Jonathan Karp
Who
Publishing veteran Karp heads up the buzzed-about Grand Central Books imprint, Twelve. He also holds the dubious honor of having edited three Donald Trump titles.
Backstory
After graduating from Brown and briefly working as a reporter, Karp began his publishing career in his mid-20s as an editorial assistant at Random House. There, he built a reputation by acquiring and editing bestsellers like Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief, Seabiscuit, and Matthew Pearl's The Dante Club. In 2005, after 16 years with Random, Karp resigned, citing his frustration with the lack of financial and editorial freedom. Although he said he was planning on a career writing musical comedies for stage and screen, he resurfaced just a few months later as editor-in-chief of Twelve, an unorthodox new imprint under Grand Central, the Hachette-owned publishing venture headed by Jamie Raab.
Of note
What makes the imprint so special? Twelve publishes just one book a month—and devotes a massive amount of attention to publicizing it. The imprint's first book was Christopher Buckley's novel Boomsday, released in April 2007; the second was Christopher Hitchens' God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Both were bestsellers. Other recent Twelve books include Jennifer 8 Lee's The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, John McCain's Hard Call, and Mark J. Penn's Microtrends. In 2008, Twelve announced plans to publish Ted Kennedy's memoir, paying the oversized senator an equally hefty $8 million advance.
On the side
Karp is the co-author of the off-Broadway musical comedy, How to Save the World and Find True Love in 90 Minutes, which debuted in 2004 at the New York Fringe Festival. The production billed itself as a "rollicking musical about hot relations at the United Nations."
No joke
Karp had the good fortune to work with Donald Trump on three titles at Random House: The Art of the Comeback, Think Like a Billionaire and How to Get Rich. During edits on the last book, Trump called Karp from his private plane to dictate an additional paragraph "on the art of the hair."
Personal
Karp has one daughter with Deborah Malmud, a Norton editor. He lives in Midtown.