CEO Brian Holding (left) and Skip Maier

Human Kinetics’ Chief Executive, Brian Holding, has announced he is to step down at the end of 2015.

“It’s time for someone else to take over and bring in some fresh ideas,” said Brian, who first broached the idea of stepping down as CEO with Human Kinetics President Rainer Martens last August.

Human Kinetics and the publishing industry in general, has changed greatly during Brian Holding’s 17 years at the helm.

“The greatest challenge has been in the last six years when we, as a business, faced tremendous transformation in our industry.” He said.

“It changed the way we produce books. It changed what we produced. It changed who we sell to.”

“We were not doing any digital products in November 1997,” Holding recalled. “Today we have 1,212 print books, 7,118 e-books, 1,056 online courses and 305 ancillaries (add-on products) to textbooks.”

Brian is not leaving the company and in addition to working on business development in the U.S. and abroad, he plans to devote time to directing the Human Kinetics Education Foundation.

Skip Maier, the director of Human Kinetics’ Journals Division has been chosen as the company’s next chief executive officer and will succeed Brian in January 2016.

During the coming year, Skip will spend considerable time with Brian Holding, Rainer Martens and others within Human Kinetics to learn all facets of the HK business.