D. J. Adamson recently interviewed award winning author Laurie Stevens to find out how she found a successful publishing home in Germany, which then garnered her an agent in the United States. There is no single market on the web. Nor is there only one way for an author to sell their work. The internet is challenging traditional…
Pearson Steps up Moves to Sell its Stake in Penguin Random House
Pearson has said in a press communication today that operational profits will be below initial expectations for 2016 and it will not now achieve its target of £800 million in 2018. Pearson reported that North American higher education market sales in 2016 were worse than forecast, with a poor fourth quarter and a revenue drop of 30% compared with the last quarter of 2015. The press release reveals…
Breaking up is hard to do: Penguin Random House has Sold Author Solutions
Penguin Random House (PRH) has sold its self-publishing division Author Solutions to an affiliate of private investment firm, Najafi Companies. PRH parent company Pearson purchased Author Solutions in 2012 for $116m from Bertram Capital. Following the merger of publishing goliaths Random House and Penguin, Author Solutions became a part of the Penguin Group. Over the…
Bertelsmann Eyeing Up Buyout of Penguin Random House
Almost a year to the day TIPM produced and posted an article and infographic to illustrate the global media corporations which control the so-called ‘big five’ publishers and the involvement major publishing houses now have in self-publishing service providers. You can still download this infographic here. One of those global corporations is Bertelsmann, current co-owners (with…
Inside Random House | The Art of Cover Design
From the ‘Inside Random House’ series of videos, book designers discuss ‘The Art of Cover Design.’ The video features pieces from Chip Kidd and Peter Mendelsund (Knopf), Marysarah Quinn and Christopher Brand (Crown), and Robbin Schiff (Random House). The Independent Publishing Magazine | TIPM Media
EU Commission Clears Random House and Penguin Merger
As expected and reported on our TIPM Facebook page last week, the EU Commission has approved the Random House/Penguin merger. From the Press Release: Mergers: Commission clears creation of Penguin Random House, combining publishing businesses of Bertelsmann and Pearson The European Commission has cleared under the EU Merger Regulation the proposed creation of…
Random House Blinks in SFWA Standoff
It was always going to be a case of who blinked first. In the case of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America against Random House’s recently introduced digital imprints, de-listing of RH’s Hydra and Alibi imprints by SFWA was only ever going to result in a protracted and explosive handbag fight, or someone making…
Random House Digital Imprints | It’s a duck!
If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, it’s a duck. Late last year, Random House, one of the big six publishing houses (now five following the US Department of Justice’s approval of the merger deal with Penguin), launched three digital-only publishing imprints alongside its already existing digital…
DOJ Approves Random House Penguin Merger in the Blink of an Eye
If you blinked yesterday then you might have missed some very significant publishing news. It is strange how one of last year’s biggest stories in the industry just sort of, well… slipped off the radar. And it’s not because Penguin hasn’t been banging its drum with announcements already this year. In the past few weeks…
P-p-p-pick up a penguin: When Six Becomes Five
In about seven weeks many in the publishing industry will gladly embrace the Christmas and New Year hiatus with added enthusiasm, and never more so than at the offices of Penguin Books. The company has been at the centre of the two biggest stories in the publishing industry this year—the purchase by Pearson of self-publishing…