Coates to leave Vintage after 20 years as Paperbacks editorial team disbands

Beth Coates has resigned from her role as Vintage Paperbacks publishing director after 20 years in the business to focus on her own writing, with the imprint’s editors going to sit within the hardback imprint teams, rather than as a separate, dedicated editorial team.

Following a two-month summer sabbatical this year, Coates decided to make the leap to focus on her writing and freelance career and will leave the business in mid-October.

In her time at Vintage, she has helped to build the Vintage Paperbacks imprint as well as masterminding numerous bestsellers, including Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments, Merlin Sheldrake’s Entangled Life and Caroline Criado Perez’s Invisible Women.

Hannah Telfer, Vintage m.d., said: “Beth has made an incredible contribution to Vintage: and all with her unique combination of insightfulness, intelligence, passion and humour. 

“I have known Beth for many of those years and long admired her publishing spirit; it has been a joy to have more recently had the opportunity to work more closely with Beth and see the creative impact she makes at every stage of a book’s life. All of us at Vintage will miss her greatly.”

Coates said: “Vintage has played a profound role in my career and my life. It has been a privilege to have grown up working with Vintage’s stable of extraordinary writers, helping shepherd their work out into the world. I’ll miss them and my best-in-show colleagues enormously.

“More than that, it’s been a blast: creatively mind-expanding, full of spine-tingling, pinch-me moments and many, many laughs. I’ve made some friends for life. I’m very much looking forward to admiring Vintage from afar and focusing on my freelance writing and copywriting work.”

The current paperback team will move to their hardback imprints at the start of October. Alex Russell, senior editor, will move to Jonathan Cape, where he will also commission; Victoria Murray-Browne, senior editor, will move to Chatto & Windus; and Sania Riaz, assistant editor, will join Harvill Secker. 

Alice Johnstone, editor, and Joel Burton, editorial assistant, will join Bodley Head. Square Peg will continue to take responsibility for all editions, led by Marianne Tatepo. All Vintage paperbacks will continue to be published with the Vintage colophon.

Elsewhere in the division, Nick Skidmore has been promoted from editorial director to publishing director of Vintage Classics & Catalogue, reporting to Faye Brewster, deputy managing director. He will continue to publish a small number of new titles on to the Jonathan Cape list.

Faye Brewster said: “I’m delighted that Nick will take on this new position of publishing director: he will build on the brilliant work he has done together with our Classics & Catalogue team to creatively champion our world-class catalogue of more than 6,000 titles and develop relationships with literary estates. Nick joins the Vintage leadership team with immediate effect.”

Skidmore said: “I’m thrilled to be taking on this expanded remit: how publishers grow, diversify, celebrate and curate their backlist is one of the most crucial frontiers in publishing right now, and this new role signals Vintage’s commitment to ensuring our wealth of incredible books continues to resonate with all readers in an ever-evolving, often highly reactive landscape.”