Susan Kamil

Susan Laurie Kamil (September 16, 1949 – September 8, 2019) was the publisher (as of 2018) as well as editor-in-chief of the Random House Publishing Group.

Career Susan Kamil was born in Manhattan, where she attended the High School of Music & Art. After graduating from George Washington University, she began her publishing career at Simon & Schuster in 1979. Kamil was a subsidiary rights director and then became a senior editor at Simon & Schuster working under Joni Evans. Both women later formed the imprint Turtle Bay books at "Big" Random House in 1991. Early titles from Turtle Bay focused on celebrity memoirs that had ultimately disappointing sales including Michael Caine's, What's It About?, Joan Rivers's Still Talking, and Brandon Tartikoff's The Last Great Ride. An exposé in New York magazine said that the fate of Turtle Bay Books was sealed by the infamous "Hair Piece." The New York Times ran a photo in the Business section featuring "a huge photograph of Evans and her glamorous gang of four looked like a fashion shoot." The title of the article was Random House's Glitzy New Imprint and Susan Kamil was in the photo. In the article, Joni Evans was quoted as saying, "What we normally talk about at these meetings is our hair." and Karen Rinaldi as Senior Vice-President at Harper Wave.

The Turtle Bay imprint was shuttered in 1993 The original Dial Press had been closed in 1985. Kamil was promoted to Publisher for both Dial and Random House Publishing Group in 2010.

Kamil edited many notable books and authors including The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, whose childhood memoir Unstrung Heroes was the first book she purchased at Simon & Schuster. She died from complications of lung cancer in Manhattan on September 8, 2019, aged 69.