S&S Cuts 35 Jobs
-- Publishers Weekly, 12/3/2008 10:57:00 AM
In what has to be one of the grimmest days in publishing in recent years, Simon & Schuster announced today that it has eliminated 35 positions. According to a memo from CEO Carolyn Reidy, the cuts came in all areas of the company, including S&S’s publishing divisions, operations and sales departments and international division. Reidy said that despite its best efforts to find ways to cut costs, the job eliminations were “an unavoidable acknowledgment of the current bookselling marketplace and what may very well be a prolonged period of economic instability.”
Early in the day, S&S announced that the head of its children’s group, Rick Richter will leave the company at the end of the week. PW has since learned that Rubin Pfeffer, senior v-p and publisher of the children’s group is also departing. Pfeffer joined S&S in 2005. He had been senior v-p and chief creative officer at Pearson Education, and before that spent 26 years with Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
The lastest news from S&S follows the announcement this morning of the reorganization of Random House and the elimination of 54 positions at Thomas Nelson. In the Random restructuring, CEO Markus Dohle is talking to Steve Rubin about a different role at the company for Rubin following Dohle's decision to disband the Doubleday Publishing Group which Rubin had led.
