PRESS RELEASES & AD-HOC
Edel creates clear and strong structures for future growth in the book business
Edel Verlagsgruppe to be headed by Jürgen Brandt, Dr. Olaf Conrad and Dr. Jonas Haentjes
Hamburg/Berlin/Munich, den December 8, 2020
The Hamburg-based company Edel has announced a merger of its book publishing activities within the Edel group of companies.
In the sense of a homogeneous and growth-oriented corporate structure, all areas relevant to the publishing house are to be bundled in the Edel Verlagsgruppe GmbH in the future. The management will be in the hands of Jürgen Brandt, Dr. Olaf Conrad and Dr. Jonas Haentjes.
Up to now, the Edel Verlagsgruppe with Edel Book Sales as well as the publishers Edel Books, Eden Books, Edel Kids Books and Edel Elements together with the music & entertainment division of Edel was located in Edel Germany GmbH. The ZS Verlag, since 2014 a 100% subsidiary of Edel SE & Co. KGaA, was again active as an independent company.
Jonas Haentjes, CEO of Edel SE & Co. KGaA: “As the next development measure of the Edel Verlagsgruppe, we want to create a clear and future-oriented corporate structure and use this as a starting point for further steps. Jürgen Brandt and Olaf Conrad have proven in recent years that they are outstanding experts in their respective fields. I look forward to working with them, the publishing directors and their teams to further shape the future of Edel Verlagsgruppe GmbH”.
With Dorothee Seeliger and Jürgen Weidenbach, Jürgen Brandt will have experts from the fields of guidebooks and children’s books in his team. Weidenbach, who has been responsible for Edel Kids Books since the founding of the children’s book publishing house in 2016, will continue to head the publishing house. Dorothee Seeliger will be responsible for ZS and Dr. Oetker Verlag in the future.
Jennifer Kroll, publishing director of the Berlin publisher Eden Books and Stefan Weikert, who as publishing director is responsible for the programs of Edel Books and Edel Elements in Hamburg, will in future be part of Olaf Conrad’s team and continue to head their respective publishing houses.
Ilja Müller-Klug, most recently Deputy Managing Director Book Sales alongside Conrad, will in future be responsible for the Book Sales division as General Manager.
The team of Brandt, Conrad and Haentjes will continue to pursue a market and customer-oriented sales strategy, expand publishing and sales cooperations and acquisitions, and expand non-book business areas such as digital media. The aim is to strengthen the strategic program work in the areas of guidebooks, non-fiction and children’s books and to increase their relevance for readers, retailers and authors.
About Jürgen Brandt
Jürgen Brandt took over the management of the former ZS Zabert Sandmann Verlag in 2014 after having held positions as publishing director at Condé Nast and Hubert Burda Media and as head of strategic product development at the Süddeutsche Zeitung. Over the past six years, he developed ZS into one of the leading advice publishers in Germany. In the process, he profiled the publishing house with successful authors such as the “Ernährungs-Docs”, Prof. Dietrich Grönemeyer, Franziska Rubin, Sophia Thiel, Alfons Schuhbeck, Roland Trettl and Charles Schumann. Since 2016, the publishing house has also been running the Dr. Oetker Verlag program.
About Olaf Conrad
Dr. Olaf Conrad joined Edel in October 2017 as Managing Director Book Sales and Member of the Management Board of Edel, after holding positions as STERN Publishing Director, CEO of DPV Deutscher Pressevertrieb & Member of the Management Board of G+J Germany, Co-Founder & Managing Director of Pubbles/Tolino Media and as a management consultant in the media industry. He was largely responsible for the strategic development of the Edel Verlagsgruppe in the book market, including the realignment of the sales strategy and the expansion of partnerships such as with Wort & Bild Verlag.