The publisher’s new board of directors has expertise spanning the life cycle of a book.
Simon & Schuster announced on Thursday a board of directors with experience that covers the life cycle of a book, including traditional publishing and audiobooks, movie spinoffs and TikTok.
The board was constituted after the private equity firm KKR bought Simon & Schuster this year for $1.62 billion. Under its previous owner, Paramount, the publisher did not have its own board.
“This board is going to help us be the pre-eminent publisher,” said Jonathan Karp, the chief executive of Simon & Schuster, who is also a member of the board. “We have aspirations to grow. We have aspirations to be the first choice for authors. And I think this board really gives us a window into how people throughout the media landscape are thinking about how books fit into the world.”
The seven-member board will include three KKR executives, including Richard Sarnoff, chairman of media in KKR’s American business. Mr. Sarnoff, who will be the chairman of the Simon & Schuster board, worked in publishing for many years, holding senior positions at Random House, the Association of American Publishers and Bertelsmann, which owns Penguin Random House.
Also on the new board will be Madeline McIntosh, the former chief executive of Penguin Random House U.S., the largest book publisher in the country. She also briefly worked at Amazon, the biggest U.S. book retailer.
V Pappas, another board member, has experience in a different aspect of book selling: social media. Mx. Pappas was the chief operating officer at TikTok, which has become enormously important in the industry. Over the past few years, books that have gone viral on TikTok have sold millions of copies. The author Colleen Hoover took off on the platform, dominating best-seller lists for months with multiple titles simultaneously.
Kareem Daniel, who spent 18 years at the Walt Disney Company, was also named a director. His experience at Disney, Mr. Karp said, will help Simon & Schuster maximize its intellectual property.
The company plans to look in a variety of directions to grow, Mr. Karp said, including distribution, international publishing, domestic publishing and audio publishing. He said that KKR has significant audiobook experience: It bought the audiobook company RBMedia in 2018, and sold it this year. Under its ownership, KKR has said, RBMedia’s catalog doubled.
Mr. Karp has been chief executive of Simon & Schuster since 2020. During his tenure, the publisher sustained positive results even as industry headwinds bogged down its competitors.
In the third quarter, Simon & Schuster’s revenue fell to $307 million from $353 million the year before, while its operating income dropped to $60 million from $93 million a year earlier. But it has since published a huge hit: “The Woman in Me,” a memoir by Britney Spears. Since its publication in October, the book has sold 1.8 million copies in the United States alone.
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Simon & Schuster Board Announced: Members Come from Disney, TikTok and Publishing - The New York Times
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