Simon & Schuster announced a reorganization last week that will result in the hardcover imprints handling all of their own paperback reprints, while the Trade Paperback Group of Touchstone and Fireside will be handling a new list of hardcover originals.
It's complicated, publisher Carolyn Reidy said, but not counterintuitive. The Trade Paper group wanted to concentrate more on original publishing—both paper and hardcover—so it will shift responsibility for the 125 S&S paperback reprints it does every year to the four hardcover lines of Atria, the Free Press, Scribner and Simon & Schuster. In their place, the group will concentrate on its approximately 125 other titles—reprints from other houses and original trade paperbacks. It will also add about 25 hardcover originals to its list, under the direction of Mark Gompertz, executive v-p, publisher, Touchstone and Fireside.
"We had four different imprints feeding into the Trade Paper Group," Reidy said. "It's a misuse of time and energy, and a duplication of effort." The move leaves the hardcover imprints satisfied as well, she said, because it gives them more control over the publication of their paperbacks. And hardcover authors will be happy because they can continue working with the same editors and publicists.
Reidy said the mission of the two units will overlap only minimally, with books such as biographies staying on the hardcover side, and the trade paperback group concentrating on other areas, such as certain types of original fiction. "They're basically going to be doing books in trade paper that need a hardcover launch," she said of the trade group's hardcover titles.
