Stuart Applebaum will end his distinguished 52-year career in publishing at the end of September, when he will retire as EVP emeritus of corporate communications at Penguin Random House and parent company Bertelsmann's longest-tenured employee. The announcement was made in a letter to PRH employees by Nihar Malaviya, PRH CEO, and Claire von Schilling, EVP and director of communications and social responsibility for the publisher.
Known to virtually everyone in the book business, Applebaum began as a publicist at Knopf before joining Bantam Books in 1975, where he soon played a major role in developing the mass market blockbuster movie tie-in to Jaws. Seven years later, Applebaum helped shift Bantam from its focus on mass market paperbacks into a major hardcover publisher when he joined Bantam executives Alberto Vitale and Jack Romanos to convince Lee Iacocca, then something of a pop culture star as chairman of Chrysler, to write his memoir. The blockbuster success of Iacocca led to more memoirs and hardcover bestsellers at Bantam.
In their letter, Malaviya and von Schilling credited Applebaum with developing media campaigns that increased the sales and readership for books by such high profile people as Maya Angelou, former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, Barbara Cartland, Nora Ephron, Frederick Forsyth, Jonathan Kellerman, Jerzy Kosiński, Judith Krantz, Robert Ludlum, Tom Robbins, General H. Norman Schwarzkopf Jr., and Gore Vidal.
As successful as Applebaum was as a publicist savant, in 1986 he was named the official spokesperson for the recently merged Bantam Doubleday Dell and became if not the first communication directors of a publishing company then one of the first. In that position, he oversaw the media and public outreach when BDD, owned by Bertelsmann, bought Random House in 1998, and played a similar role when Random House merged with Penguin Random House in 2012. Applebaum was appointed to his current position in 2014, where he continued to help guide PRH's corporate communications efforts.
"It has been reassuring, especially when we have a high-stakes issue, to know that Stuart can advise us and help solve it," Malaviya and von Schilling wrote. "But his contributions to our community go beyond communications. He also has been an incredible mentor to countless individuals over the years, including former assistants of his who went on to be publicity executives across the industry."
Applebaum has also been quietly active in philanthropic circles. Through the Stuart S. Applebaum Giving Foundation, he has made donations to arts, book, health, Judaic, and library organizations.
In his own letter to colleagues announcing his departure, Applebaum recalled some of the incidents throughout his career in communications of a sort that will sound familiar to publicists today.
"I still remember tangling, solo, on the phone, with Roy Cohn over the provenance of the Iacocca acquisition. (He abruptly stopped calling)," he wrote. "Losing my beloved author Shirley MacLaine’s luggage on her book tour in the Cleveland airport (the airline eventually found it). Standing by haplessly as General Schwarzkopf got splattered with fake red blood by a protestor at his Seattle Costco memoirs signing (we beefed up security). My 50-year Passion Project: “Riding the river” with Kathy, Beau, Angelique, and Louis L’Amour, for decades best known somewhat dismissively as a writer of popular paperback westerns, as he gradually became acknowledged as one of America’s most widely read #1 bestselling hardcover novelists, and whose death, in 1988, made page one of the New York Times."
Applebaum added, with typical generosity, "But my enjoyment from the challenge of publicizing our books, and speaking up for our company, doesn’t fully explain why I have stuck around here for more than a half-century. Simply put, it’s because of you, my dear colleagues. Working with you every day not only gives me structure and routine. It motivates me to accomplish more better, as I try to rise to your level of excellence and achievement."
As early as 1997, PW, in its 125th anniversary issue, deemed Applebaum the "king of his profession." Applebaum's ties to PW run deep; his interest in publishing began, he has told a number of PW staffers, when he started reading the magazine as a teenager at the Queens Library, and sources say he "has never missed an issue since." PW joins those congratulating Stuart for an unmatched publishing career and good health in the coming years.
