This past July, Penguin Random House (PRH) experienced yet another shake-up. Following its failed bid to acquire fellow Big Five publisher Simon & Schuster in 2022—and the resignations of its chief executives soon after—news broke over the summer that dozens of longtime PRH employees were leaving the company due to layoffs or via PRH’s buyout program.
Since the PRH employees included some of the best-known editors in the industry, news of their departures was covered by national media outlets, such as the Associated Press. New York magazine also reported on these editors in a piece originally called “The Golden Age Is Over” and now titled “The Old Guard Is Out at Penguin Random House.”
Reaction to this article was mixed. While some expressed regret over the end of a bygone era, when both editors and their authors stayed in one place for decades, others found it “entirely out of touch.”
Since the departing editors brought some of the world’s most respected authors into print, their contributions to the book industry cannot be overstated. But to lament the end of this era is a mistake, according to Peter Osnos, who was vice president and publisher at Random House before founding PublicAffairs, now an imprint at Hachette. “It’s a natural progression,” says Osnos. “Things can’t go on being exactly the same.” Osnos emphasizes that the new generation of editors “will have the same dedication to books and writing,” and that the departure of longtime PRH editors “does not mark a cheapening of the brand.”
Furthermore, he points out, “Most of the people who are leaving are well into their 70s. They had been at the company, in some cases, for 40 years. There comes a time you should make way for other people. This doesn’t mean you’ll stop doing the things you want to do.” Case in point: Osnos writes a Substack newsletter that he updates every week. As for the company he founded, PublicAffairs (now owned by Hachette)—“the people I hired should be running it, not me,” he says.
New York magazine suggested that the departure of longtime editors will “open the ranks to a more diverse and technologically nimble group.” But while many publishers have ramped up their efforts to improve representation and inclusion among their employees and author lists, obstacles remain, according to a report by PEN America last fall. R.F. Kuang’s novel Yellowface, released this past May, is one of several recently published novels that offers a biting critique of publishing’s approach to diversity, among other issues.
Perhaps a better balance is the next best step in publishers’ efforts, says Dana Isaacson, who has worked in various capacities in New York City publishing for over 30 years, most recently as a senior editor at PRH. “Certainly an editorial staff more diverse than what was there in the past is needed, but the collaboration between diverse voices—new, old, fresh, experienced—is invaluable,” he says. Isaacson expressed gratitude to his mentors at PRH, who taught him, among other things, diplomacy with authors, adding that “the wholesale elimination of years of experience and institutional knowledge seems foolhardy and destructive to me.”
Anjali Singh, who has worked in editorial positions at the Big Five houses and smaller presses and is currently a literary agent with Ayesha Pande Literary, says the departing PRH editors “deserve to be celebrated and to be treated with respect,” criticizing the way publishing “‘retires’ most editors (especially female editors) once they reach a certain age without giving them the credit they deserve for their myriad contributions and sacrifices, both personal and professional.” That said, she calls for a change to “the culture of paying those at the top … so much more than young people, while also extracting everything you can from young people.”
Laura Zats, who co-founded Headwater Literary Management and has worked in editorial departments in the US and the UK, offers one reason for the attention being given to the PRH editors: “They were given the space and the budget to explore and develop their taste in a way a lot of younger editors aren’t allowed to do due to shrinking imprints and midlists and an ever-expanding search to improve the bottom line.” What we should be focusing on “is not who is left, but rather, who will get to stay long enough to become a tour de force the way the old guard was allowed to.”
Zats says there are fewer imprints today (and fewer editors), and the number of submissions each editor receives has outstripped past records—and they are responsible for a growing number of books on their list. Furthermore, fewer editors have assistants or other support staff. “Pressure and lack of support from their employer has made it difficult for editors to be as hands-on with their authors as I think they would like to be,” Zats says.
So are editors today still editing? Absolutely, says Isaacson: “Editors are still spending nights and weekends working on their labors of love. The much-ballyhooed demise of editors editing is overblown.” Singh says, “My literary authors have been given extraordinary, great care and intense, line-level editing by their editors.” Their commitment is “frankly miraculous, given how much is asked of editors these days.”
Bottom line: “Tales of a lost golden age are seductive—and dangerous,” writes Dan Sinykin in his recently released history of the publishing industry, Big Fiction. Publishing a book today is “a completely different experience than it had been … before conglomerates swept through the industry. Then, your odds amounted to how easily you could get your book into the right editor’s hands.” In today’s publishing era, new questions must be asked: Who is the target audience? Which media outlets or influencers will give this book attention? Does the author have a platform to help sell the book?
On that note, Isaacson advises, “More than ever, writers need to invest their time (and usually money) into the promotion of their books. It’s expected, and authors who are good at it are more attractive to publishers. If your career is Author, go all in and invest more than your literary talent.” And according to Zats, although traditional publishing has been projecting an image of scarcity, it’s “a great time to get your story out there.” She warns, though, that the ability to be a house author is changing. “Even the biggest selling names nowadays work with multiple imprints and editors, often across houses (and many also self-publish). I’d say that it’s a better mindset to be flexible in your work—you might work on IP, dabble in different categories, or jump genres.” This, she says, “is a sign of success.”
Zats also reminded writers of their necessity to the business. “Without you, publishing wouldn’t exist. Remember that everyone here is working for and because of you.”
A former acquiring editor of children’s books at Little, Brown and Simon & Schuster, Sangeeta Mehta runs her own editorial services company.
A former acquiring editor of children’s books at Little, Brown and Simon & Schuster, Sangeeta Mehta (@sangeeta_editor) runs her own editorial services company. Find out more at her website.
