Press Release
Important Announcements from Hachette UK12/03/2009
Tim Hely Hutchinson, CEO of the Hachette UK group, is delighted to announce the following appointments and other new management arrangements:
* Kate Wilson, Group Managing Director of Scholastic UK, has been appointed to the newly created role of CEO of the Headline Publishing Group. She will join on May 5th.
* Kate Wilson, Tim Hely Hutchinson, Kerr MacRae (Deputy Managing Director and COO), Jane Morpeth (Deputy Managing Director and Publisher) and Martin Neild will form a new strategic development group briefed to build rapidly on Headline’s outstandingly successful publishing model.
* Martin Neild, currently Managing Director of Headline and CEO of Hodder & Stoughton and John Murray, will continue his long and successful association with Hachette UK after he ceases to work full time in publishing in early 2010, in accordance with a long-held personal plan. Kate Wilson will this year report to Martin, alongside Martin’s existing reports. After a break in Spring 2010, Martin will act as a consultant to Hachette UK until at least the middle of 2011 and probably beyond.
* When Martin stands back from his full-time involvement in early 2010, Kate Wilson and Jamie Hodder-Williams, Managing Director of Hodder & Stoughton, will report directly to Tim Hely Hutchinson and Jamie will assume the title of CEO of Hodder & Stoughton and John Murray with Roland Philipps continuing as Managing Director of John Murray.
* Richard Kitson, Hachette UK Commercial Director, will at the same time take responsibility for Hachette Ireland, in addition to his present responsibilities.
* Kate Wilson will assume responsibility for Hachette Scotland immediately.
Headline and Kate Wilson
Kate will join Headline on 5th May reporting to Martin Neild. She will also join the main board of Hachette UK.
Since its launch in 1986, Headline has been at the forefront of commercial fiction and non-fiction publishing. Headline changed the way books were marketed by transforming cover design, how and where books were bought, expanded the market by working with traditional and non-traditional book retailers alike and transformed author/publisher relationships by promising and delivering radically higher standards of efficiency, marketing and communication.
Headline was founded on the principle of publishing books with the “Headline Promise of Entertainment”. Over the years, it has very successfully extended this concept into reading group and prize-winning fiction and a broad range of non-fiction, with the result that it now publishes many of the biggest names in all of fiction and entertainment.
Headline’s strong sense of identity and its reputation for publishing bestsellers and promoting new authors with vigour, flair and commitment has been built over the years by its talented staff led by joint Deputy Managing Directors Kerr MacRae and Jane Morpeth. It is now further enhanced by the appointment of Kate Wilson, an outstanding publisher with a wealth of creative and business experience, and the foundation of a new strategic development group consisting of Tim Hely Hutchinson, Kerr MacRae, Jane Morpeth and Martin Neild briefed to build rapidly on Headline’s outstandingly successful publishing model.
The Hachette UK group is constantly evolving. It operates with a unique federal structure: each of its publishing companies has a distinct identity with a separate autonomous management team led by its own CEO reporting to Tim Hely Hutchinson. When Martin Neild steps down, and Kate reports directly to Tim Hely Hutchinson, Headline will become part of the same UK group management structure as the other UK publishing houses in the group: Hachette Children’s Books; Hodder Education; Hodder & Stoughton; Little, Brown; Octopus and Orion.
Kate Wilson’s career in publishing, before her leadership of Scholastic, included experience with Canongate, Faber, Methuen, Heinemann, Hamlyn Children’s Books and Macmillan Children’s Books, where she was Managing Director. During Kate’s time as Managing Director of Macmillan Children’s Books, sales grew from £3 million to £16 million and the business was transformed to become one of the company’s principal sources of profits. At Scholastic UK, Kate has broadened her direct experience of consumers and their buying by managing the book clubs and book fairs divisions that sell directly to both children and adults. She oversaw the evolution of Scholastic’s educational, English Language Teaching and magazine publishing and developed its web-based activities. She brought new bestselling authors to Scholastic, reinvigorated the sales of existing authors and many hugely popular brands and built an excellent publishing team.
