Penguin Books continues its global expansion into the global
self-publishing service sector in partnership with Author Solutions (ASI).
Pearson, owners of Penguin Books, bought the giant self-publishing service
provider last year for $116 million from Bertram Capital. Just recently Penguin
Books revamped and relaunched its own self-publishing imprint, Book Country, courtesy
of ASI’s technical development team.
Yesterday, Penguin
Books India, in partnership with ASI, announced
the launch of Partridge
Publishing, a print and digital self-publishing service imprint. Partridge
Publishing is specifically aimed at Indian authors looking to self-publish
their books in this market. Partridge will offer various publishing packages
and include services like editing, book design, formatting, publicity and
marketing, as well as e-book distribution and online print distribution.
Interestingly, I do recall when Pearson first purchased ASI
last year that it was stressed Penguin Books and Author Solutions would remain
entirely separate entities. It may be the case in words alone, but I’ve seen
little demonstration of this over the past few months. According to Penguin
Books India President and CEO, Andrew Phillips, yesterday:
“Since Author Solutions joined the Penguin family, we’ve been focused on their international expansion and India is an obvious starting point, given the active and enthusiastic writing community. We are delighted to be working with them to offer high quality services priced appropriately for the Indian market.”
Shouldn’t Penguin Books be focused on the expansion and
strategy of Penguin Books, and not newly arrived little brother, ASI? It seems
to me parent Pearson is letting the big children babysit the younger ones. In a
very definite effort to align the two companies, Penguin Books India’s submission page
includes self-publishing information and links to Author Solutions along with
its standard traditional submission guidelines. The main homepage banner now
sports a large sliding advert for Partridge Publishing. The days of large
publishing houses being somewhat coy about mentioning or directly touting their
self-publishing imprints are long gone. Just like the logo of
Simon & Schuster’s Archway Publishing imprint, Penguin’s Partridge
Publishing makes it loud and clear who is running the show, even if in reality your
book manuscript only ever passes through ASI hands.
Partridge – A Penguin Company!
Andrew Phillips adds the usual (dis)claimer in these fair
times of large houses launching self-publishing imprints:
“In addition, Penguin will be monitoring Partridge titles with hopes of picking up authors for the Penguin list. I have no doubt that Partridge will be a huge success.”
To be fair, I’m referring my judgement for another year or
two as to whether many of these new self-publishing imprints from traditional
publishers really become the talent feeders of the future for the industry. I’ve
yet to see a convincing set-up from a large publisher which places the
discovery of new writing talent as the primary goal, rather than as an
additional revenue stream. And, above all, does not include an Author Solutions
partnership in The
Self-Publishing Honeypot. Penguin did try it with Book Country, an in-house
operation, but then they went and
allowed ASI to Booktango it.
Are you listening Stephen Page of Faber and Richard Charkin of
Bloomsbury?
Mick Rooney – Publishing Consultant
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