Cross-town Rush Hour: Cook Hires Five from Industry Neighbors

by Marcia Z. Nelson, Religion BookLine -- Publishers Weekly, 9/13/2006

In notable traffic across town in Colorado Springs, evangelical Christian publisher Cook Communications Ministries has added four top people from NavPress Publishing and one from the literary agency Alive Communications.

Today Cook announced the hiring of a publisher for its newly formed book division—industry veteran Don Pape, most recently with Alive but prior to that v-p and publisher at WaterBrook Press. Last week Cook announced the hiring of Terry Behimer as editorial director/associate publisher and Andrea Christian as development/acquisition editor, in Cook’s book group; Mike Kennedy as senior director of marketing and Douglas Mann as director of marketing, in the house’s product marketing group. All had the same, or similar, positions at NavPress.

What might look like a raid really isn’t, according to Cook spokesperson Michele Tennesen. The company is restructuring itself under the leadership of president and CEO Cris Doornbos, who arrived a year ago from Zondervan, where he had been executive v-p of sales. Although total head count hasn’t changed, Cook has reconfigured itself internally and assembled new leadership for its new groups. “We are very attractive to a lot of people right now, and we are purposeful in trying to talk to people right now,” said Tennesen, corporate publicity manager.

Doornbos said the company’s new strategic publishing units will include people from different areas working as a team in developing products. Besides reorganizing internally, Cook is also remaking itself.

“We’re kind of rethinking the brand called Cook and our core identity,” Doornbos said. It’s too soon, however, to say what that means for current and new products, he added.

Kent Wilson, executive publisher at NavPress, called Cook Communications’ current hiring strategy “very aggressive,” noting that the two companies’ location in the city of Colorado Springs made NavPress a logical source of personnel. “We wish their new direction well,” he told RBL. “Strength at Cook will translate for the entire Christian publishing industry.”

Wilson said he expected to be able to hire quickly, given what he called “instability” within the evangelical publishing world, seen most recently in the acquisition of Multnomah by Random House. “There are a significant number of individuals who have already contacted us, without our having posted the positions,” Wilson said.