Chapman’s exit at S&S presents his successor with a familiar challenge

In a rapid, perhaps orchestrated, set of announcements this week, both Simon & Schuster UK and Bonnier Books UK lost their chief executives and gained new ones. Coming just ahead of the London Book Fair in March, these moves will make for a lively few weeks as the trade digests them, and assesses the implications.

First, Ian Chapman said he intended  to step back from S&S UK and International from May, to be replaced by Perminder Mann, CEO of Bonnier Books UK, who, in turn, has been succeeded by Sarah Benton and Jonathan Perdoni, now joint CEOs of that operation.

Chapman will be a big miss at S&S, particularly at a moment when it has gained a new owner. He has been a stalwart at the UK division, steering it adroitly for 25 years despite the ‘forever sale’ sign hanging over the business’ head for most of his tenure. His style has been  to bulk up incrementally, and his reign has been remarkably effective. It is worth recalling that for a long time, S&S struggled to be seen as distinct from its parent, but for the past decade this narrative has shifted as international stars such as Colleen Hoover, and Lauren Roberts have combined with home-grown talent such as Bob Mortimer and AF Steadman to carve out a commercially successful place just outside the UK Big Five. It has also shown, with Dave Grohl’s The Storyteller and Britney Spears’ The Woman in Me, that it can do the big books with or without its corporate parent.

Over two decades it has doubled in size – and market share, peaking at 2.9% in 2022. He has eschewed growth for its own sake, but at the same time has made S&S UK the credible outpost of the larger US group it needed to be. It deservedly won the Publisher of the Year accolade at The British Book Awards twice in succession, as well as taking home the Children’s Publisher prize in 2023.

When Mann took over as CEO it was a moment of reckoning, needing to figure out how to stabilise that business and then remake it 

The challenge for his successor is to steer the business through a  rapid growth era that its new parent KKR will want to put in place. It is easy to buy turnover at the expense of good prudence, and in Mann, they have recruited an executive who has some knowledge of growing pains. Over 20 years, Bonnier UK has risen 10-fold, but the cost of that was, for a period, extraordinary, reporting losses of £15m in 2017 (before write-downs). Indeed, when Mann took over as CEO it was at a moment of reckoning, with the new broom needing to stabilise the business and remake it. Back then, there was no guarantee it would survive.

Today, the Bonnier UK accounts (which exclude Igloo) show profits bouncing around, but TCM sales have been maintained above £40m, and almost caught up with S&S in 2024. CEO Jonathan Karp called Mann “a strategic thinker, an innovator and a team builder”, which is fair given the hand she was dealt at the beginning of her tenure.

She too will be missed. With smart hires at the executive level, new imprints and clever book acquisitions, I almost never think of Bonnier Books UK as the reckless business it used to be: instead it feels now like a zestier version of its stately Swedish parent.

There is an obvious overlap between the two leaders. Mann took on a problem, and leaves behind an opportunity. Chapman took on an opportunity and leaves behind a legacy.