The CEO of Simon & Schuster worldwide, Jonathan Karp, who has held the position since 2010, is to step down to lead a new imprint called Simon Six. His successor has not yet been announced.
Karp said: “It has been a privilege to lead the company for the last five years. When [finance company] 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 have 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.”
The new imprint Karp will head up, Simon Six, will partner with Simon & Schuster’s existing imprints on six books a year, “each with an X-factor”. Karp added: “As the founding publisher of Twelve [at Hachette], I published one book per month. For Simon Six, I will acquire and edit half as many books each year and publish them with twice as much emphasis, in partnership with many of the same colleagues I’ve enjoyed working alongside for years.”
He added: What am I looking to publish? Some of the best books I’ve worked on have been about things I knew little or nothing about, so I’m especially interested in authors who will enlighten me while intriguing me. Like many editors, I want to help put books into the world that expand our understanding, challenge orthodoxies, and are useful, artful, and irresistibly interesting. Simon Six titles will be published in partnership with the teams at various Simon & Schuster imprints, to be determined on a book-by-book basis. My hope for Simon Six is that this imprimatur will signal to readers that these are books of quality, singularity, and relevance.