For the past few weeks, the decision loomed: to stay with a solid organization, or to seize a new opportunity. No, not for LeBron James, whose overwrought free agency drama made for a cringe-worthy ESPN special last night, but for Evan Schnittman, who after eight years at Oxford University Press as vice president of corporate and business development, this week left to become managing director of group sales and marketing, print and digital for Bloomsbury. “It was not an easy decision,” Schnittman told PW after his return yesterday from the U.K., where his appointment was officially announced. He praised the OUP organization, but said the lure of a new, global role with another great organization that extended his responsibilities, and included both trade and academic publishing, was too good to pass up.
In his newly created role, Schnittman will lead Bloomsbury's sales and marketing in the U.K., U.S., and Germany, across all divisions of the group. Nigel Newton, chief executive of Bloomsbury, said the new worldwide sales and marketing position, and Schnittman’s appointment, “reflect our view of the future of the publishing marketplace.” Schnittman will officially take up his new role on August 2nd, and will work both in New York and in the U.K.
Meanwhile, OUP moved quickly this week, promoting Schnittman’s OUP colleague David Bowers as the new v-p for rights and business development for the global academic business. In an internal memo shared with PW, OUP president Tim Barton said Bowers has been “a key driver of the success of the Rights and Business Development team” at OUP, and “has done a terrific job in developing our business in Asian markets in particular.”
The quick appointment of Bowers should help blunt the loss of Schnittman for OUP, who Barton noted in a memo to staff, “has made a very significant difference in his time at the Press, overseeing huge growth in our Rights revenues,” first for OUP’s USA operation, and then for the OUP’s global businesses. Barton praised Schnittman and his team for a string of “major deals that have both generated significant revenues and helped OUP to disseminate its content to markets and customers that our own publishing could never have reached,” and as “an excellent colleague who contributed to OUP’s the wider strategy. He will be greatly missed.”
In addition to his tenure at OUP, Schnittman has served as executive v-p at The Princeton Review, senior editor at Little, Brown, and held editorial and sales positions at FA Davis. He is widely known in the industry, both as a popular and sought-after speaker on the key issues in publishing in the digital world, and via his blog, Black Plastic Glasses.
