Geoff Shandler, who launched William Morrow’s Custom House imprint in fall of 2015, has left his position as its editorial director to pursue other opportunities, according to a memo sent by Liate Stehlik, senior v-p and publisher of Morrow.
To replace Shandler, Stehlik has appointed Peter Hubbard v-p and editorial director of Custom House, and Kate Nintzel as executive editor. “With this new leadership, Custom House will publish industry-leading nonfiction and fiction of lasting quality, judiciously selected and aggressively positioned,” Stehlik wrote in the memo.
At its launch, Custom House was charged with publishing literary fiction and nonfiction, and it has had its share of bestselling and critically acclaimed works in both categories, including Audacity by Jonathan Chait, The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry, Seduction by Karina Longworth, Chicago by David Mamet, and The Spider Network by David Enrich. Under Hubbard and Nintzel, the Custom House list will be broadened to bring in new voices and partnerships and the number of books released will grow, Stehlik said.
Since he joined Morrow in 2004, Hubbard has edited more than 25 bestsellers, including the huge bestseller American Sniper. In 2019 he published a string of bestsellers, highlighted by Three Days at the Brink by Bret Baier, The Man Who Sold America by Joy-Ann Reid, Every Man a Hero by Ray Lambert, You Are Worth It by Kyle Carpenter, and Sacred Duty by Tom Cotton.
Nintzel has specialized in literary and commercial fiction. Her writers include Christina Baker Kline, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Orphan Train; Tara Conklin, author of the inaugural NBC Today Show/Read with Jenna pick The Last Romantics; and the #1 Indie Next Pick The House Girl.
The first list that will be released under the new team will come in 2021 and will include, Stehlik wrote, a brief history of Earth by Harvard geologist Andrew Knoll; Fox News anchor Bret Baier on Ulysses S. Grant; New York Times reporter Matthew Richtel on the science of creativity; Community Board, the next novel from Tara Conklin; Appleseed by Young Lions Fiction Award finalist Matt Bell; and Imposter Syndrome, a new Silicon Valley-set satire from Kathy Wang.
