Greg Greeley's first major public appearance as Simon & Schuster CEO — at the London Book Fair, the industry's most international gathering — was a deliberate choice of venue, and the interview with Publishing Perspectives is the most substantive statement of strategic intent from a Big Five CEO at LBF 2026.

The "founder mindset" framing is the most revealing element of the interview. Greeley is not a founder — he is a professional executive who has run large divisions at Amazon and Airbnb — but the framing signals something important about how he intends to operate within the KKR ownership structure. Private equity ownership of publishing companies has historically been associated with cost-cutting, margin optimisation, and exit-oriented decision-making. Greeley's explicit statement that KKR is focused on "long-term growth rather than a quick exit" is a direct rebuttal of that narrative, and it is consistent with KKR's track record since the 2023 acquisition: the firm has been investing in S&S's infrastructure rather than extracting cash from it.

The AI comments are carefully calibrated. Greeley did not claim that AI would transform publishing or replace editorial judgment; he identified two specific use cases — "workflows" and "discovery" — that are both defensible and commercially significant. Workflow AI (automating rights management, metadata generation, contract processing, and production scheduling) is already being deployed by several Big Five publishers and offers clear ROI without threatening the editorial relationships that define publishing's value proposition. Discovery AI (personalised recommendation, search optimisation, and reader behaviour analysis) is the more commercially ambitious application, and it is where S&S's scale — and the data that comes with it — provides a genuine competitive advantage over smaller publishers.

The M&A signal is the most consequential element of the LBF interview. Greeley confirmed that KKR has "encouraged international expansion and acquisitions since taking ownership," and he identified the "global nature of books" as S&S's biggest opportunity. This is a direct statement of intent to acquire publishing companies outside the US, and it comes at a moment when several mid-sized European publishers are under financial pressure and potentially available. The S&S–Advantage worldwide distribution deal announced earlier this week is consistent with this strategy: it is a low-risk way to establish commercial relationships in new markets before committing to full acquisitions.

Jonathan Karp's return to editorial is worth noting as a signal about what Greeley values. By allowing — or encouraging — Karp to step back from the CEO role and return to the work he is best at, Greeley is demonstrating that he understands the difference between publishing's commercial infrastructure and its editorial culture. The best publishing CEOs have historically been those who protect the editorial environment while building the commercial machinery around it. Whether Greeley can do both remains to be seen, but the LBF interview suggests he understands the distinction.