Susan Moldow, president of the Scribner Publishing Group and publisher of Touchstone, will retire at the end of the year, Simon & Schuster president and CEO Carolyn Reidy announced in a letter to staff.
Moldow's career in publishing began with an internship at Workman Publishing in 1966. She then entered a trainee program at Doubleday after graduating college in 1967. She left Doubleday in 1971 and joined Pocket Books, where she worked at Washington Square Press before joining Avon Books from 1976 to 1981.
She went on to hold senior positions in editorial management at Dell Publishing, Penguin Books, Doubleday, and HarperCollins before returning to Simon & Schuster in 1994, shortly after the Macmillan acquisition. Back at S&S, she reorganized Charles Scribner’s Sons, Macmillan, and Atheneum into the Scribner imprint. In 2012, Moldow was named president of the Scribner Publishing Group; she was named Touchstone’s publisher in 2013.
Under Moldow, Scribner has published authors and bold-faced names such as George H.W. Bush, Anthony Doerr, Angela Duckworth, Janet Evanovich, S.C. Gwynne, Charles Johnson, Chuck Klosterman, Phil Knight, Rachel Kushner, John le Carré, Frank McCourt, Siddhartha Mukherjee, Reynolds Price, Annie Proulx, Kathy Reichs, Geneen Roth, Lisa See, Andrew Solomon, Colm Tóibín, Jeannette Walls and Stephen King. Reidy, in her letter, also noted that Moldow has, during her tenure, overseen "multiple editions updating our venerable Joy of Cooking franchise" as well as Scribner's relations with the Fitzgerald and Hemingway estates.
"To talk with Susan, whether one-on-one or in a meeting when she is giving one of her trademark, carefully composed and enthusiastically delivered presentations, is always an adventure," Reidy wrote. "No matter the subject, or the book involved, she is always ready with an arch remark or self-deprecating quip, demonstrating her encyclopedic knowledge of the publishing marketplace and her love for what we do."
