Michael Jacobs, former president and CEO of Abrams, and Sheridan Hay, a writer, editor and teacher who works closely with the Center for Fiction, have formed Filmore Projects, a management and literary advisory firm that will have a publishing and packaging imprint.
The firm will focus on executive coaching, organizational development and board governance, structure and strategic advice for profit and nonprofit enterprises in publishing and the creative arts. It will also offer literary advice, including editorial development for writers and creative artists as well as marketing and sales strategies for book publishers and professionals and other content producers.
Filmore Projects is also launching Galpón Press, an independent book publishing and packaging imprint whose list will be comprised of projects of passion--local, seasonal and literary. It will make its debut in Fall 2025.
The principals said, "Having had successful and long careers in book publishing and literary endeavors, we're excited to bring our years of experience to clients and colleagues, new and old, and to have the opportunity to work with a select group of partners and friends on projects that matter to them and to us."
Before spending nearly 20 years leading Abrams, Jacobs worked at several major publishers. He started his career at Penguin, where he was named president in 1990. He also held senior leadership positions at Simon & Schuster, including as publisher of the Free Press, and at Scholastic, he oversaw the sales, marketing, and distribution of the first five Harry Potter books.
Jacobs has served as chair on the boards of the Academy of American Poets and the National Coalition Against Censorship and is currently on the board of governors of Yale University Press, the Corporation of Yaddo, and the Book Industry Charitable Foundation (Binc) as well as Abrams and Chronicle Books, UK. He was an Eli Whitney scholar at Yale.
Hay holds an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars. Her first novel, The Secret of Lost Things (Doubleday/Anchor), was a Book Sense pick and a Barnes & Noble Discover selection, was shortlisted for the Borders Original Voices Fiction Prize, and nominated for the International Impac Award.
She has led the Center for Fiction's Moby Dick reading group many times, as well as leading a longstanding Henry James group, among others. She is currently leading the Metropolitan Opera's first reading group in collaboration with the Center for Fiction. Early in her career, Sheridan was an editor at Simon & Schuster and worked at HarperCollins and Penguin Books in New York and in Sydney, Australia, where she was born.