David Shelley grew up living above the second-hand bookshop in Lewes, East Sussex, that his parents ran, and after a state education he became the first in his family to attend university, graduating from Oxford, where he read English. In 1997 he began his career in the publishing industry by working at Allison and Busby as an editorial assistant to the company's then publisher, Peter Day. Shelley went on to run the company as Publishing Director at the age of 23 when his boss retired in 2000. In 2009 Shelley joined the Little, Brown Book Group as Deputy Publisher, and was Publisher from 2011 to 2015, subsequently becoming Chief Executive Officer of the Orion Publishing Group and the Little, Brown Book Group, and in 2018 taking on the role of Group CEO of Hachette UK.
Diversity initiatives
In 2016 Shelley started an Hachette initiative called "Changing the Story", aiming to make the company more diverse and inclusive, in which was launched an imprint called Dialogue Books, headed by Sharmaine Lovegrove, to "publish books by writers from diverse backgrounds who may otherwise not have been picked up by the establishment". He has said: "Unfortunately, there've been too many decades where nothing has happened, so there's a lot of ground we have to make up for in the industry. And the sad thing is that there are potential classics that were never published in the 60s–90s because the industry was very much one way. I'm reminded of Allison and Busby, the first company I worked for. It was started by two people – a man called Clive Allison and a woman called Margaret Busby. Margaret was the first black British woman to have a publishing company. They started that in 1967, and she published some amazing writers like Ishmael Reed and CLR James – just some fantastic BAME writers. What's also sad is that from 1967 till up to two or three years ago, there were very few other Margaret Busbys and things didn't move on. I think there's an awful lot of ground the industry has to cover". Following the murder of George Floyd on 25 May 2020, Hachette UK donated £10,000 to The United Families and Friends Campaign, and £10,000 to The Inclusive Indies Fund, to help diversity-led independent publishers survive the coronavirus crisis. Shelley said: "...there is a more urgent need than ever for us to stand together and educate ourselves, become better allies and offer financial support where we can. These events highlight the importance of the Black Lives Matter movement and, closer to home, they underpin the vital work of THRIVE, Hachette's network for BAME employees, Changing The Story, our strategy to make the company more inclusive at all levels, and Dialogue Books, our imprint focused on illuminating voices often excluded from the mainstream." After the publication on 15 June 2020 of an open letter from the newly formed Black Writers' Guild, calling for change in the UK publishing industry to address inequalities in output and personnel, Shelley was quoted in The Guardian as saying that "the industry could and should do a lot more – and that we could and should do a lot more at Hachette". Shelley has also expressed a commitment to regional diversity, with plans for Hachette to open new offices in Sheffield, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Manchester and Bristol, so as "to forge closer links to the brilliant pool of creative talent outside the 'London bubble' and connect more closely with readers, authors and booksellers around the UK to enrich our publishing."
Recognition
Shelley was on the Progress 1000 list of "London's most influential people 2016 – Literati". In 2017 and subsequent years, he was named in the Financial Times annual OUTstanding list of LGBT+ executives, becoming the second senior executive from Hachette UK to be listed, after his predecessor Tim Hely Hutchinson.
