Random House has announced major staffing and alignment changes. As we reported in this article in May, Markus Dohle was installed as the chairman of the international publishing behemoth. Long-time senior executives Irwyn Applebaum and Steve Rubin are leaving their positions. They most recently headed the Bantam Dell and Doubleday Broadway groups, respectively.
In this letter Dohle sent to staff (which Publishers Weekly has published), he describes some of the major group realignments:
* The Bantam Dell Publishing Group (which includes The Dial Press, Doubleday’s Spiegel & Grau, and the Bantam sf/f imprint Spectra) will now be part of the Random House Publishing Group, headed by President and Publisher Gina Centrello
* The Doubleday and Nan A. Talese imprints (currently part of the Doubleday Publishing Group) will move to the Knopf Publishing Group, under Chairman Sonny Mehta
* The rest of the Doubleday Publishing Group (Broadway, Doubleday Business, Doubleday Religion, and WaterBrook Multnomah) moves under the Crown Publishing Group umbrella, headed by President and Publisher Jenny Frost
* The Random House Children’s Books division will remain unchanged, under President and Publisher Chip Gibson
Dohle emphasizes, in the letter, that “all the imprints of Random House will retain their distinct editorial identities.” He also reiterates taht “the newly formed publishing groups will continue to bid independently in auctions. Each group will have my full support to publish autonomously, promote aggressively, and strive for more competitive advantages in the marketplace.” He blames most of the changes on the economy, noting that these realignments will offer some savings by combining back-room operations.
The actual integration—how divisions will work with each other in the new structure—will be left to the individual division heads, according to this piece.
[Note: Editor Ian Randal Strock’s book, The Presidential Book of Lists, was recently published by the Random House’s Ballantine Books under their Villard imprint.]