Ben Sevier to lead Hachette Book Group as David Shelley returns to UK
Ben Sevier will become chief executive of Hachette Book Group on 1 January 2027.
Hachette announced the succession on 29 September 2026, with Sevier taking over from David Shelley at the head of its United States publishing business, according to Publishers Marketplace. Shelley will move back to Britain. He will take a new post as executive chair of both HBG and Hachette UK.
An executive chair leads the board rather than running day-to-day publishing. A chief executive does. Shelley will also serve as a global adviser to Hachette Livre chief executive Arnaud Lagardère and deputy chief executive Jean-Christophe Thiery. Hachette Livre is the French parent company of both the American and British businesses.
A third appointment completes the reshuffle. Richard Kitson will become president and chief operating officer, global English language, Hachette. A chief operating officer oversees daily operations across a company, in this case spanning English-language publishing on both sides of the Atlantic.
Sevier is currently president and publisher of Grand Central Publishing, a fiction and nonfiction division inside HBG, according to Hachette Book Group. Shelley is currently chief executive of HBG and Hachette UK. Kitson is currently deputy chief executive officer of Hachette UK.
The changes continue a working relationship that has been in place for several years. Shelley promoted Sevier to head the Grand Central Publishing Group in 2024 and combined Hachette’s British and American distribution businesses, meaning the warehouses and systems that move finished books to shops, according to Publishers Weekly. Sevier has reported directly to Shelley in his joint role across HBG and Hachette UK.
For readers, this means continuity rather than a clean break. The same three executives remain involved. Only the job titles and the location change.
That matters because publishers shape what reaches the shelf long before a bookshop orders it. They decide which manuscripts to buy, what advance to pay the author, how many copies to print first and how to sell them into retailers. A change of chief executive does not alter books already in production. It does put a new person in charge of those calls.
