The Class of 2025 16
Rohan Hope de Silva Penguin Random House
Rohan Hope de Silva had contemplated law and banking after his history and politics degree at Warwick, but realised “the finance-corpo life wasn’t really for me”. He opted for publishing, specifically sales as it “encapsulated my interest in the intersection of the cultural and commercial”. He became a “journeyman” across Penguin Random House’s divisions – Transworld’s digital sales, Vintage’s online department – but when covering absences at the group-wide regional teams, where a big part of his job was visiting indie booksellers, he knew he had found his calling. He jumped at the opportunity in 2024 to become PRH’s newly created independents publisher liaison manager. Since then, he has become the main conduit between the trade giant and indies, with highlights such as co-ordinating across PRH’s division to double the number of exclusive indie editions and overseeing the all-conquering campaign for Robert Macfarlane’s Is a River Alive? “Indies are the most career-affirming place to be in publishing,” Hope de Silva says.
Ben Johns Simply Books
Long before Ben Johns became co-owner and MD of Simply Books, he was a customer, attending an event at the Bramhall indie at age six. But it was hardly a straight line from that story time to getting the keys to the shop as Johns has had a varied career, including setting up a sports coaching company at 16, working in tech start-ups and launching the How Novel book subscription service. He and his mother Karen Johns dreamed of running “a bookshop with a twist”, so when Simply Books was put on the market two years ago the two leapt at the chance to buy it. The venture has been a success from the off, helped by a rejigging of the premises and an emphasis on events – all of which fed into the store winning the North Regional Independent Bookshop of the Year gong at The British Book Awards 2025. In the end, Johns is committed to Simply Books: “The project is a long-term one for me, and I can see great potential, which I guess is the main goal: to see how much we can grow the business.”
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Beci Kelly Transworld
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Close your eyes and imagine the most striking book covers of recent vintage, and odds are that some of them will be Beci Kelly’s designs. The Transworld deputy art director’s portfolio includes Francine Toon’s Pine, Jacqueline Wilson’s Think Again and, most iconically, Bonnie Garmus’ Lessons in Chemistry, which Kelly chalks up as one of her highlights, “not least because I got to design so much accompanying merch, too… it was a very full-on time, though humbling to realise how little of my chemistry classes from school had stuck”. Kelly has been a Transworld lifer, joining the division nine years ago after studying graphic design and illustration at Liverpool John Moores University. Her current in-tray includes the “absolutely epic” new ML Stedman, A Far-Flung Life, and working on the treatment for some of Transworld’s new talents, such as Madeline Cash and Marisa Kashino. As the industry goes forward, she hopes it “continues to prioritise human- crafted design and art. AI can be a great tool, but ideas should always be realised by a human”.
17 17 Zoë King Hachette Group
Zoë King grew up in the Scottish town of Oban, and did not realise that publishing could be a profession until attending the University of Edinburgh, where a course on censorship lit a spark and she began thinking about “what stories we’re allowed to read”. Cue the difficult road into the trade for those outside London; King ended up in Sheffield, editing English content for a translation company (“fridge manuals and sports brand product copy: just as fascinating and fulfilling as it sounds”). Then Hachette opened a Sheffield office and in 2022 King bagged a rights assistant role. She excelled from the jump, promoted twice to senior rights executive. Hachette rights boss Rebecca Folland says King has generated a whopping £1.4m since her start; Little, Brown CEO Charlie King (no relation) calls her “a phenomenon”. It is unsurprising that King urges more regional diversity: “Until [publishers] remove that London barrier, I feel there will be voices and experiences missing from their teams, and they – and their books – are a lot poorer for it.”
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20 20 Shyam Kumar Viking Non-Fiction
“Proactive and data-driven” is how Shyam Kumar describes his commissioning over a career on the non-fiction teams at Orion and, since 2022, Viking. The approach has worked a treat, with a string of hits including Phil Hay’s And it Was Beautiful, Will Buxton’s Grand Prix and Pope Francis’ memoir Hope. Some of his books chime personally; Sathnam Sanghera’s bestseller Empireworld spoke to Kumar’s own first-generation British-Asian experience. His dad owned an electronics shop on Tottenham Court Road called, embarrassingly for a young Kumar, Shyamtronics – “he maintains it was named after me, not vice versa”. The locale sparked an interest in books as Kumar would often go to the shop after school and drift down to nearby Foyles. In addition to listening to data, Kumar keeps an ear to the ground: “Editors shouldn’t be gatekeepers, especially now that we don’t live in a monoculture anymore… I love hearing what friends, relatives, colleagues, anyone I encounter, is interested in.”
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Features
Rising Stars
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