David Shelley

David Shelley (born 1976) is a British publisher who is Chief Executive Officer of both Hachette UK (the second-largest trade publisher, with divisions including Hodder & Stoughton, Orion, Headline, John Murray, and Little, Brown) and the Hachette Book Group in the US. Shelley is past President of the Publishers Association, a trustee of The Reading Agency and a director of Tate Enterprises.

Shelley began his publishing career at the age of 23 working as an editorial assistant at the independent company Allison and Busby, founded in 1967 by Clive Allison and Margaret Busby, and after five years running the company he moved on to become editorial director of Little, Brown in 2005, publisher at Sphere in 2007, then in 2009 Deputy Publisher at Little, Brown, and Publisher there in 2011.

In November 2023, it was announced that as of January 2024 Shelley would be taking on a newly created role leading both Hachette UK (HUK) and the Hachette Book Group (HBG) in the US.

Biography Education and career David Shelley grew up living above the second-hand bookshop in Lewes, East Sussex, that his parents ran, and after a state education he became the first in his family to attend university, graduating from New College, Oxford,

In 1997, he began his career in the publishing industry by working at Allison and Busby as an editorial assistant ("cum-dogsbody") to the company's then publisher, Peter Day. Shelley went on to run the company as Publishing Director at the age of 23 when his boss retired in 2000.

Diversity initiatives

Shelley has been outspoken about the need for inclusivity and diversity in leadership roles in the publishing industry as well as in the books published. In 2016 he started an Hachette initiative called "Changing the Story", aiming to make the company more diverse and inclusive, in which was launched an imprint called Dialogue Books, headed by Sharmaine Lovegrove, to "publish books by writers from diverse backgrounds who may otherwise not have been picked up by the establishment".

After the publication on 15 June 2020 of an open letter from the newly formed Black Writers' Guild, calling for change in the UK publishing industry to address inequalities in output and personnel, Shelley was quoted in The Guardian as saying that "the industry could and should do a lot more – and that we could and should do a lot more at Hachette".

Shelley has also expressed a commitment to regional diversity, with plans for Hachette to open new offices in Sheffield, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Manchester and Bristol, so as "to forge closer links to the brilliant pool of creative talent outside the 'London bubble' and connect more closely with readers, authors and booksellers around the UK to enrich our publishing."

Recognition Shelley was on the Progress 1000 list of "London's most influential people 2016 – Literati".

In 2017 and subsequent years, he was named in the Financial Times annual OUTstanding list of LGBT+ executives, becoming the second senior executive from Hachette UK to be listed, after his predecessor Tim Hely Hutchinson.