The big shock in the publishing world is the news
that Jane Friedman is suddenly not the CEO of HarperCollins.

That’s the big question today in the publishing world, which was collectively stunned last night when it was reported that Jane Friedman had resigned as the CEO of HarperCollins after 10 years on the job and handed the reins of the company over to her 41-year-old deputy.



Did Ms. Friedman, who is 61, see Peter Olson’s recent resignation from Random House and subsequent appointment to the faculty of the Harvard Business School and think, ‘Gosh, that sounds nice”? Or did she make her exit in anticipation of a terrible fourth quarter?



Right now nobody knows, and many are puzzling over Ms. Friedman’s exuberant behavior over the weekend at the Book Expo convention in Los Angeles. Ms. Friedman gave no indication over the weekend that she was planning to leave. At one point on Saturday she walked over to the Random House booth in the convention center to meet with that house’s brand new CEO, and later that night,at the height of a party she hosted

on the 20th Century Fox lot, she pulled a reporter aside and exclaimed with no apparent irony, “I love being CEO of HarperCollins! Write that down.”



As far as we can tell, not even the publishers who report to Ms. Friedman– those are the people who run the individual divisions at HarperCollins– knew that this was coming. One told us last night, before we confirmed it with a source close to Ms. Friedman, that it was probably a joke; another said this morning, when asked to speculate about Ms. Friedman’s motivations, “I wish I had an answer.”

So far, Gawker
and The Wall Street Journal have speculative pieces on the departure, but no one knows for sure what’s going on. Some are speculating that a combination of the Judith Regan debacle plus some upcoming poor financial results led to her firing. But no doubt we’ll learn more in the coming weeks.



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Original post by ReadersRead.com Book Blog