In the opening keynote session of this year's London Book Fair, Jonathan Karp, president and CEO of Simon & Schuster, extolled the virtues of the company’s new status as being part of KKR, the private equity firm that purchased the publisher last October. “We’re now the largest independent publisher of adult and children’s trade books in the United States," Karp declared.
Under KKR’s ownership, the company has instituted an employee ownership model, which Karp said, "has got everyone rowing on the same team." When the company is sold by KKR - in "five to ten years" - all employees will receive a cash payout. "The new model has sent a jolt of electricity through the business - a lot of innovation has been unleashed,” Karp said.
In conversation with Porter Anderson of Publishing Perspectives, Karp was excited about the opportunity to invest S&S’s profits in the company, rather than passing them on to a parent company. “We can reinvest in ourself,” he said, pointing to the recent hiring of several editors in both the U.S. and U.K., and the recent news of the launch of Summit Books, which will have an international focus.
S&S UK chief executive Ian Chapman was in the audience, and Karp spotted him from the stage and asked him to stand up. "He has built the U.K. operation into the gem that it is," said Karp, citing two back-to-back wins for the company in the British Book Awards (i.e. Nibbies). Earlier, he had described S&S UK as "the Michael Jordan of British publishing."
Karp said that S&S was committed to international growth and that, “S&S UK was going to be hiring editors in the categories they want to expand in," adding that the Canadian, Australian, and Indian operations would also be growing.
Addressing the hot topic of the London Book Fair—artificial intelligence—Karp said that S&S "was proceeding with caution." He also applauded efforts of Publishers Association in the U.K. and the Association of American Publishers to fight for author’s rights. Karp said S&S was experimenting with using AI translation to produce audiobooks for select backlist titles that might benefit from being sold in territories for which the company held rights, but where audiobooks are not available. He stressed to the audience that "contracts would be honored and the wishes of authors" respected.
On the subject of book acquisitions, he was asked what factor was it that finally drove the decision to buy a book. "You know it when you see it!" he replied, citing a phrase first used by Supreme Court judge Potter Stewart when asked to describe his definition of obscenity.
Karp also added that he was "very positive" on TikTok and that its impact on the book market was not slowing down at all. As evidence, he cited the continuing success of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, which has sold five million copies, adding that "we want to sell a million copies for each husband.” He did concede that nonfiction sales were in a "difficult environment," essentially because the news was so grim. "People want to escape" into fiction, not more reality, he said
Still, Karp maintained good nonfiction had a unique power to "change the conversation... what you really want from nonfiction is something you can't get from a podcast or a video.” He said the U.S. and U.K. teams worked “in lockstep,” adding, “we published Britney Spears together and Walter Isaacson together and Sir Patrick Stewart together.” He said this type of collaboration is likely to expand in the future, noting that business books, geopolitical titles, and practical nonfiction as categories that have the potential to work internationally. “The [sales] traffic will be going in all directions,” Karp said.