Authors with whom Kate worked at Scholastic include Philip Pullman, Philip Reeve, Terry Deary and Julia Donaldson. Kate is involved in a number of industry-wide initiatives including the World Book Day Executive, the Trade Publishers’ Council and the PA/BA Liaison Committee and is widely regarded as an outstanding leader amongst her generation of publishers, with a great empathy for readers and a consequent flair for effective sales and marketing.
Martin Neild
Martin Neild has, for some time, been discussing with Tim Hely Hutchinson his plans to leave his full time executive work with Hachette UK and, although he will not be stepping down until early 2010, now is the right time to make the announcement.
Martin Neild joined Hodder Headline in 1993, shortly after the group was created from the merger of Hodder & Stoughton and Headline, as Managing Director of Hodder & Stoughton. Martin’s leadership transformed the business, bringing its publishing much greater strength in depth and bringing not only a fresh approach to marketing and management but also the friendly and open ethos of which Hodder & Stoughton remains proud today. In 2001, Martin was promoted to be overall responsible for Headline and eventually John Murray, Hachette Ireland and Hachette Scotland, as well as Hodder & Stoughton (where Jamie Hodder-Williams became Managing Director). The businesses for which he has been responsible have gone from strength to strength, and Martin has also been instrumental in creating valuable informal cooperation between all the trade publishers in the Hachette UK group, whereby best practice ideas are exchanged and talent is encouraged in every way.
Martin’s continuing work for Hachette UK, from Spring 2010, will involve the recruitment and development of publishing and authorship talent as well as more general publishing issues. Martin’s work outside the group will involve creating a portfolio business of consultancy, coaching and training and he also intends to spend more time on his other interests, including viticulture in Italy.
Hachette Ireland and Richard Kitson
Hachette Ireland was formed in 2007 under joint Managing Directors Breda Purdue and Jim Binchy. The business very successfully publishes Irish authors, as well as representing most of the Hachette group’s lists in Ireland. Richard Kitson, Commercial Director of Hachette UK since 2006, will take group level responsibility for Hachette Ireland when Martin Neild relinquishes his full-time role.
Hachette Scotland and Kate Wilson
Hachette Scotland started publishing a small list of fiction and non fiction in 2008 under Publisher Bob McDevitt. Kate Wilson, herself a Scot, will assume responsibility for the company immediately.
Tim Hely Hutchinson comments:
“Headline today is a dynamic, creative, warm-hearted and intensely focused publishing house and it is these same characteristics that make Kate an outstanding publisher. I believe they are made for each other and I am delighted to welcome Kate to Headline and to the wider Hachette UK group. Under Kate’s leadership and supported by Kerr MacRae and Jane Morpeth who have both played such an important part in Headline’s success of many years, Headline will continue to build on its founding principles of publishing books for the widest possible readership. This has been immensely successful for us and we want to build on this success. Martin and I have been trying to attract Kate to our group for a considerable time and I could not be more confident that, under her leadership, Headline will indeed both innovate and build on its great strengths.
Martin has worked alongside me to recruit Kate and has persuaded me that her joining us makes it possible for him to move, as he has long discussed with me, to a part-time consultancy role. Martin and I have been friends for some 30 years, colleagues more than once and we have worked together for the last 16 years. I am more grateful than I can possibly express not only for all the success his leadership has brought us, but also for his steadfast personal support through thick and thin and I am delighted that he has agreed to continue working for us on a new part-time basis. Although it is still a long way off, I also wish him extremely well with his other plans and like the sound of the Italian viticulture.”
Kate Wilson comments:
“The opportunity to work with bestselling and building Headline authors is an incredible privilege. I have long admired the Headline list - and, more generally, Hachette - from the outside, so the prospect of being inside is a great source of pleasure and excitement. I can think of no better people to learn from than Tim, Martin, Jane, Kerr and the Headline team as I build on the foundations of my strong publishing and general management experience to take an already stellar list to even greater success.”
