Simon & Schuster Canada has a new president and publisher.
Nicole Winstanley will report to Simon & Schuster President & CEO Jonathan Karp, and she will also serve on S&S’s executive committee. Her first day in the new role will be April 11.
Winstanley joins Simon & Schuster from Penguin Random House Canada, where she was most recently publisher of Penguin Canada and vice president of PRHC. Winstanley joined Penguin Canada as a senior editor in 2006, and was made publisher in 2010 and president and publisher in 2012. Before joining Penguin Canada, Winstanley worked as director of foreign rights at Westwood Creative Artists.
Karp lauded Winstanley as “one of the most highly regarded publishers at work in Canada.”
“Nicole’s reputation for excellence, her commitment to authors, and her keen editorial eye will help us become an even greater force throughout Canada and all of the territories in which we publish,” he said in a press release. “We are thrilled to be welcoming Nicole to our executive leadership team and committed to her vision of publishing an even broader range of books in Canada – works of great popular interest and high literary quality.”
Winstanley said in the release that she is excited to be joining S&S and has been “enormously impressed with their significant impact on the Canadian publishing landscape in a relatively short period of time.”
In a simultaneously issued press release, Penguin Random House Canada CEO Kristin Cochrane announced Winstanley’s departure and thanked her for commitment to Penguin and to publishing in Canada. Cochrane said she will be taking “some time to consider how to fill the role of publisher of Penguin Canada” and will be working closely with the team in the meantime.
Winstanley’s appointment comes a month after Karp announced the departure of former president and publisher Kevin Hanson. Hanson’s departure came after those of a number of high-level staffers in late 2023.
Simon & Schuster marked 10 years of publishing in Canada last June.