’s main imprint. And his five years as CEO have included the failed 2022 attempt by Penguin Random House to acquire S&S, an effort turned back by Judge Florence Pan, an antitrust win for the Biden administration. The successful acquisition by KKR would come almost a year later—as the company was preparing for its 100th anniversary.
What’s more, much of this was occurring against a background of political upheaval, and Simon & Schuster is a leading publisher of often strong political writings.
As an example, in 2021, Karp found himself responding to a petition from some of his own employees, protesting the company’s signing of former vice-president Mike Pence’s two books. “Regardless of where authors sit on the ideological spectrum, or if they hold views that run counter to the belief systems held by some of us,” Karp wrote to the staff, “we apply a rigorous standard to assure that in acquiring books, we will be bringing into the world works that provide new information or perspectives on events to which we otherwise might not have access.”
And just this month, John Bolton’s 2020 The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir has been back in the news, the former Trump national security advisor having been under investigation under both the Biden and now Trump administrations. In his first administration, Trump had tried to block publication of the book, and as Devlin Barrett and Glenn Thrush wrote for The New York Times, the case seemed to mushroom into view again on Friday (August 22) as FBI agents searched the Bolton home in Maryland and office in Washington DC.
None of this is meant to explain Karp’s decision to wait until his successor is found and then form a new imprint (with a new site already up and operating) called Simon Six. Speculation is just that.
It has, however, been quite a half-decade for this century-old Big Five publisher, only now an independent house for the first time in its development. Madeline McIntosh, formerly of Penguin Random House USA and the co-founding CEO and publisher of Author’s Equity, is on Karp’s S&S board. She said to Elizabeth A. Harris for her report at The New York Times this week about S&S, “Think about what they’ve had to experience, and what he’s had to manage as a leader. It was five years, but for him it must have felt like 15.”
And as the week’s announcement from S&S’ offices in New York laid out the news of his plan to leave the chief executive role, it was striking how frequently the company was stressing a desire on Karp’s part to work more with authors, to work more closely to the house’s literature, to be what KKR’s Richard Sarnoff—who has worked with Karp in the past at Random House—a “shaper of books.”
“Simon and Schuster is on a great growth trajectory right now,” Karp said in his prepared statement for various news media this week, “and it has been a privilege to lead the company for the last five years. When KKR acquired Simon & Schuster, I agreed to stay on through the transition, but my north star has always been our authors and their books, and I’ve decided it’s time for me to return to the part of publishing that animates me the most.
“I remain deeply committed to our mission and am excited to remain a devoted shareholder who will support our next leader and the entire team however I can.”
‘We Have To Be Increasingly Persistent’
Some of the industry players who may be less surprised at Karp’s interest in the books over the corner office may have been at London Book Fair‘s packed 2024 main-stage keynote conversation with Publishing Perspectives. While it may not have stood out in the same way at the time in London, almost every point he made in response to a question in that live interview referenced some element of his interest in authors’ work and the house’s books, often with very specific references. The trade visitors at London Book Fair were hearing the focus of what Karp says is guiding his pivot now.
“Marketing has always been what authors wanted more of. I think Gutenberg probably wished he’d sold more copies of The Bible.”Jonathan Karp
In terms of new hires, for example, he said, “We’ve hired some really terrific editors recently and we’re going to hire people in enlisting marketing and production and sales to do more titles. It’s not going to be a dramatically large increase in titles. It’s going to be gradual. And we’re not going to rush books into the marketplace. We’re going to be careful about it.”
Upbeat about S&S’ upcoming 100th anniversary that year and the new KKR ownership, Karp was relaxed, energetic, and detailed in his commentary. He talked of surveying 400 authors “to ask them what they thought of us.” He emphasized that an interest in authors was more than a company talking point: “We’re really committed to walking that walk.”
Jonathan Karp
Authors had told the company, he said “that they’d like to see more communication around marketing and publicity. I think marketing has always been what authors wanted more of. I think Gutenberg probably wished he’d sold more copies of The Bible.” The key, he said, is to make it clearer to authors how much was being done in support of their books.
And as he worked his way through the conversation, he referenced multiple authors by name to illustrate his points. “We published The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo,” he said, “and we sold five million copies. Right now, we have Lauren Roberts’ Powerless and that’s followed by Reckless. We’ve got a huge bestselling nonfiction book that’s been out for six years—a nonfiction book by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga, translated [by Isaac Wright] from Japanese, The Courage To Be Disliked,” a book, like many, he said “being driven by BookTok.”
In point after point, Karp was swinging from book to book and from author to author, in a widening view of the company’s work. And he was not talking to consumers who would buy those books. This was London Book Fair’s industry-professional audience. The arc of his comments illuminated Simon & Schuster’s lists, not the more financially led observations that some may have anticipated.
“Over the past five years, we’ve brought a lot of new talent to our company. We’ve become a more international company. We’ve created an ownership culture and we’ve achieved some record-setting results that have positioned the company for growth.”Jonathan Karp
He talked about Genevieve Kingston’s memoir Did I Ever Tell You?, saying, “It’s really the most extraordinary memoir I’ve ever read. About a mother’s love for her children. I cried about seven times when I read this memoir. And I’m not a crier. But anyone I give it to, I get the same reaction. It’s just really special and this book is going to have massive word of mouth behind it.”
Karp would go on to reference A Walk in the Park by Kevin Fedarko and many other titles and writers, saying that he finds it easiest to land a debut, while “The second and third books are harder. It’s hard to make people pay attention the second time and third time and fourth time. That’s why we have to be increasingly persistent in our marketing and also really communicate to authors about what we do” to support their books.”
Jonathan Karp on a mid-March day in 2024 was full of pride in S&S’ authors and books, and hanging virtually every point he made on one or more of them.
The London attendees who heard Karp speak may have been early recipients of his message this week, when he wrote to the staff, “Over the past five years, we’ve brought a lot of new talent to our company. We’ve become a more international company. We’ve created an ownership culture and we’ve achieved some record-setting results that have positioned the company for growth.
“Most importantly, we’ve kept our focus squarely on our authors and the books we publish.”
More from Publishing Perspectives on London Book Fair is here, more from us on trade shows and book fairs in world publishing is here, and more on the United Kingdom’s book market is here, more on Simon & Schuster is here, and more on the work of authors in book publishing is here.