Penguin Random House is creating a new Penguin Random House Español division as of January 1 that will bring together Miami-based Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial USA with the New York-based Vintage Español, announced Monday by PRH US ceo Madeline McIntosh. Silvia Matute will serve as president of the new division, out of Miami, continuing to report to Roberto Banchik at Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial. Vintage Español team members will remain based in New York and report to Matute effective immediately, and Vintage Español publishing director Cristobal Pera will “move on…later in the new year” after advising throughout the transition.
The goal is to combine “the historic strengths of both groups” in a larger, dedicated Spanish-language group “to expand our publishing list and further grow our business.” Matute says, “We are really looking to the market,” where “we need a great diversity of titles to reach these communities,” which are “very diverse and very nuanced.” The combined division will help “bring those titles to market in a much more focused way…. A larger group and a larger list allows us to strengthen some of the tools that we use to reach the audiences,” with “strong social media teams, sales teams, and consumer outreach.”
The two groups have had different sales reps, which will now be harmonized. “Having one group that has every function in it and only speaks Spanish — that is new,” Matute said. She expects that her group will “work even more closely with the English-language publishers in New York” going forward, primarily to acquire rights and coordinate publications of Spanish editions. But she expects “that will also result in publishing in the other direction” with books by Spanish-speaking authors that could be published in English.
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Canada’s Indigo appointed Dr. Chika Stacy Oriuwa, a psychiatry resident at the University of Toronto, to their board of directors.
The new Astra House literary imprint will be represented by 2 Seas Agency for sales of translation rights.