Pan Mac's Harvie joins Elliott & Thompson as executive publisher

Robin Harvie is leaving Pan Macmillan to take up the role of executive publisher at Elliot & Thompson. 

He will join Elliott & Thompson on 1st January and will oversee the entire publishing function as well as setting the strategic direction of the company. He will report to chairman Lorne Forsyth.

Harvie leaves his role as non-fiction publisher at Pan Macmillan, where he was responsible for the publisher's sporting successes, including the autobiographies of Rob Burrow, Alun Wyn Jones, Eddie Jones and Johan Cruyff. He also developed an internationally-focused list that included Range by David Epstein, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs by Steve Brussatte, Radical Candor by Kim Scott and How Emotions Are Made by Lisa Feldman Barrett.

Previously he worked at Aurum where he published Richie McCaw, Lizzie Hawker, John McPhee, Roger Kahn, George Kimball and Doris Kearns Goodwin. Harvie began his career at Fourth Estate as a publicist, working with authors such as Francis Wheen, Matt Ridley and Simon Singh. 

Sarah Rigby, who joined E&T to cover Jennie Condell’s parental leave in August 2019, has stepped into a permanent role as publishing director, continuing to commission narrative non-fiction for the list.

Harvie said: "I am absolutely thrilled to be joining Lorne and his team at Elliott & Thompson, who have shown the power of independent publishing with the huge successes in recent years of Tim Marshall’s million-copy selling books, Nancy Campbell’s Fifty Words for Snow and Julia Boyd’s Travellers in the Third Reich. Elliott & Thompson have brilliantly demonstrated that there is huge potential for growth when creativity and dexterity are coupled with a market that re-affirmed its love of reading during lockdown. I am incredibly excited to have the opportunity to join the Elliott & Thompson team as we look to take the company to the next stage in its growth, both in the UK and internationally."

Forsyth added: "We are delighted to have a publisher of Robin’s immense skill and experience joining the company at such an exciting time, as we look to consolidate our huge successes of recent years. As soon as we met Robin, we knew that his fierce ambition, drive and determination matched our own and that he would be the perfect person to steer Elliott & Thompson to the next stage of growth. Working with publishing director Sarah Rigby, directors Olivia Bays and Jennie Condell and editor-at-large Simon Spanton, Robin will be leading a formidable commissioning team with great commercial nous. We can’t wait to get started."

Harvie can be contacted on robin@eandtbooks.com or 07771 892 797.