– HarperCollins “plans to delay pay increases until after July 1, 2009…a response to the U.S. recession, according to spokesperson Erin Crum, Bloomberg reports. “HarperCollins hasn’t decided whether to
eliminate jobs, she said.”
Bloomberg
– “Last month, John Sargent, chief executive of Macmillan, whose publishing houses include Farrar, Straus and Giroux and St. Martin’s Press, said in a companywide meeting that he could not guarantee that everyone would have a job going forward. Mr. Sargent declined to comment.”
– Pearson has a companywide freeze on nearly all raises, which includes Penguin.
– Bowker announced internally a restructuring in “a couple of our operating units, including the transition of key responsibilities to our development team in the Netherlands.” As a result, according to ceo Annie Callanan, “this has resulted in the elimination of 13 positions in the US.” She says they are “shifting more of our product management, training and IT development resources on our Search & Discovery services to our [Dutch] Medialab operation.”
Callanan emphasizes that the company overall is expanding, not contracting: “Bowker is closing out another strong year of growth in 2008 and our payroll is actually increasing into 2009.”
– Among the errors in newspaper coverage of yesterday’s Random House changes (in addition to continuing accounts of Steve Rubin’s departure), bear in mind that the new RH organization has four divisions, not three. The sizable Random House Children’s remains a separate unit under Chip Gibson. Among the errors in our own coverage yesterday was Rick Richter’s starting point at S&S. He joined the company in 1996, for his first of two stints running the Children’s division.