Martin Neild comments:
“I can think of no other publishers I would rather work for than Hachette, Hodder and Headline but, after 16 incredibly enjoyable years with the group as it has grown, I have for a while been planning a change of direction to enable me to pursue other longer term interests. I now feel able to put this plan into effect as a result of the announcements we are making today about Headline.
“I shall miss working with my wonderful colleagues and the group’s authors on a day to day basis, but am absolutely delighted that I shall be remaining in close contact with everyone in my new role, while continuing to work closely with Tim on some exciting projects across the group.”
Kate Wilson - Biography
Kate Wilson was born in Edinburgh in 1964. A voracious reader as a child, she also honed her bargaining skills early by using pocket money to buy small pieces of unpolished but lovely decorative second-hand and antique silver that she cleaned up and sold – experience that has stood her in good stead since in her career in publishing.
A budding career in antique dealing was cut short by a family move to Brussels in her early teens, where the – initial – challenge of a new language and an emerging interest in boys proved barriers to its pursuit.
She studied English at Worcester College, Oxford, and has a First in English Language and Literature.
Returning to Edinburgh after university, and with an ambition to work with books but no contacts in the world of publishing, she took courses in computing and word processing and learned to touch type by typing much of Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth, while working in a very junior and entirely unpaid capacity at Canongate and waitressing in the evenings to pay the bills.
In 1986, she moved to London to take a rights assistant job with Faber and Faber. Her boss, Tony Pocock, got amoebic dysentery within months, and, with a rights manager leaving the business, she stepped up and became a rights and contracts manager, where her main focus was selling serial rights, book club rights and TS Eliot by the line.
She moved to Methuen Children’s Books in 1989, and progressed to Rights Director of what was then Reed Children’s Books – an organisation is like but not identical to today’s Egmont Publishing.
Eager to have the opportunity to shape books as well as sell them, she joined Macmillan Children’s Books in 1994. In her time there as Managing Director, she profitably grew revenue six-fold, publishing The Princess Diaries and The Gruffalo among other bestsellers, while reshaping the list to include more books for mass market and special sales channels as well as international markets. She was a member of the wider Pan Macmillan management team.
In 2004 she became Group Managing Director for Scholastic UK. She broadened her general management experience to include finance, property management, distribution, HR and IT. She added bookselling experience to her publishing experience by managing Scholastic’s book clubs and book fairs divisions and developed her understanding of non-metropolitan consumer mass markets. In terms of consumer publishing, Scholastic provided the opportunity to maximise the success of the impact of the film tie-in of Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights; reinvigorate the Horrible Histories and Captain Underpants brands; bring in new best-selling talent such as Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler; diversify the list; and build an excellent team. She also oversaw the evolution of Scholastic’s educational, ELT and magazine publishing and developed Scholastic’s web activities, which now include subscription-based content delivery, marketing and selling direct to the consumer.
To be CEO of the Headline Group is a superb opportunity to apply what she has learnt over 23 years in publishing to a new and exciting area of the business. The past four and a half years have been an unforgettable learning experience, and she could not be happier with the legacy of people and publishing that she leaves. However she wants to get close once again to what she really loves: books, authors and selling. She reads and uses a wide variety of adult fiction and non-fiction. The prospect of a journey without an adult book induces real anxiety, and an annual two-week holiday requires a minimum of 14 adult books (just to be safe). Faber and Faber and Pan Macmillan provided exposure to publishing for adults, and Headline will add a completely new dimension.
Kate says “The opportunity to work with bestselling and building Headline authors is an incredible privilege. I have long admired the Headline list - and, more generally, Hachette - from the outside, so the prospect of being inside is a great source of pleasure and excitement. I can think of no better people to learn from than Tim Hely Hutchinson, Martin Neild and the Headline team as I build on the foundations of my strong publishing and general management experience to take an already stellar list to even greater success.”