This week London book queens Victoria Barnsley and Gail Rebuck were toppled off their thrones at HarperCollins and Penguin. Sebastian Shakespeare reads between the lines.
Not a good week for women is how one leading literary agent described it. This week two of the most powerful women in the London books trade, Dame Gail Rebuck and Victoria Barnsley, stepped down from their posts within 24 hours of each other. On Tuesday night, Barnsley abruptly departed as UK and international chief executive of HarperCollins after a brutal management shake-up by proprietor Rupert Murdoch. A day earlier, Dame Gail Rebuck stepped back from day-to-day control of Random House after the merger with Penguin was completed.
While Rebuck, 61, will remain with the publisher as UK chairman (and is being tipped for a peerage), Barnsley’s plans are unknown, though she will not stay on as an adviser.
Barnsley was tearful when she told her staff she was leaving and last night’s annual HarperCollins summer party at the Orangery in Kensington Gardens was an emotional farewell after 13 years at the helm and more than 200 literary prizes on her watch, including double Booker winner Hilary Mantel.
In front of high-profile authors including historian David Starkey and Nigel Slater, she said: “While this is in many ways a very sad moment for me personally, it’s also a very proud one. I don’t want to turn this party into a wake — it’s not what tonight is about. Tonight is about celebrating, and we have so much to celebrate — our wonderful authors, our wonderful company and a future full of potential for all of us. Whether you’re an author, agent, publisher or retailer, depending on your view it’s either a terrifying or exhilarating time. The only certainty is that it’s all changing... The publishing world has gone mad.”
Sir Max Hastings, speaking on behalf of her authors last night, compared the seismic changes in publishing to “Paris in the reign of terror”. So what are the implications of the latest tectonic shift?
First, British publishing has now reverted to being a largely public school, male-dominated business (at least among the upper echelons). Barnsley is being replaced by Charlie Redmayne, Eton (and half-brother of actor Eddie), while Random Penguin UK is being ruled over by new CEO Tom Weldon (Westminster and Oxford). “Four years ago there were four women heading up British publishers,” says Liz Thomson of BrookBrunch. ”On Sunday we had three, and today we have one.” Ursula Mackenzie remains the only female CEO of a major UK imprint (Little Brown).
More significantly, power and influence has shifted overnight to America. Barnsley’s international responsibilities have been moved to the head office in New York, where Brian Murray has been appointed as president and CEO of HarperCollins Worldwide. Until recently, book deals were agreed on a country-by-country basis and England’s historic link to “the Colonies” like India and Commonwealth territories like Australia and New Zealand mattered. Not any more. Likewise Penguin, with its history dating back to 1935, when Allen Lane founded the paperback imprint in Marylebone, will no longer be headquartered in The Strand. Instead, as part of the newly merged Penguin Random House group, it will be run out of New York by Markus Dohle, where Random House is already based.
The other major development is that the man at the top of HarperCollins UK does not come from a publishing background. No wonder some authors and agents are worried. Tellingly, Barnsley is being replaced by the digitally-savvy executive Redmayne, who has spent the past two years running Pottermore, the Harry Potter website. Redmayne was poached by Barnsley in 2008 from BSkyB to become group digital director.
Barnsley is a popular figure in the publishing world. “Everyone feels the manner of her departure is rather brutal,” says one insider. She may have been cheerfully indiscreet (HC fortunes were boosted in the past few years by Tolkien franchises, prompting Barnsley to tell a friend she was not a fan of the “fucking elves”) but she was a serious publisher, a serious reader and cared passionately about books. She set up Fourth Estate in 1983 and changed the entire tenor of British publishing, with bestsellers like Dava Sobel’s Longitude proving that you don’t have to go downmarket to be commercially successful. Her replacement by Redmayne is being interpreted as a sign of things come: an ever increasing focus on digital content rather than book publishing, with more emphasis on brand and franchise at the expense of serious writing.
