What Makes A Great Book Publisher?

Past and Present.

Bennett Cerf

On Sunday, April 17, 1960, a four-column headline at the top of the front page of the New York Times declared:

Knopf, Random House in Publishing Merger

Deal Made on Handshake Over Luncheon

— Cerf’s Company to Buy Stock, but Knopf Will Stay on Job

The byline on the story was Gay Talese, who amazingly in 2026 is still doing journalism of distinction.

This was clearly a big deal, although the sale price was about $3 million.

In fact, Random House had acquired Alfred A. and Blanche Knopf’s illustrious publishing company, which had been established in 1915. Bennett Cerf and his partner, Donald Klopfer, had founded Random House in the 1920s. Random House was itself a major book publisher, but with a bit less literary panache than Knopf.

In 2026, Penguin Random House, which still includes Knopf, is owned by Bertelsmann, a family company based in Gutersloh, Germany, and is the world’s largest book publisher, with billions in global revenues and solid profits.

What was a transaction small enough to be agreed over lunch was arguably the beginning of the modern corporate multi-billion-dollar business that book publishing has become. Whereas the media and technology companies are enormous business stories, book company finances are now mainly footnotes.

Gayle Feldman has recently published Nothing Random: Bennett Cerf and the Publishing House He Built, a masterwork of biography and a history of the evolution of book publishing in the twentieth century that in narrative and meticulous detail reflects the two decades Feldman devoted to writing the book.

For my purposes, I want to focus on the question of what made Bennett Cerf a great publisher — and what that means in today’s era, in which more books than ever are being sold.

The portrait Feldman provides of Cerf is of a man who wanted to enjoy life (and succeeded) and who had the talent for choosing which books to publish and how to do that best.

From James Joyce’s Ulysses, the controversial book that gave the fledgling publisher an initial boost, until Cerf’s death in 1971, with Klopfer as his less colorful but rock-solid partner, an extraordinary outpouring of books of quality (mainly) and notice appeared.

There were authors whose fame endures, from Gertrude Stein to Ayn Rand and literary geniuses like William Faulkner, John O’Hara, and William Styron. Cerf’s nurturing of Ted Geisel (Dr. Seuss) and James Michener provided Random House with a stream of vastly popular and profitable books long past his death.

There was a flip side to Bennett Cerf. He wrote bestselling joke books, which were published by other companies. He was a regular Sunday night panelist on the game show What’s My Line?, which made him a recognizable, national celebrity.

(His equally formidable and entrepreneurial wife, Phyllis, originated “Beginner Books,” which established Random House as a leading children’s book publisher — a market that was then and is now indispensable to its business success.)

Cerf didn’t just publish books, he made them into events, drawing comparisons to Broadway and Hollywood producers. There was zeal in every format and in the advertising, publicity, and relations with booksellers.

I spent a dozen years at Random House in the 1980s and ’90s, hired by Cerf’s successor, Robert L. Bernstein, also a publisher of flair, when the company was owned by S. I. Newhouse of the Conde Nast dynasty.

These were the years of increasing consolidation and corporate domination in book publishing, but the industry still could generate media fascination and headlines. I especially remember the day when on the front page of the Times it was reported that Joni Evans, the publisher of the Random House trade division (not the whole company), was being replaced by Harry Evans. (The two were not related.)

I chuckled at the notion of the New York Times editorial meeting that day: “Evans is out! Evans is in!”

The era when book publishing had that level of fascination and notoriety is definitively over. There are famous authors, but the publishers and editors responsible for them are rarely visible, except when they are caught up in scandals or takeovers, or when the legendary ones die.

So, what does it take to be a great book publisher in 2026? I recently spoke with Jonathan Karp, the outgoing CEO of Simon & Schuster, and in my view the closest comparison today to Bennett Cerf.

Jon started at Random House as an editorial assistant in 1989, earning $17,000 a year. Over time and with demonstrated skill he rose through the editorial ranks and was made CEO of Simon & Schuster following the death in 2020 of Carolyn Reidy, herself an exemplary book person.

What is the comparison to Cerf? In our conversation, Jon described every phase of his publishing career as “fun,” sharing stories of acquiring and wrangling books and coping with author egos and literary agents’ demands that others found stressful and even excruciating.

He took a brief detour working for Scott Rudin, a famously difficult film and theater producer (with whom he got along), although he quickly decided he preferred books. Jon also wrote a musical called How to Save the World and Find True Love in 90 Minutes and had it staged off-Broadway in 2006.

Cerf imagined how to publish in a variety of ways. Aside from Beginner Books, there was a young-adult history series called Landmark (which as a boy I read assiduously) and other innovations.

In 2005, Jon devised what he called Twelve, a publishing imprint that would release and promote one book a month, as a way to focus closely on each title, in recognition that getting the public’s attention for books was growing more difficult.

And now, as he leaves the CEO position, he is launching Simon Six, with a similar concept. In 2026, it is even harder to reach readers than it was when reviews and advertising drove sales, unless you understand social media and fragmented audiences.

This is what I consider the most significant aspect of my Cerf-Karp comparison. A great book publisher also has to be a very savvy businessperson. Cerf dealt with RCA when it acquired Random House in 1966, and Karp contended with Paramount’s determination to sell Simon & Schuster and the failed merger with Penguin Random House, which collapsed after a protracted antitrust trial.

A publisher has also to be able to select books that will sell, mass as well as class, and across our political and cultural divide. That explains how S&S could publish Mike Pence and Kamala Harris and the enormously popular genre called “romantasy” — romance mixed with fantasy.

Bennett Cerf would never have heard of romantasy, but like Jon Karp he would have known what to do with it.