The Walt Disney Company’s book operations have undergone a series of changes over the years as the company has morphed into a media and entertainment colossus. Disney Publishing’s most recent big pivot came in 2020, when it sold 1,110 children’s titles to Hachette Book Group and made the decision to focus on acquiring global content that it can leverage across multiple platforms and media. In recent months, the group has made a number of significant changes, but company executives said their mission remains the same. “We remain focused on acquiring and developing global content that could be leveraged across multiple platforms and media,” Tonya Agurto, SVP and publisher of new IP and global business development, Disney Publishing, wrote in an email to PW.
While its objectives remains unchanged, Disney has made a number of tweaks to its publishing division in order to fulfill that mission. Over the last six months, two high-ranking children’s publishing executives have left the company, which also made a number of layoffs in marketing and other departments earlier this year. In April, it announced several promotions at Hyperion Avenue, the adult imprint Disney founded in 2021, eight years after it sold the majority of its adult titles to HBG.
Earlier this month, Disney announced it had reached a new, broad licensing agreement with Penguin Random House, a move that had been rumored for weeks. Under the agreement, PRH is licensing content from the 20th Century Studios, Disney, Marvel, National Geographic, Pixar, and Star Wars units. The agreement includes children’s books; middle grade, young adult, and adult novels; manga; and reference books across print, e-book, and audio formats.
PRH has licensed Disney properties for over 20 years, and both parties called the deal an expansion of their relationship. The agreement also deepens Disney’s ties to PRH, which took over distribution for Disney’s adult and children’s print books from HBG in 2023. In her email, Agurto noted that Disney Publishing has a presence in more than 100 countries and products available in more than 40 languages, adding that “as our business evolves, we continue to explore new licensing agreements that bring books to fans of all ages.”
After finalizing the agreement, Random House Children’s Books hired about a dozen editors and other employees who had worked at Disney Publishing on the National Geographic Kids imprint. Among the new PRH employees is Vivian Suchman, who was named editorial director of National Geographic Kids after serving as managing editor for that imprint while it was at Disney.
The announcement of the PRH licensing agreement came a few weeks after Monique Diman-Riley was promoted from director of sales in North America for Disney Publishing Group to VP of sales and retail strategy for Disney Publishing. In that role, Disney said, Diman-Riley will “expand her scope to work with licensing partners to drive promotional branded opportunities at retail for the larger Disney publishing portfolio.”
Among the executives who have recently departed Disney are Kieran Viola and Sylvie Frank. Viola joined Disney in 2021 to oversee Disney Hyperion, with a mandate to find new bestselling children’s authors, and is now an executive editor at Scholastic. Frank had served as editorial director of Disney Hyperion, overseeing acquisitions across all young reader formats, as well as the Freedom Fire and Disney Planet Possible imprints; she is now senior executive editor at Flamingo Books, an imprint of Penguin Young Readers.
Following the moves, Jennifer Levesque now heads up all children’s and adult imprints at Disney. This spring, Levesque was promoted from director of editorial for Hyperion Avenue to deputy publisher for Disney Publishing Group, where she also oversees both Hyperion Kids and National Geographic Adult.
A Whole New World
In email responses to PW, Agurto repeatedly referred to Disney as the number one children’s publishing brand. Still, as far as original trade publishing goes, the company appears to be slipping. Disney doesn’t disclose financial information on publishing, but a look at PW bestseller lists indicates that the company has had a diminishing presence on the children’s side. In 2023, Disney had 14 titles reach PW’s children’s frontlist fiction list, keeping the company on the charts for 68 weeks; last year, that number fell to seven titles across 57 weeks last year. In 2019, Disney stayed on the same list for 81 weeks, with 19 books.
Disney's most reliably bestselling author to date is Rick Riordan, through his Percy Jackson series and Rick Riordan Presents imprint. Riordan's two frontlist Jackson titles in 2024 sold approximately 450,000 print copies combined, according to Circana BookScan. But backlist sales across the company have softened in recent years—no doubt due in part to the 1,100 children’s titles it sold to HBG in 2020.
The future of several Disney children’s imprints also appears uncertain. In October 2023, the company announced the launch of Kugali Ink, a collaboration with pan-African entertainment company Kugali designed to celebrate African voices. Its first two graphic novels, Akanni and Runeless, are due out this year, but neither title has yet been listed on Amazon, and PW has not received galleys for review.
In a previous release announcing a number of promotions, Disney said that Rachel Stark had been promoted to senior editor at Hyperion, and that they would serve as lead editor for Kugali Ink. In Stark’s own note in the announcement, they stressed that they acquire and edit middle grade and young adult novels and graphic novels, quipping that this wasn’t a new role and observing that “agents often seem to believe I only acquire graphic novels.” A Disney spokesperson declined to comment on Kugali, adding that the company had no additional information to share about the status of its Melissa de la Cruz Studio and Freedom Fire imprints.
On the adult side, however, things seem a bit more stable. With Levesque’s promotion, Adam Wilson, previously executive editor for Hyperion Avenue, was named editorial director, and now oversees the acquisition of adult fiction and nonfiction as well as the creation of original adult IP. Among his focuses, per Disney’s promotion announcement, are the oversight of nonfiction projects by individuals with a connection to other Disney projects and collaborations with a number of other Disney-owned groups—including ABC, ESPN, FX, Hulu, and Marvel—on both fiction and nonfiction book initiatives.
In her email to PW, Agurto doubled down on Disney’s commitment to adult nonfiction publishing. “We continue to support nonfiction through both our vertical and licensees,” she wrote, pointing to the nonfiction published under Andscape, Hyperion, and National Geographic Adult. Forthcoming titles from those imprints include memoirs from actor and sports broadcaster Jayne Kennedy and the late film producer Jon Landau (Avatar; Titanic).
Since its 2021 launch, Hyperion Avenue has also added the Marvel Crime line, which publishes books by bestselling crime and mystery authors featuring Marvel’s characters; the imprint’s first title, Breaking the Dark: A Jessica Jones Marvel Crime Novel, hit shelves last year. Overall, Hyperion Avenue saw two titles—A Confident Cook and Tangled Up in You—hit the PW adult bestseller lists in 2024, each staying for one week.
For years, especially when synergy was the business-world strategy of the moment, top executives at Disney took different approaches on how to best fit book publishing into the corporation. But Disney is now a $91 billion conglomerate, with interests that range from cruise ships to streaming services to ESPN to theme parks. Given the scope of its businesses and the scale of recent changes, many industry insiders have been left wondering what, exactly, the current plan for books is inside the Magic Kingdom.
