Feiwel, Boughton Rise at New Macmillan Kids' Group
By Jim Milliot and Diane Roback -- Publishers Weekly, 12/16/2008 7:56:00 AM
Monday's job losses at Macmillan were as much about adjusting to the recession as they were about CEO John Sargent’s determination to centralize some of the company’s operations, a decision that involved the consolidation of the business and production functions of the entire trade group. In explaining the move in a memo to employees, Sargent said “technology has changed the publishing landscape substantially, and many of the traditional publishing methods are simply not as effective as they one were.” Sargent added, however, that the changes will not “change the way we acquire books or capital we allocate to acquire them. Nor we will stray from the publishing autonomy and independence that has fueled our superb organic growth over the last decade."
The most dramatic change involved the creation of the new Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group, and as part of that restructuring Jean Feiwel and Simon Boughton have both been appointed senior v-p publishing directors of the group, reporting to newly appointed group head Dan Farley. Feiwel will oversee Feiwel and Friends, Square Fish, Holt Books for Young Readers, and Priddy Books, with Laura Godwin, publisher of Holt BFYR, reporting to her. Boughton will become publisher of FSG Books for Young Readers, and continue to head Roaring Brook Press. Margaret Ferguson, associate publisher and editorial director of FSG BFYR, will now report to Boughton, as will First Second’s editorial director Mark Siegel. FSG BFYR employees will be located at FSG's 18th St. offices and not move to Macmillan's headquarters in the Flatiron Building, at least for the "near term," Farley said.
As a result of the changes, Michael Eisenberg, associate publisher of FSG BFYR, is one of the Macmillan employees whose job was eliminated. The Melanie Kroupa Books imprint at FSG was also eliminated in the restructuring; Kroupa, whose imprint had been with the company since 2000, was let go. Also let go was Patrick Collins, art director at Holt BFYR; Jill Davis, who left Bloomsbury Children's Books this past September to join FSG BFYR as executive editor; Jennifer Abbots, associate publicity director at Holt BFYR; Susan Hecht, who joined Roaring Brook in June as associate director of retail marketing; and Kat Kopit, associate editor at Roaring Brook.
Under the new structure, Farley said the Feiwel and Boughton units will each have their own promotion chief (Elizabeth Fithian for Feiwel, Lauren Wohl for Boughton), and independent creative teams. The new group will have a centralized marketing operation and Farley is recruiting for a person to fill that spot. He estimated that the Macmillan Children's Publishing Group will release about 300 titles annually.
The children’s group will also be affected by the overall company consolidation. Subsidiary rights for the group will be overseen by St. Martin’s rights department head Karen Nordling, and the Holt and FSG BFYR rights departments will be combined. Production will also be consolidated; Tom Nau will handle children’s production reporting to Karen Gillis, who has been named head of production and will oversee adult production. Longtime FSG head of production Tom Consiglio will leave the company. The consolidation also means the Holt and FSG rights departments will be combined and will be run by Denise Cronin, who will report to FSG head Jonathan Galassi.
Sargent noted that the changes, while helping the company to tighten its belt during the recession, will also reorganize Macmillan to position it for the long term, “while remaining a loose federation of publishers.”
