Bookouture expands after a record-breaking year

Claire Simmonds
Harriet Wade
Jayne Osborne
Nina Winters
Natalie Edwards
Sarah Gunton
Stephanie Straub

Bookouture has made a number of new hires and internal promotions across its editorial and operations teams after the most successful year in its 10-year history.

Claire Simmonds joins the company in January as Associate Publisher reporting to Publishing Director Laura Deacon. Claire is currently Sales Manager at Cornerstone, PRH and has worked across their biggest fiction brands including James Patterson, Harlan Coben and Lisa Jewell. Claire will acquire and publish her own fiction list as well as taking on strategic and management responsibility for the Thread non-fiction list.

Claire Simmonds says: ‘Although sad to be leaving Penguin Random House after a wonderful decade, I could not be more thrilled to be joining Bookouture at such an exciting time. I have long admired their incredible roster of world-class authors, and how innovative and market leading their approach to commercial publishing is. I am so looking forward to joining one of the most dynamic and creative teams in the business, working towards growing their already stellar list of bestsellers. Above all, I can’t wait to work with some of Bookouture’s brilliant existing authors, and to discover exciting commercial voices of the future.’

Harriet Wade and Jayne Osborne will join the company in January as Commissioning Editors. Harriet joins from Pushkin Vertigo where she worked across a varied crime thriller list and will also report to Laura Deacon. Jayne joins from Pan Macmillan where she published authors Laura Price and Joseph Murray as well as working on Danielle Steel’s publishing. Jayne will report to Publisher Ruth Tross.

Nina Winters, Natalie Edwards and Sarah Gunton have all been promoted to the role of Commissioning Editor and will begin to build their own lists having supported the editorial teams brilliantly as publishing executives over the last eighteen months.

In the Operations team Stephanie Straub has been appointed to the role of Digital Operations Executive also joining the business in January. Stephanie will report to Digital Operations Manager Marina Valles and has previously supported teams at Canongate, Severn House and PBS UK. Stephanie will be based in Hachette’s Edinburgh office.

Managing Director Jenny Geras said of the new hires and promotions: ‘It’s been an incredible year which has seen significant growth in all formats and every area of our business. I’m so excited to have Claire, Jayne, Harriet and Stephanie joining the team in 2023 and the promotions for Nina, Natalie and Sarah could not be more deserved.’

Please do join us over on Facebook and Twitter to celebrate the awesome news! 

Incredible deals on unputdownable ebooks!

Join for FREE and never miss out, or find out more.

The data controller is Bookouture (an imprint of Storyfire Ltd). Read about how Bookouture will protect and use your data in our Privacy Policy. You can unsubscribe at any time via the link in any email we send you.