NEW YORK — Oprah Winfrey, John Grisham and J.K. Rowling have made the list of the 10 most influential people in publishing.
The results will appear next week in the July/August edition of Book Magazine, a bimonthly publication.
“We talked to scores of people throughout the industry,” said the magazine’s editor, Jerome Kramer. “We wanted to know who decides what gets published and what gets read.”
The magazine lists the 10 in alphabetical order, rather then ranking them.
Several on the list are little known to the general public. Carl Lennertz runs Book Sense, a marketing program for independent book sellers. Sessalee Hensley is the fiction buyer for Barnes & Noble. Andrea Smith is literary editor for NBC’s “Today” show.
“Oprah Winfrey would be a lot of people’s No. 1 choice, because she’s so well known,” Kramer said. “But the point we’re making is that within the industry some people who are much less famous have significant impact.”
Also cited are agent Amanda “Binky” Urban, whose clients include Toni Morrison, Tom Brokaw and E.L. Doctorow; film producer Scott Rudin, who helped bring “Angela’s Ashes” and “A Civil Action” to the screen; David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, and Phyliss Grann, CEO and president of Penguin Putnam.
