![]() At one point along the way, I was a volunteer for the Pacific Northwest Writers’ Conference, and my job was to pick up an editor arriving from New York at SeaTac, drive her to the conference at Pacific Lutheran University, and then return her to the airport when the conference ended. In the world of literary snobbism, original paperbacks, in which form I was being published, are generally looked down upon. They were invented during World War II, designed to be lightweight enough that soldiers could carry books with them into the field in their pockets or back pack-hence the name “pocket book.” And it was also there that I learned the storied history of paperbacks. It was there I met her for the first time, standing in the receiving line. By then Carolyn Reidy was the Publisher at Avon and she summoned one an all to a party at Rockefeller Center in New York City. I knew my editor, John Douglas, and that was it.Ī couple of years passed and Avon Books celebrated its 50th anniversary. I was a completely unknown and very minor author at that point in my career, and the people running the show in New York were far above my pay grade. My first two manuscripts were purchased by Avon Books in 1983 when she was president of the company. ![]() Reidy: siblings David Kroll, Kathleen Todd and Ruth Tolles, and many nieces, nephews and grandnieces and grandnephews.Carolyn Reidy, a pillar of my publishing career and the woman at the helm of Simon and Schuster for years, passed away on Tuesday of this week, succumbing to a heart attack at her home in the Hamptons. Reidy is survived by by her husband, Stephen K. Reidy’s death comes three months after the passing of one of Simon & Schuster’s most celebrated editors, Alice Mayhew, and less than four months after the death of longtime Simon & Schuster author Mary Higgins Clark. Before coming to Simon & Schuster, she was president and publisher of Avon Books. Reidy had worked in publishing for much of her adult life, starting in 1974 in the subsidiary rights division of Random House. Raised in Silver Spring, Maryland, she was an undergraduate at Middlebury College, and received a master’s degree and a doctorate in English from Indiana University. In 2017, she was named the industry’s Person of the Year by the trade publication Publisher Weekly, which cited her leadership “through the Great Recession, publishing’s digital disruption, and a slow-growth sales environment all while keeping Simon & Schuster a commercial and critical success.” Earlier this year, ViacomCBS CEO Bob Bakish said the publisher was up for sale, telling an investor conference, “Simon & Schuster is not a core asset. She confronted many crises and upheavals at Simon & Schuster, whether the rise of e-books, the financial crash of 2008 that happened within months of her becoming CEO or the current coronavirus pandemic. Reidy was known for her warm and candid manner, for sending handwritten letters to authors and for her alertness to the bottom line. “Most of all, she was a smart and passionate reader.” ![]() “She was a trailblazer and a role model and a champion for me and so many other women,” Weiner wrote of Reidy, who at the time of her death was the only woman running one of the Big Five publishers. Simon & Schuster is one of the so-called “Big Five” New York based publishers, with authors including Stephen King, Doris Kearns Goodwin and Bob Woodward, who in an email to The Associated Press called her “One of the great publishers and book people of all time” and praised her as “both tough and generous.” On Twitter, novelist Jennifer Weiner noted that she had worked with Reidy for her whole career. “As a publisher and a leader, Carolyn pushed us to stretch to do just that little bit more to do our best and then some for our authors, in whose service she came to work each day with an unbridled and infectious enthusiasm and great humor.” “Carolyn was both an exemplary leader and a supremely talented and visionary publishing executive,” Eulau said in a statement about Reidy, who joined Simon & Schuster in 1992 and had served as CEO since 2008. Her death, from a heart attack, was announced by Dennis Eulau, the company’s chief operating officer and chief financial officer. NEW YORK (AP) - Simon & Schuster CEO Carolyn Reidy, who presided over her company with steady force and a passion for books during a time of frequent and traumatic change, died Tuesday morning at age 71. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated. This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated.
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