In a quick changing-of-the-guard at Twelve, Hachette Book Group has replaced publisher Susan Lehman with Cary Goldstein. While many were surprised when Lehman was picked in September to head Jonathan Karp's boutique imprint at Hachette, after Karp decamped for Simon & Schuster, a mild shock ran through the industry on Tuesday when word broke that Lehman's tenure had been cut that short.
Since Lehman had relatively little book publishing experience -- aside from a brief stint as an editor at Riverhead she had spent some time in magazines and was director of communications and strategy at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law when Jamie Raab picked her to be the new publisher of Twelve -- many in the industry wondered openly about the hire.
Goldstein, who was associate publisher at Twelve, seemed like a more logical, if less flashy, choice to succed Karp. Goldstein, who in addition to his longstanding publicity role at Twelve has also been acquiring books, has been with the imprint since it began and, per Jaime Raab, has been "one of the pillars" of Twelve.
Speaking briefly about Lehman, Raab simply said that while she was "insightful," she "just wasn't the perfect fit."
At Twelve, Goldstein has edited books like Jess Winfield’s My Name is Will: A Novel of Sex, Drugs and Shakespeare and acquired titles such as Benjamin Hale’s forthcoming debut novel The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore. Goldstein, who is taking over immediately, was associate director of publicity and Web publicity at FSG before he joined Twelve in 2006.
