Year End

As Simon & Schuster closes the year as part of the newly re-merged ViacomCBS, ceo Carolyn Reidy writes to staff in her year-end letter, “This re-combination will present Simon & Schuster with a host of new opportunities as we forge close relationships that can both draw from and supply content to our new media partners, expanding the universe of direct relationships and pipelines that we have previously worked very hard to establish and maintain, and that over the years have yielded significant benefit. I am very much looking forward to seeing how we will be able to exploit the many […]

Hachette Book Group USA ceo Michael Pietsch welcomed staff back to work with a summary memo, celebrating “another strong year in 2018” in which “our budget for revenue and profit and surpassed 2017’s results.” He notes that “our publishing divisions all contributed to our positive financial results.” It was also a year, as previously reported, in which the company “restructured for greater efficiency.” Notably, Pietsch reiterates that “our first goal as a company continues to be growth, and we achieved this both through acquisitions and internal expansion.” As for the year ahead, he indicates that Malcolm Gladwell will have a […]

The “silence breakers” earned person of the year honors from Time magazine and from people around the country. As the magazine aptly wrote: “It became a hashtag, a movement, a reckoning. But it began, as great social change nearly always does, with individual acts of courage.” We should not let the year end without reviewing some of the notable revelations and effects of #metoo on book publishing. Documented accusations have been more modest than in film and television, though the story that started the movement, exposing Harvey Weinstein’s horrendous acts, had near immediate resonance in book publishing. MSNBC news personality […]