PETER Olson, the CEO of Random House Inc., the publishing giant, is stepping down at the end of the month and the speculation is that he is launching a new career at the Harvard Business School.
Though Olson, who is 58, did not specifically say he was joining Harvard, he and wife Candice Carpenter did recently buy an apartment in Cambridge, Mass., fueling the speculation.
Calls to Harvard Business School Dean Jay Light were referred to the p.r. office, which had not returned a call by presstime.
Random House is owned by German media giant Bertelsmann, which yesterday said it was dispatching Markus Dohle, an industry outsider with a background in industrial engineering, to take over its American subsidiary.
Dohle was most recently the CEO of Arvato Print, a Bertelsmann unit with 11,500 employees worldwide.
In contrast, Random, the nation’s largest trade book publisher, employs about 5,700, and most observers think that number is surely going to be cut.
“People are panicking and saying it couldn’t be worse,” said one Random House author. “On the face of it, it looks like the guy is a complete production bean counter. It doesn’t look hopeful that he’ll share the romantic idea of literature and publishing.”
When he began his tenure, Olson was also seen as a cost-cutting executive in the German mold, especially when he bounced Ann God off as the publisher and editorial director of the flagship Random House imprint.
Godoff eventually landed at Penguin, where she heads her own imprint. Many of her authors at Random House followed her out the door.
But, as one insider said, “other than firing Ann Godoff – and replacing her with Gina Centrello – he didn’t make that many big changes.”
Indeed, Sonny Mehta still runs Knopf, and most of the other editors and publishers are still there.
Olson was the executive in charge of Bertelsmann’s Bantam Doubleday Dell operations when in 1998 the media giant stunned the publishing world by paying an estimated $1.2 billion to purchase the Random House operation from the Newhouse family’s Adance Publications empire.
Though some back room operations merged, the imprints remained independent and often bid against one another in high-stakes auctions.
However, his hands-off editorial approach may have been his undoing.
“Random House was run as a series of independent fiefdoms,” said one publishing rival. “But you can’t run publishing today in a decentralized way.”
Something as basic as allowing each publisher to select the size of the books could be standardized, for instance. While it would have meant less independence for individual publishers and editors, it could have saved millions a year, said one source.
At 39, Dohle is younger than most of the publishers and top editors in the company.
Last year, Random House reported revenues were down slightly compared with a year ago. Privately held Bertelsmann does not break out the revenue by division.
Stuart Applebaum, a vice president of publicity for Random House, said many of the early concerns about Dohle’s arrival are unfounded.
“Dohle is the CEO, not the publishing director,” he said. “He doesn’t pick the books, he picks and supports the people who do that.
“In the near term, I think our new CEO will be doing a lot of listening,” said Applebaum. “Any speculation about sweeping changes is counter to what the new CEO and [Bertelsmann CEO] Hartmut Ostrowski are telling the staff – despite what some agents and hand wringers are telling you.”
Still, many observers think there will be added pressure on this fall’s lineup of Random House authors to perform well.
They include the just-released Barbara Walters No. 1 bestseller “Audition: A Memoir,” which netted a $5 million advance for the anchorwoman and now has 1 million copies in print.
Although there was a lot of speculation that Olson was pushed out by the German board, in his farewell memo to staffers, he insisted it was his decision.
“The past 10 years have been the happiest moments of my life,” he said. “As wonderful as they’ve been, I still have one professional dream that remains unfulfilled: an academic life.”
Dohle and Olson were said to be at a Bertelsmann board meeting yesterday and could not be reached for comment beyond their prepared statements.
Olson steps down May 31 and Dohle starts on June 2.
High noon
People magazine, under pressure from wholesalers, is moving its deadlines up by 12 hours to noon every Tuesday.
Before the change, reporters and editors had a final deadline of around midnight with the magazine going to the printer early Wednesday morning, and reaching the supermarket checkout stands and other retailers by Friday.
All the major competitors in the celebrity weekly category – from Us Weekly to the Bauer titles In Touch and Life & Style – go to press on Monday.
The late deadline occasionally gave People a huge advantage. When actor Heath Ledger died on a Tuesday, Jan. 22, People was the only celebrity weekly with the news on the cover of the issue that hit newsstands on Jan. 25 (the issue had a Feb. 4 cover date). The issue sold 1.8 million copies, nearly 400,000 above its average weekly sales.
People was also the first newsweekly on the newsstands with coverage of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks – which also happened on a Tuesday. People’s editors ripped up their entire issue and put the burning Twin Towers on the cover, selling 4 million copies – still a record.
One distribution source said that the skyrocketing price of gasoline means wholesalers who in the past might have made two or three deliveries now want to make one or two deliveries.
People Managing Editor Larry Hackett put his staff through a dry run on the early deadline this week. It goes live as of June 3.
“It is something we have to do to maintain our pre-weekend delivery,” said Hackett. “We’re moving the deadline up 12 hours to basically lunchtime. If something extraordinary happens, we’d still find a way to get it in.” keith.kelly@nypost.com