Further to this article from early September, we’ve learned that Simon & Schuster is not only not planning to replace Star Trek Editor Margaret Clark, but is actually reorganizing the company to make Pocket an imprint with no editors.
Specifically, the company will merge their Simon Spotlight Entertainment (SSE) line with Pocket Books’ hardcovers and trade paperbacks, creating a new imprint to be called Gallery Books (the SSE imprint will cease to exist). The once-again shrunk Pocket will focus solely on mass market publishing, “as partner for all of the S&S imprints and continuing with paperback originals for ‘rising authors’,” according to Publishers Lunch. Gallery is scheduled to launch next Spring.
Announcing the change to S&S employees, CEO Carolyn Reidy wrote “as a company we need to ensure that each of our imprints has sufficient strength and support, especially in this difficult environment.” She also says that Gallery will have immediate strength in areas where Pocket and SSE “have already forged well-earned reputations, such as women’s fiction, pop culture and entertainment,” while it “will also operate with a mandate to acquire top authors and hot prospects in a broad range of publishing categories, both fiction and nonfiction.”
Personnel implications:
Louise Burke will be Executive Vice President and Publisher of Gallery, while maintaining her current portfolio for all Pocket mass-market imprints.
Anthony Ziccardi will be Vice President and Deputy Publisher of Gallery, while also keeping his Pocket responsibilities.
SSE’s Jennifer Bergstrom will lead the newly combined editorial group as Editor-in-Chief.
SSE’s Tricia Boczkowski will be Editorial Director.
Lauren McKenna will be Executive Editor of Gallery.
Mitchell Ivers will be Senior Editor of Gallery.
Other editors will include Jaime Costas, Megan McKeever, Patrick Price, Kathy Sagan, Ed Schlesinger, Emily Westlake, and Abby Zidle.
Jennifer Robinson will be Vice President, Publicity Director for Gallery. Jean Anne Rose will report to Robinson.
All editors in the merged staff will acquire and edit for both Gallery and the full range of Pocket’s mass-market imprints.
Publishers Weekly adds: “The other imprints in Pocket—Downtown Press, Karen Hunter Publishing, MTV Books, Star Trek, Threshold Edition, and WWE—are unaffected by the move and will continued to be overseen by Burke and Ziccardi. Burke will also directly oversee Pocket’s mass market operations.”