Simon & Schuster sold for $1.62B

Simon & Schuster has had strong sales over the past two years, even as the book market has cooled off. The publisher has scheduled some of the most anticipated fall releases, including Britney Spears’ memoir “The Woman In Me” and Walter Isaacson’s biography of Elon Musk.

Richard Sarnoff, chair of media at KKR, praised Simon & Schuster as effective and well run and said that it would retain editorial independence.

“We’re not going to tell them what to buy, what to publish or what not to publish,” said Sarnoff, a former executive at Penguin Random House’s parent company, the German conglomerate Bertelsmann. “There’s a 99-year legacy of editorial independence that we’re going to protect.”

Sarnoff said that no layoffs were planned, and that instead KKR hoped to invest in and expand Simon & Schuster, citing international sales as an area of possible growth. As with other companies that KKR has owned, it plans to give Simon & Schuster employees equity, an arrangement that could give the publisher a competitive advantage. In an industry where starting salaries range from $45,000-$50,000, a source of growing unhappiness among young people trying to afford living in the New York City area, an equity stake could end up being worth half or more of a worker’s annual pay, according to Sarnoff.

“The upside is big,” he said. Sarnoff added that he didn’t know how long KKR would run Simon & Schuster before selling it, although he cited five to seven years as the typical range. “We don’t have a set timeline,” he said.