Richard Snyder, a visionary and imperious executive at Simon & Schuster who presided over the publisher’s exponential rise during the second half of the 20th century and helped define an era of growing corporate power, has died
Former Princess Diane von Furstenburg posing with of Simon & Schuster executive Richard Snyder on Feb. 28, 1977 celebrating the publication of her new book on beauty. Snyder, a visionary and imperious executive at Simon & Schuster who presided over the publisher’s exponential rise over the past half century and helped define an era of growing corporate power, died on Tuesday at his home in Los Angeles at age 90.
Snyder was among those who helped transform the industry. When he joined Simon & Schuster as a sales assistant in the early 1960s, publishing houses were mostly privately owned, some still run by their founders. By the time he was forced out by Viacom in 1994, Simon & Schuster and such rivals as Random House and HarperCollins were under corporate ownership and had bought out numerous former competitors.
'You cannot be a publisher any longer without also being a businessman,'' Snyder told The New York Times in 1984. “The thought that you can publish just because you love books is a sure prescription for failure.'' “Dick looked us straight in the eye and he was very direct and I felt we'd get his total backing,” Woodward, who would liken Snyder's strength and impulsiveness to qualities he found in Post Executive Editor Benjamin Bradlee, told The New York Times in 1992. “I was right. If he'd ever ducked, or flinched or blinked, I'd say so. But he never has. He's brave. He cares. He always does what he says he'll do. And he's tough, tough, tough.
Simon & Schuster eventually signed up memoirs by such fallen Nixon officials as John Dean, John Ehrlichman and John Mitchell, along with books by Nixon himself and Ronald Reagan, whose memoir was released just months before Simon & Schuster published Kitty Kelley’s notorious “Nancy Reagan,” which suggested the former first lady had an affair with Frank Sinatra. Woodward has stayed with Simon & Schuster for decades, his long run of No.
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