Publisher steered Simon & Schuster through recession and e-book upheaval
Hillary Clinton’s aching wrist was proof of Carolyn Reidy’s gimlet eye for a bestseller. Costly celebrity autobiographies had a reputation for struggling to translate publicity into profit, and the former first lady had secured an eyerubbing US$8 million advance from Simon & Schuster in 2000 for her White House memoir,
Living History. At the time, it was a sum
exceeded only by the 1994 deal for Crossing the
Threshold of Hope by Pope John Paul II. Clinton had already published three books with S&S after Reidy, an executive with the American publishing house, visited her in Washington and formed what proved to be an enduring relationship.
Living History
was a hit, selling more than a million copies in a month on its release in 2003. Clinton, by then a United States senator, autographed so many copies at signing sessions that her hand would seize up and she would have to soak it in ice.
‘‘Signing 1500 books in an hour and a half is not an easy thing to do while you are shaking hands with everybody,’’ Reidy, who has died aged 71, told the New York Times.
Reidy herself exuded stamina and zest as she rose through the ranks to become, in 2008, the first female head of S&S, one of the ‘‘big five’’ American publishers. Founded as a publisher of crossword puzzles in New York in 1924 by Max Schuster and Richard Simon, father of the singer-songwriter Carly Simon, it is now owned by ViacomCBS and publishes about 2000 books a year.
It was a turbulent moment to take the helm. Reidy was embroiled in the financial fallout from the crash of 2008, upheaval to the traditional business model caused by the growth of digital formats, and a legal battle with the United States government. However, she was as perceptive a reader of balance sheets as biographies, and S&S regularly turned a profit under her leadership.
More recently Reidy grew worried that social media and political polarisation may act as suppressants on the free and frank trading of thoughtful and varied opinions
. ‘‘In today’s world, when arguments or debates are taking place at lightning speed, on forums where nuance is either impossible or worse, not sought, we are too often witness to the crush of hive-minded crowds that seek only to affirm their rightness,’’ she said in a speech in 2018. ‘‘In too many instances we have ceded any effort toward a rational, higher-level discourse that could elucidate rather than exasperate our differences; we have ceased to exchange or evaluate ideas; and we have watched as discussion is hijacked into what is essentially a phony debate over free speech.’’
A year earlier she was embroiled in a controversy regarding Milo Yiannopoulos, the alt-Right provocateur who found fame in the US as a rampantly offensive writer and editor for the Breitbart News website. In December 2016 it emerged that S&S had agreed to pay him a reported US$250,000 advance for his book, Dangerous.
The deal ignited outrage: more than 160 children’s book authors and illustrators signed a letter of protest to Reidy accusing the company of ‘‘getting in line with fascism and making it mainstream’’. Reidy sought to soothe concerns, though in the end S&S cancelled the deal.
Carolyn Judith Kroll was born in Washington, to Mildred and Henry, who ran an insurance agency. As a child she would devour books after bedtime by torchlight under the covers. She took a degree in English literature at Middlebury College in Vermont, where she met her future husband, Stephen, who became a venture capitalist. They married in 1974. He survives her; there are no children.
Reidy travelled the world for work and pleasure, her luggage bursting with books, and spent Christmases at an apartment in Paris. One of her favourite novels was All the
Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr, a book set during World War II that won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2015.
Her publishing career began at Random House, where she was hired at an entry-level job because she could type at 90 words a minute. She became head of the romance publisher Avon before joining S&S in 1992. She worked on such successes as Angela’s
Ashes by Frank McCourt (1996), Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson (2011) and a self-help book by Rhonda Byrne, The Secret (2006), which has sold more than 30m copies. Never short of robust opinions, Reidy was also noted for her booming laugh and supportive nature, whether massaging the egos of star writers or encouraging unknowns. She often sent handwritten notes to authors, who respected her attention to detail.
Even amid the coronavirus crisis, she expressed optimism that the business could adapt and flourish. ‘‘She was indefatigable, she had more bandwidth than an internet service provider. She could consume vast amounts of information and read across all kinds of books, from the headiest theoretical books to romance novels,’’ said Jonathan Karp, an executive at S&S. –