Check out the official announcement.
OAKLAND, January 4, 2024 — Berrett-Koehler Publishers (BK), a mission-driven publishing company, is pleased to announce the appointment of Praveen Madan today as its new CEO and publisher. The decision comes as current CEO and publisher David Marshall retires from BK after 17 years of dedicated service.
Madan states, “I am deeply honored and grateful to have this opportunity to serve the global Berrett-Koehler community, which has been a source of profound learning and unwavering generosity.”
Madan envisions a new publishing model for BK that continues to deepen its roots as an author-friendly, mission-based book publisher and expands innovation and collaboration with partners. After a successful career as a strategy and transformation consultant for leading companies, Madan moved to the book industry and has become a leader in developing a new model for next-generation community bookstores. As CEO of Kepler’s Books since 2012, he has led a successful turnaround and reinvention of this legendary cultural institution. Madan’s innovative strategies, such as embracing the nonprofit model, implementing community financing and governance, developing new revenue streams, and raising wages to build a strong team, are being replicated by many bookstores around the US. He says his learnings from the BK community have been critical to his success in the book industry.
BK founder and senior editor Steve Piersanti states, “Berrett-Koehler is wonderfully fortunate to welcome Praveen as our new CEO and publisher. Praveen brings the best of both outsider and insider experience through his business consulting career, followed by his dynamic independent bookselling leadership, combined with serving from 2009 to 2020 on the BK board of directors, including two years as board chair. Praveen brings intimate knowledge of BK’s business and culture along with fresh, innovative outsider perspectives.”
Berrett-Koehler Publishers has been facing financial difficulties over the past year due to several factors, including the lingering effects of the pandemic and market pressures within BK’s areas of publishing. Madan’s vision and turnaround experience will guide the company through these challenges to emerge stronger than ever.
BK author and board chair Joyce Roché said, “I have always believed that the right person shows up at the right time and that is the case with our selection of Praveen as Berrett-Koehler’s new CEO and publisher. Praveen has the brainpower, book industry experience, and passion for Berrett-Koehler that are needed at this challenging time in the company’s history.”
As BK moves forward with new leadership, we welcome support and involvement from anyone who wants to join us in the BK community’s mission of co-creating a world that works for all. Madan said, “One of the reasons why I am accepting this challenge is the urgent necessity to reimagine the relationship between book publishers and bookstores. I would also love to see more publishers, bookstores, and authors adopt the human-first approach that Berrett-Koehler has pioneered. Our collective future is at stake.”
Praveen Madan is a nationally recognized leader in reinventing bookselling and building literary communities. As CEO of Kepler’s Books since 2012, Praveen has been leading a community-sponsored initiative to transform Kepler’s into a model next-generation community bookstore. In 2021, he co-convened the Reimagining Bookstores movement with a mission to strengthen communities, deepen literacy, and pay living wages to people working in bookstores. Reimagining Bookstores’ inaugural conference attracted nearly 600 participants from all walks of the bookstore ecosystem and was reported by Publishers Weekly to be “one of the most invigorating gatherings on independent bookselling in a generation.” Praveen is the former chair of the board of directors at Berrett-Koehler Publishers. He holds an engineering degree from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi and an MBA from the University of Texas at Austin. Before moving to the book industry, he spent a decade working at Kearney, the global management consulting firm.
About Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Berrett-Koehler Publishers is an award-winning, innovative independent publishing company that has been in business since 1992. BK’s books focus on driving positive change in individuals, businesses, and society toward a mission of connecting people and ideas to create a world that works for all. BK is a Certified B Corp and a California Benefit Corporation. BK print titles are distributed all over the world by Penguin Random House Publisher Services. BK books have been translated into 54 different languages.
To deepen the impact and increase the reach of BK’s mission, the BK community created two nonprofits—the Berrett-Koehler Foundation, focused on supporting change makers in co-creating a world that works for all, and BK Authors, Inc., dedicated to connecting BK authors with each other and helping them amplify their messages in the world. Together, these three organizations share the same values and mission and are bound to each other through the Berrett-Koehler Constitution. The result is a powerful global network of people working together.
