The passing on Monday of Sonny Mehta, head of the Alfred A. Knopf imprint of Penguin Random House, has set off an industry guessing game on who will succeed the legendary publisher atop a crown jewel of the publishing world.
At the time of his passing, Mehta had been at the helm of Knopf for more than 31 years with the title of chairman of the larger Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group since 2009.
“There was never a No. 2. There was always only a No. 1: Sonny,” said Paul Bogaards, the deputy publisher at Knopf who was tasked with breaking the news of Mehta’s death to a stunned publishing world on New Year’s Eve.
For an idea of Mehta’s uncanny ability to pick best-selling novels, four of the top 10 of the decade’s top books were projects overseen by Mehta: the “Fifty Shades of Grey” trilogy by British author E L James, which held down the top three spots with combined sales of $34.9 million, and the translation of Stieg Larsson’s “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” which, while first introduced in 2008, still landed as the 10th best-selling novel on NPD Bookscan’s Top 10 list with sales of $7.9 million.
Under Mehta’s reign, six of Knopf’s writers won Nobel Prizes: Toni Morrison, Alice Munro, Kazuo Ishiguro, Orhan Pamuk, Imre Kertesz and V.S. Naipaul.
Mehta came to the US in 1987 after being recruited as president and editor-in-chief of Knopf following a 22-year career in London in which he published both literary and commercial writers, including Jackie Collins, Germaine Greer, Ian McEwan and Salman Rushdie.
At Knopf, he went on to publish the historian Robert A. Caro, as well as world leaders including Pope John Paul II, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush and Tony Blair, novelists from Michael Crichton to Anne Rice and John Updike and nonfiction writers, including Joan Didion, Nora Ephron, Patti Smith and Gay Talese.
“It’s a job that every publisher in New York City would love to have,” said an executive at a rival publishing house.
If there was a nominal No. 2 to Mehta of late, it was Knopf editorial director Robin Desser. But in November, she was named editor-in-chief of the Random House imprint, known in the industry as “little Random” to distinguish it from the corporate parent Penguin Random House.
The company has not yet revealed a replacement out of respect, but there were indications that Mehta, 77, who died from complications related to pneumonia, had pondered the issue with his current boss, Madeline McIntosh, the CEO of Penguin Random House US.
“I also know that in addition to your grief, you may also feel anxiety about the future of the group,” McIntosh wrote in a memo to Knopf Doubleday staffers Tuesday.
“I want to do whatever I can to allay that anxiety. As you can imagine, the ‘legacy question’ was not a subject Sonny leapt at, though it was top of mind. Indeed, it was a subject we discussed at length, particularly in recent months.
“As was his way, Sonny was careful, considered, and deliberate in his thinking. His focus was on what has made these imprints successful in the past and what our priorities should be for the future. Indeed, it was the future he was mostly thinking about. We were absolutely aligned in our thoughts and in the process of making concrete plans to structure that future.
“Now is not the time to talk about any of those discussions. There will be plenty of time going forward for me to share with you what he had in mind and how we will put that vision in place.”
