Simon & Schuster sold to Private Equity Firm KKR
Portfolio includes Stephen King, Britney Spears
Simon & Schuster,1 run by CEO Jonathan Karp, has a roster that includes recent bestsellers from Stephen King, Colleen Hoover, Taylor Jenkins Reid and Ruth Ware under 20-plus imprints including Scribner, Atria, Gallery and One Signal that comprise 36,000 titles. Recently unveiled book deals include memoirs from Britney Spears, actress Nia Long, TV host Stephen A. Smith and director Edward Zwick. Leadership, including Karp as CEO and Dennis Eulau as COO, will stay in place as Simon & Schuster transitions to a standalone company in the KKR portfolio.2
Simon & Schuster, which will celebrate its 100th anniversary in April, has a lucrative backlist that ranges from Hemingway and Fitzgerald to Colleen Hoover and Stephen King, who was a vocal opponent of the PRH sale. Over the past few years, it’s also churned out a number of political blockbusters, as well as mega-bestsellers like Jennette McCurdy’s I’m Glad My Mom Died and “BookTok” phenoms like Taylor Jenkins Reid’s The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. The company has a big fall coming up with two major nonfiction tentpoles: Walter Isaacson’s biography of Elon Musk and a memoir from Britney Spears.3
Keeping an eye on the Britney Spears book. https://hxlibraries.substack.com/p/britney-spears-and-the-future-of/comments
I was called in once to do a valuation of a publisher. I sure wish I had known you back then,