John Sargent is a book publisher and vocal advocate for the importance of book publishing in the United States and around the world. He was CEO of Macmillan and is the Executive Vice President of the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group.

His career contributions were recognized with the 2017 PEN Publisher Honoree Award, given “for his fierce advocacy for the right to publish and for serving as a defender of publishers’ and authors’ intellectual property rights.” After receiving the award, John spoke directly about the importance of defending free speech. His remarks closed with a call for continuing to do what publishers do best, especially when doing so is difficult: “I hope we will apply the principles of the First Amendment and have the courage to resist the great power of polarized opinion.”

John has not shied away from taking hard business positions. In 2012, he maintained Macmillan’s innocence in the face of Department of Justice claims of collusion in the implementation of the agency model for e-book pricing, refusing to settle even after several other publishers had agreed to terms offered by the DOJ. Agency pricing itself, proposed in 2010, was part of an effort to create what John called “a level playing field” for sales of digital books in the United States.

John ran the US operations of Holtzbrinck, including all the US trade companies, the Macmillan Higher Education group, St. Martins Scholarly and Reference, Hanley & Belfus medical publishers and Scientific American. He started at Holtzbrinck as CEO of St. Martin’s Press. John has also served as CEO of Dorling Kindersley Inc. and the President of the Children’s Book Division of Simon & Schuster.