But the credit for inventing the first headless wonder in publishing really belongs to Penguin. They have been experimenting for a while now with the unusual concept of having three people replace ex-ceo David Davidar, leading to a piquant situation where the head and the tail wag independent of each other. But Penguin finally seems to have come around to the realisation that this is not such a good idea after all, no matter how flattering it is for Davidar, now struggling to put Penguin Canada on the publishing map. Ravi Singh, who previously headed only the front list of Penguin's non-stop production, has now been appointed to the vacant chair as publisher and editor-in-chief.
These are indeed heady days for publishing editors with ambition. Or even those who are merely out of work. Random House, which held its first board meeting in India with Sonny Mehta flying down from New York for the two-day pow-wow, is still dithering on the appointment of editors for its Indian house. Shortlisting of a few candidates is where they are now at. If picking an editor or two takes this long, think about commissioning the first batch of their books which they hope to launch by next October.
