Major Reorgnization from Random House; Applebaum and Rubin Out

Written by Edward Champion

Posted on December 3, 2008
Filed Under Random House

In an email circulated to Random House colleagues, Random House announced a massive reorganization and the loss of veteran staffers, Irwyn Applebaum and Steve Rubin. Here is the email that came from CEO Markus Dohle:

Dear colleagues and agents,

I would like to share with you the attached announcements I made today regarding a reorganization within Random House and the departure of two colleagues, Irwyn Applebaum and Steve Rubin, with whom you’ve worked over the years.

I want to emphasize that within this new structure our publishing groups retain their autonomy and our publishing programs and efforts will continue unabated. We are committed to the values of a vibrant marketplace and to supporting the passions of our individual editors and publishers to pursue the projects they desire. For that reason we will continue the Random House policy of permitting imprints to bid against each other in auctions up to the moment that there are no out-of-house participants.

My intention is that Random House should always lead the market, even in difficult times, and we can do that only by forging stronger relationships with our authors, you, their agents, our retail customers and readers everywhere. These changes will make each individual imprint stronger and make us better able to accomplish that goal collectively.

Please don’t hesitate to share your thoughts.

Regards,

Markus

As part of the reorganization, Knopf will be absorbing both Doubleday and Nan A. Atlese, with this new amalgam headed by Knopf’s Sonny Mehta, while Crown, under the supervision of President and Publisher Jenny Frost, is taking Broadway, Doubleday Business, Doubleday Religion and Waterbrook Mountain. These details were announced in the attached PDFs.

Dohle insists in the PDF, “I want to stress the fact that all the imprints of Random House will retain their distinct editorial identities. These imprints and all of you who support them are the creative core of our business and essential to our success.” But with the distinct identities of Applebaum and Rubin now out of the picture, it remains to be seen whether or not these new clusters will remain as distinct as their previous incarnations.

The Observer’s Leon Nefakh also reports, “The time bomb that was Random House for the past five months has finally exploded.”