Before becoming the president and CEO of publishing house Simon & Schuster in 2020, Jonathan Karp ’86 first fell in love with books not in New York City, but on College Hill.
Through reading for hours in the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Library and serving as editor-in-chief of The Herald and president of The Brown Daily Herald, Inc., Karp found his passion for storytelling during his time at Brown.
This enthusiasm did not end once he passed through the Van Wickle Gates for the last time.
After a brief stint in journalism, Karp worked at Random House for 16 years, ascending to become its editor-in-chief. Karp went on to become publisher and editor-in-chief of Twelve, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, where he worked from 2005 to 2010.
Karp landed at Simon & Schuster in 2010, serving as president and publisher of the company’s flagship imprint.
But this past August, Karp announced his decision to step down from his role as CEO. His next venture is a new Simon & Schuster imprint called Simon Six that will publish just six books annually — a small fraction of the over 2,000 new books the publisher puts out each year.
With the transition, Karp hopes to collaborate more closely with authors and ensure each book he works on receives more individualized attention, he said in an interview with The Herald.
“I really enjoyed the CEO job, but it was not a job I ever wanted to do forever,” Karp said. “Ultimately I’m here for the books and for the writers, and I’m just much more excited by that particular challenge.”
At Simon Six, Karp intends to find books with certain “X-factors,” he said, including “excellence,” “exquisite prose,” “exemplary individuals,” “extraordinary stories” and “exclusivity” — a quality he defines as when a story is best experienced through the medium of a book.
Karp studied American civilization while at Brown — an academic experience he said continues to inform his work.
“Just about everything I studied in American civilization relates to the work I do today,” he said. The courses taught him to look “at books through a cultural prism,” which he said taught him to identify “good writing.”
But Karp’s time in college wasn’t only spent on classes. Decades before he helped authors refine their books’ structures, plots and prose at Simon & Schuster, he was doing the same for articles from The Herald’s office at 195 Angell St.
At The Herald, Karp started out as a sports reporter before expanding his coverage to a broad array of topics, ranging from features of well-known artists to an article on how a Ph.D. graduate from Brown was convicted of murder.
Karp covered many well-known names, talking to figures such as composer David Yazbek ’82, writer Nora Ephron, playwright John Guare and artist Andy Warhol.
One line from the Warhol article, which Karp co-wrote with Alex May ’89, reads, “Whether it was just a bad day, an overwhelming lack of personality or one of his games, Andy Warhol confused us.”
During the interview with Warhol, the artist suggested they take a photo of himself sitting on Karp’s lap, Karp said. Though he declined at the time, Karp now wishes he had that photo.
“The Brown Daily Herald was the formative experience of my life, and the highlight of my time at Brown, and probably the greatest educational experience I’ll ever have,” Karp said. “I basically lived there for four years, and I loved it.”
Karp described his experience with journalism as “great preparation for everything in life, because I do think that most things in life come down to who, what, when, where, why and how.”
“The stories I covered for The Herald on institutional racism at Brown, gender discrimination and gay rights had a huge influence on me in my professional life, as a leader and in the authors I chose to publish,” he wrote in an email to The Herald.
In 1985, during Karp’s time as editor-in-chief, “one of the biggest stories we covered that year was a protest by Black students about institutional racism at Brown,” he wrote. “It was an enlightening experience for a lot of us, and it also attracted national attention.”
Another one of his “biggest stories” came about when fraternities protested their removal outside then-President Howard Swearer’s house in the middle of the night.
Bear Barnes ’86 was Karp’s first-year roommate and, for a short period of time, a sports writer at The Herald, before he left the paper.
Even though Karp is, according to Barnes, “a bit of a genius when it comes to publishing,” Barnes noted his friend’s constant humility — a trait that was present even during their time in college. He recalled a moment from their sophomore year when Karp told him that “on his tombstone, he’d rather have it say he was a nice guy than that he was a genius.”
Barnes said he also enjoys hearing Karp talk about the interesting connections he has made throughout his career.
One time, while the pair was on a call, Karp “kept hopping off the phone and then coming back,” Barnes recalled. “He said, ‘I’m sorry, Marlon Brando keeps calling me, and I can’t get the guy off the phone, he just wants to talk to somebody.’”
Barnes also recalled that Karp, while still a student at Brown, started exchanging letters with novelist John Irving — one of the most famous American authors at the time, Barnes said.
“He wasn’t his editor or anything, he just wrote him a letter,” Barnes said. “Irving wrote him back, and (Karp) wrote him back, and there’s a whole sort of correspondence back and forth between them.”
Jill Zuckman ’87, who succeeded Karp as editor-in-chief after the end of his tenure, met Karp at Herald orientation during her first year at Brown.
“We’ve been friends since then, and we’ve really stayed in close touch all these years,” Zuckman said. “He was a very talented journalist, very talented writer, way back when.”
Zuckman added that he was a “fantastic leader,” noting that people wanted “to do their best work for Jon.”
In the 1986 commencement issue, Karp wrote a column titled “We’re All Faking It,” where he wrote that he “came to Brown insecure about (his) intellect.”
“Apparently I’m one of those flukes who get into Brown on personality,” he wrote in the column.
Karp said he gained inspiration for his column from an interview he did with Rupert Holmes, the singer of “Escape (The Piña Colada Song),” who gave him the titular piece of advice that “everybody is faking it.” The interview helped him realize that even the people who seemed most together didn’t always know what they were doing.
“To say that during my time at Brown I have realized the vastness of my ignorance is not only cliche, but an understatement,” he wrote in the column. “In the last four years, I have realized the vastness of everyone’s ignorance.”
