Ms. Spiegel and Ms. Grau are the latest prominent editors and publishers to depart as a result of the shake-up. In the aftermath of the reorganization, Maya Mavjee, Crown’s president and publisher, left the company and will be moving to Macmillan; Crown’s senior vice president and publisher, Molly Stern, who edited Michelle Obama’s book, left the company. Emi Ikkanda, an editor at Spiegel Grau, will also leave with the shuttering of the imprint.
The consolidation comes at a moment when big publishing houses are trying to adapt to the shift toward online retail. Some of the biggest publishing houses have been adding imprints and acquiring smaller publishing companies to stay competitive, hoping that getting bigger would give them an advantage when negotiating terms with retailers and distributors. In 2016, Hachette Book Group struck a deal to acquire Perseus, an independent publishing house, and in 2014 News Corporation bought the romance publisher Harlequin for $415 million.
When Penguin and Random House merged in 2013, they became by far the largest of the “big five” publishing houses, which also include Hachette, HarperCollins, Simon Schuster and Macmillan.
Lately, however, there have been signs that the biggest publishing houses feel the need to contract and consolidate by eliminating and combining imprints. Last year, Hachette shifted its free-standing Hachette Books nonfiction line to the Perseus Books division. In 2017, Penguin shut down Blue Rider Press.
Penguin Random House, which houses around 275 imprints worldwide and generates some $4 billion annually, has begun to look for ways to streamline its publishing lines, a move that could help to curb duplication across imprints.
In a company memo, the Random House publisher Susan Kamil said Spiegel Grau’s authors would move to other imprints.
“While the S G list will no longer exist as a stand-alone imprint, its amazing authors will be fully and proudly supported by Random House, The Dial Press and One World,” Ms. Kamil wrote.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/25/books/spiegel-grau-close-penguin-random-house.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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