Insight Editions announced last week that COO Tara Catogge, who came on board in June, has restructured the company and refocused key leadership positions. In a release, the company reported a 34% growth in net sales year to date. To sustain the gains and more rapidly scale the business, Catogge consolidated separate areas into three centralized editorial divisions, appointed a publishing director to each editorial division, and blended sales and marketing into a single unit.
Conversations about reorganizing units began before Covid, said v-p and co-publisher Vanessa Lopez, who has been with Insight Editions since 2013. As founder and publisher Raoul Goff grew their number of partners and expanded existing partnerships, including ones with Warner Bros. and Disney, “we had gotten to a certain size where it didn’t make sense to continue to work horizontally rather than vertically,” Lopez said.
The restructure establishes “focus areas that could grow into imprints, and even into fully functioning companies,” said Lopez. “To position ourselves to maximize growth opportunities, we needed to be more divisionally structured and we needed central leadership within each division.”
New hire Jamie Thompson will lead Insight Gift, Lifestyle and Entertainment. Thompson formerly served as executive editor in Chronicle Books’ entertainment division, where she participated in Chronicle’s gift format program and the company’s acquisition of Games Room in 2021.
Mike Degler, Insight’s director of publishing since October 2020 and a former v-p in PRH’s Prima Games business unit, will head Insight Games, Sport, and Music. Chris Prince, executive editor for Insight’s film and TV publications for more than a decade, continues as publishing director of the newly titled Insight Film division. Vicki Jaeger, who came to Insight Editions in December 2020, will become v-p and group managing editor. Jaeger leads a company-wide managing editorial team that supports the three divisions.
Lopez believes these changes will enable teams to focus on “how we approach new concepts, and new project ideation. Because we do so much licensing, and one licensing might cover a variety of editions, we won’t have as many editors individually negotiating” single projects. She added, “We are doing more hiring for sure.”
“In order to be in such an aggressive growth pattern, we are making the investment in additional head count,” agreed executive v-p of sales and marketing Chris Bauerle, who says Insight Editions is in “hypergrowth mode.” Bauerle, who came to the company from Sourcebooks in February, will work with v-p of marketing Rachel Kempster Barry, a veteran of DK who was hired in 2021. Their division anticipates “big marketing” around in-store displays and promotions; Bauerle foresees investing in “programmatic solutions, particularly for independent bookstores and the gift market, that also will have implications for Barnes and Noble.”
Bauerle attributes Insight Editions’ growth to high production values and “areas of expertise and depth,” including licensed entertainment cookbooks and tarot guides. Seinfeld: The Official Cookbook (“that’s going to be a juggernaut release”) and Dragon Ball Z: The Official Advent Calendar debut this holiday season, and last year’s The Nightmare Before Christmas: The Official Cookbook and Entertaining Guide has 200,000 units in circulation going into this fall. “The marriage is this: high manufacturing quality and a fan base that is voracious,” Bauerle said.
“We are 100% focused on creating something that feels to the fan like a fan created it,” said Lopez. She believes Insight Editions’ success comes from “thinking about our consumers, who they are, what they want to see more of from this universe [of which they are a fan], and what does that product look like. These are questions we ask ourselves constantly.” She looks forward to a project with HBO and Warner Bros. on the making of House of the Dragon, and she says Reinhart Pop-Up Studio, which recently launched a Stranger Things edition, “is working to create popups at various price points” from $21 to $80.
Future projects include a Buffy tarot guide for 2023 and Ashley Eckstein’s Star Wars Everyday, slated for October. New publishing partnerships are on the horizon too, Lopez promises: “I really wish I could talk about one or two. The ink’s not dry—I can’t quite yet.”
