Industry members who expected Random House chairman Markus Dohle to do more to revamp Random House than the restructuring that took place earlier this year will not be surprised to learn that the company has announced today a total makeover of the Crown Publishing Group. As part of the restructuring Crown president Jenny Frost has left Random and Dohle is importing Maya Mavjee, executive publisher of the Doubleday Canada Publishing Group, and executive v-p of Random House Canada Ltd. as president and publisher of the Crown Publishing Group effective January 1.

The group Mavjee will lead will be smaller than the current Crown organization with Dohle deciding to separate Crown’s trade publishing imprints from the Random House Audio Group and the Random House Information Group. The Crown Publishing Group will now be entirely focused on its core strengths, Dohle said in the memo about the changes: general interest fiction and nonfiction, business, religion, political thought, cooking, and lifestyle. Its imprints are Broadway Books, Broadway Business, Clarkson Potter, Crown Publishers, Crown Business, Crown Forum, Doubleday Business, Doubleday Religion, Harmony Books, the Monacelli Press, Potter Craft, Potter Style, Shaye Areheart Books, Ten Speed Press, Three Rivers Press, Watson-Guptill Publications, and WaterBrook Multnomah. Mavjee’s mandate is to lead the imprints “to realize their greatest fiction and nonfiction publishing potential,” Dohle wrote.

The non-trade book units now consist of the Random House Audio Publishing Group and
Books on Tape and the Random House Information Group: Fodor's Travel Group; Large Print; Living Language; Prima Games; The Princeton Review; Random House Reference; and Sylvan Learning. “Separating these businesses from the traditional print publishing businesses will allow us to focus on the unique opportunities these formats provide,” Dohle wrote. For the interim, Audio's Amanda D'Acierno will report to Dohle, as will the Information Group’s Tim Jarrell, Debra Kempker, and Tom Russell. In the coming weeks Random will announce additional details about reporting responsibilities of these companies.

There was no word if the restructuring will result in fewer titles and/or staff cuts in the future.

Frost has been in charge of Crown since 2002 after being in the vanguard of the audio publishing industry when she formed Bantam Audio in the mid 1980s. She assumed responsibility for the consolidated Random House Audio Publishing Group in 1998 and the following year she acquired Listening Library, and later bought Books on Tape, deals that Dohle called “two of our best return-on-sales investments.”

In remarks about the appointment of the South African-born Mavjee, Dohle said “there may be no one better qualified within or outside Random House worldwide to lead these Crown Group publishers and our colleagues who work for them in a fresh, content-focused direction.” She will oversee all of the Crown trade-publishing imprints, “setting their publishing priorities and selecting and publishing their books with their teams, who will be responsible to her,” Dohle said. Mavjee is a member of the U.S. and International Random House executive boards, and a member of the Bertelsmann Management Representative Committee.