Over at Penguin, Rebuck takes a back seat — she who secured Tony Blair’s memoirs for £4 million and was named last year by Radio 4’s Woman Hour as the 10th top most powerful woman in the UK — and Tom Weldon steps forward. Weldon does have a publishing background (he was a Macmillan graduate trainee) and has dutifully risen through the ranks, but the authors he is associated with are Jeremy Clarkson, Jamie Oliver, Girls Aloud and Posh Spice. Spot the connection? Not exactly the Reithian end of the market. They are not new discoveries or authors that have been quietly nurtured over the years but they have been bought in from TV and the music.
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Barnsley was tearful when she told her staff she was leaving and last night’s annual HarperCollins summer party at the Orangery in Kensington Gardens was an emotional farewell after 13 years at the helm and more than 200 literary prizes on her watch, including double Booker winner Hilary Mantel.
In front of high-profile authors including historian David Starkey and Nigel Slater, she said: “While this is in many ways a very sad moment for me personally, it’s also a very proud one. I don’t want to turn this party into a wake — it’s not what tonight is about. Tonight is about celebrating, and we have so much to celebrate — our wonderful authors, our wonderful company and a future full of potential for all of us. Whether you’re an author, agent, publisher or retailer, depending on your view it’s either a terrifying or exhilarating time. The only certainty is that it’s all changing... The publishing world has gone mad.”
Sir Max Hastings, speaking on behalf of her authors last night, compared the seismic changes in publishing to “Paris in the reign of terror”. So what are the implications of the latest tectonic shift?
First, British publishing has now reverted to being a largely public school, male-dominated business (at least among the upper echelons). Barnsley is being replaced by Charlie Redmayne, Eton (and half-brother of actor Eddie), while Random Penguin UK is being ruled over by new CEO Tom Weldon (Westminster and Oxford). “Four years ago there were four women heading up British publishers,” says Liz Thomson of BrookBrunch. ”On Sunday we had three, and today we have one.” Ursula Mackenzie remains the only female CEO of a major UK imprint (Little Brown).
More significantly, power and influence has shifted overnight to America. Barnsley’s international responsibilities have been moved to the head office in New York, where Brian Murray has been appointed as president and CEO of HarperCollins Worldwide. Until recently, book deals were agreed on a country-by-country basis and England’s historic link to “the Colonies” like India and Commonwealth territories like Australia and New Zealand mattered. Not any more. Likewise Penguin, with its history dating back to 1935, when Allen Lane founded the paperback imprint in Marylebone, will no longer be headquartered in The Strand. Instead, as part of the newly merged Penguin Random House group, it will be run out of New York by Markus Dohle, where Random House is already based.
The other major development is that the man at the top of HarperCollins UK does not come from a publishing background. No wonder some authors and agents are worried. Tellingly, Barnsley is being replaced by the digitally-savvy executive Redmayne, who has spent the past two years running Pottermore, the Harry Potter website. Redmayne was poached by Barnsley in 2008 from BSkyB to become group digital director.
Barnsley is a popular figure in the publishing world. “Everyone feels the manner of her departure is rather brutal,” says one insider. She may have been cheerfully indiscreet (HC fortunes were boosted in the past few years by Tolkien franchises, prompting Barnsley to tell a friend she was not a fan of the “fucking elves”) but she was a serious publisher, a serious reader and cared passionately about books. She set up Fourth Estate in 1983 and changed the entire tenor of British publishing, with bestsellers like Dava Sobel’s Longitude proving that you don’t have to go downmarket to be commercially successful. Her replacement by Redmayne is being interpreted as a sign of things come: an ever increasing focus on digital content rather than book publishing, with more emphasis on brand and franchise at the expense of serious writing.
Over at Penguin, Rebuck takes a back seat — she who secured Tony Blair’s memoirs for £4 million and was named last year by Radio 4’s Woman Hour as the 10th top most powerful woman in the UK — and Tom Weldon steps forward. Weldon does have a publishing background (he was a Macmillan graduate trainee) and has dutifully risen through the ranks, but the authors he is associated with are Jeremy Clarkson, Jamie Oliver, Girls Aloud and Posh Spice. Spot the connection? Not exactly the Reithian end of the market. They are not new discoveries or authors that have been quietly nurtured over the years but they have been bought in from TV and the music.
More
Ignore this space, can't get rid of it. Scroll down for next post.
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