Simon & Schuster Taps Former Amazon Exec Greg Greeley to Succeed Jonathan Karp as CEO

Big Five publisher Simon & Schuster has announced that Greg Greeley, who spent nearly two decades at Amazon, has been tapped to succeed Jonathan Karp as CEO, effective this week. Karp is stepping back as planned to helm a new S&S imprint.

In a statement, Richard Sarnoff, Chairman of Simon & Schuster’s Board of Directors and Chairman of Media for Private Equity Firm KKR, which purchased S&S in 2023, called Greeley “a talented and strategic leader” who will bring to S&S “wide-ranging experience managing enterprises across physical and digital markets.” With international expansion being a stated goal of S&S, Greeley also brings significant international experience to the role.

Greeley comes to S&S after a nearly 19-year tenure at Amazon, during which he held a variety of senior leadership roles, including in the company’s Books and Media business. In that capacity, Greeley helped launch the company’s self-publishing platform and its print-on-demand service, and expanded both the company’s global audiobook and books businesses through acquisitions. He also led the company’s international expansion, and championed several “reader discovery” programs for Amazon Prime members, including First Reads, Prime Reading, and Audible spoken-word offerings.

Greeley left Amazon in 2018 to become president of Airbnb’s Homes business, and most recently, served as a tech investor and advisor.

“His depth of expertise and avid love of books give us the confidence that he is the right CEO to take Simon & Schuster forward ,” Sarnoff said.

Greeley’s appointment comes some six months after Karp announced he would be stepping down as CEO, and would return to his editorial work, with his new imprint Simon Six, which will publish six books a year. Last month, Karp announced that the imprint’s first title, Take Me to Your Leader: Perspectives on Your First Alien Encounter, by Neil deGrasse Tyson, would be published in May.

S&S former CEO Jonathan Karp returns to his editorial work with his new imprint, Simon Six.

During his tenure as CEO, Karp led S&S to record earnings through some difficult times—beginning with his own appointment, following the sudden death of longtime CEO Carolyn Reidy in May 2020. He helped the company navigate through the pandemic, then its failed merger with Penguin Random House—which was blocked by the government on antitrust grounds in 2022 after a sensational trial—and finally through the company’s eventual sale to KKR in 2023.

In a letter to staff announcing his intention to step down, Karp said he never saw himself a CEO for life, and always expected to return to editorial work.

“Simon & Schuster has played an enduring role in sharing and shaping human culture through books, and I’m honored to steward that mission for the next generation of authors and readers,” Greeley said, in a statement. “The opportunity to support authors’ careers and help their stories and ideas travel widely and take root across formats, markets, and generations is deeply compelling.”

In a statement of his own, Karp also endorsed Greeley’s hiring, calling him “a transformative CEO” and “the best person to take Simon & Schuster to the next level. “I am thrilled to be working with him and am confident he will take us to even greater heights.”

Or, at least, into the hands of new ownership.

In an interview with the New York Times this week Greeley acknowledged that Simon & Schuster’s current private equity owners will at some point be looking to sell the company, although he told the Times that the S&S board had “assured him that KKR was continuing to invest in long-term growth at Simon & Schuster, through building its overseas businesses, acquiring smaller companies, and continuing to expand in audio and in popular categories like science fiction and fantasy.”

A version of this article also appears on Publishing Perspectives.