Loss of Gail Rebuck from Random House and Victoria Barnsley from HarperCollins leaves all big four headed by men
Victoria Barnsley has left HarperCollins UK after 13 years as chief executive.
Photograph: Martin Argles for the Guardian
A bad week for women and a good one for geeks, sighed an industry insider after a couple of days that saw one of British publishing's two queens abdicating, and the other resigning herself to a less regal role.
On Monday, the completion of the merger of Penguin and Random House was accompanied by the announcement that Gail Rebuck, chairman and chief executive of Random House UK since 1991, would step down from the day-to-day running of the UK arm of the business to take the strategic role of chairman.
The following day, the news broke that Victoria Barnsley was leaving HarperCollins UK after 13 years as chief executive.
Barnsley's resignation occurred on the eve of her annual summer authors' party at the Orangery in Kensington Gardens (a pleasure house bequeathed by an earlier beleaguered monarch, Queen Anne) which, as she noted on the night, "has become my leaving do". She cited the irony of HarperCollins winning a publisher of the year award under her leadership just a year ago (an award Rebuck's Random House took for 2012 two months ago).
Many a loyalist tear was shed as Barnsley joked: "As my colleagues have told me my one great weakness is I'm not really good at managing up, and I think the last few days I have really realised that."
Though her speech was light on bitterness, it tellingly lacked the usual "you'll be in good hands" tribute to her replacement, Charlie Redmayne, from JK Rowling's website, Pottermore.
In case anyone had missed the regicidal undertones of the occasion, the historian Max Hastings spelled it out with overt reference to the French revolution. Saluting Barnsley's "shining achievement", he said: "Obviously we all know that after the reign of terror we will all go on doing great things, but we must go on raising our glasses to Vicky not only for what you've done for authors but for publishing and books in this country."
Hastings' patriotic reference to "this country" touched another raw nerve in the British publishing industry. Last month's splitting up of Rupert Murdoch's media empire included the reallocation of oversight of HarperCollins's operations in India and Australasia from Barnsley in the UK to the worldwide chief executive, Brian Murray, who is based in Manhattan.
Over at Penguin Random House a similar reorientation has been happening. The new British chief executive will be Penguin's Tom Weldon, with Gail Rebuck as chairman, but the overall group chief executive, Markus Dohle, will be based at the merged firm's headquarters in New York.
For those alarmed about the masculinisation of the British book trade, there's no shortage of other examples to point to. A few days earlier, on 30 June, Kate Swann, WH Smith's widely admired boss, stepped down; and six months before that, on 1 January, Marjorie Scardino retired after 13 years running Pearson, the owner of Penguin (it now owns 47% of the merged group). Both, like Barnsley and Rebuck, were replaced by men.
The suddenness of the change is startling – from 2000 to 2012 three of the big four British publishers were overseen by women. In the Guardian's Book Power 100 list two years ago, Rebuck was ranked ninth and Barnsley fifteenth, and Rebuck took 10th place in Radio 4's Woman's Hour power list for 2013. Now, arguably, there are none.
But for some the concern is not just defeat in a gender numbers game: it's also that as women drop back, the geeks are on the rise, with implications for who and what gets published.
While praising HarperCollins for being "in the forefront of the digital revolution", Barnsley expressed the anxieties of many in the Orangery when she warned: "By all means do play with the tech companies but please don't try to become one. We are content businesses … the one thing that is never going to change is the importance of great narratives."
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On Monday, the completion of the merger of Penguin and Random House was accompanied by the announcement that Gail Rebuck, chairman and chief executive of Random House UK since 1991, would step down from the day-to-day running of the UK arm of the business to take the strategic role of chairman.
The following day, the news broke that Victoria Barnsley was leaving HarperCollins UK after 13 years as chief executive.
Barnsley's resignation occurred on the eve of her annual summer authors' party at the Orangery in Kensington Gardens (a pleasure house bequeathed by an earlier beleaguered monarch, Queen Anne) which, as she noted on the night, "has become my leaving do". She cited the irony of HarperCollins winning a publisher of the year award under her leadership just a year ago (an award Rebuck's Random House took for 2012 two months ago).
Many a loyalist tear was shed as Barnsley joked: "As my colleagues have told me my one great weakness is I'm not really good at managing up, and I think the last few days I have really realised that."
Though her speech was light on bitterness, it tellingly lacked the usual "you'll be in good hands" tribute to her replacement, Charlie Redmayne, from JK Rowling's website, Pottermore.
In case anyone had missed the regicidal undertones of the occasion, the historian Max Hastings spelled it out with overt reference to the French revolution. Saluting Barnsley's "shining achievement", he said: "Obviously we all know that after the reign of terror we will all go on doing great things, but we must go on raising our glasses to Vicky not only for what you've done for authors but for publishing and books in this country."
Hastings' patriotic reference to "this country" touched another raw nerve in the British publishing industry. Last month's splitting up of Rupert Murdoch's media empire included the reallocation of oversight of HarperCollins's operations in India and Australasia from Barnsley in the UK to the worldwide chief executive, Brian Murray, who is based in Manhattan.
Over at Penguin Random House a similar reorientation has been happening. The new British chief executive will be Penguin's Tom Weldon, with Gail Rebuck as chairman, but the overall group chief executive, Markus Dohle, will be based at the merged firm's headquarters in New York.
For those alarmed about the masculinisation of the British book trade, there's no shortage of other examples to point to. A few days earlier, on 30 June, Kate Swann, WH Smith's widely admired boss, stepped down; and six months before that, on 1 January, Marjorie Scardino retired after 13 years running Pearson, the owner of Penguin (it now owns 47% of the merged group). Both, like Barnsley and Rebuck, were replaced by men.
The suddenness of the change is startling – from 2000 to 2012 three of the big four British publishers were overseen by women. In the Guardian's Book Power 100 list two years ago, Rebuck was ranked ninth and Barnsley fifteenth, and Rebuck took 10th place in Radio 4's Woman's Hour power list for 2013. Now, arguably, there are none.
But for some the concern is not just defeat in a gender numbers game: it's also that as women drop back, the geeks are on the rise, with implications for who and what gets published.
While praising HarperCollins for being "in the forefront of the digital revolution", Barnsley expressed the anxieties of many in the Orangery when she warned: "By all means do play with the tech companies but please don't try to become one. We are content businesses … the one thing that is never going to change is the importance of great narratives."
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