Penguin Random House South East Asia will launch in Singapore in 2019, to “discover and publish local and international voices across English-language adult and children’s fiction and nonfiction formats for Singapore and Malaysia, as well as from Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Brunei, and Myanmar.” Gaurav Shrinagesh, ceo of Penguin Random House India and South East Asia, will oversee the company, with Nora Nazerene Abu Bakar joining as executive editor in November and reporting to Shrinagesh. Most recently Bakar was acquisitions manager at Marshall Cavendish Education. The company will do business as Penguin Books Singapore for now, with a formal […]
International News
People, Etc.
At Harper Collins, Catherine Barbosa Ross has been promoted to director, foreign rights, and Maureen Cole has been promoted to director of publicity for the Morrow Group. Hachette UK’s Lucy Hale has been promoted to the newly created role of deputy ceo for Hodder & Stoughton, Headline, John Murray Press, and Quercus. Group ceo Jamie Hodder-Williams said, “She has a first-class commercial brain and a forensic knowledge of our markets at home and abroad. Working closely with our authors, she has demonstrated time and again that her peerless vision, her energy, dedication and enthusiasm in delivering campaigns ensures that every book reaches […]
EU to Allow Members to Drop E-Book Tax Rates
After two full years of debate (and years more of hand wringing), European Union member states now have the option to lower VAT tax rates on ebooks to the same rate charged for printed books — which in some countries are tax free. The measure unanimously agreed on by the EU’s Economic and Financial Affairs Council on October 2 is “the final step to ensure that the unequal treatment of the two products – paper versus digital – becomes a thing of the past,” said the EU Commission. The measure does not force member states to align the rates, but […]
EU Parliament Vote Moves Controversial Copyright Law Forward
The EU Parliament passed the Copyright Directive, containing two controversial provisions intended to ensure publishers and content creators get paid when their content is shared on internet platforms such as Facebook, Google, and YouTube. While the vote is significant, particularly considering that Parliament rejected a different version in July — it’s far from final. As the Guardian and others report, the law will now go to three-way negotiations with the European Commission and the Council of the European Union. The European Parliament will vote one final time in January. Article 11 (referred to as the “link tax”) allows publishers to […]
New Accounting Rules Will Likely Lift Penguin Random House’s Sales: It’s A Long Story
On Thursday Penguin Random House’s parent company Bertelsmann will be the last of the big companies to report financial results through June 30, and when that happens, there will be something different about PRH’s results. The company will use a different accounting method for their ebook sales, making their overall sales for the past six months unlike previous PRH reports. That will also make their sales report unlike those of all the other publishers that we have reported so far this earnings season. That difference is that for many (but not all) ebook sales, PRH will start counting the full consumer […]
Quarto Approves Taking On Still More Debt
At a special meeting, Quarto Group shareholders approved an amendment to the company by-laws so that they can take on still more debt (which stood at $64 million as of their last annual report). Just over 10 million shares, or a little over half of the shares outstanding, voted in favor of the proposal. Almost all of the other shares were not voted at all, suggesting that other holders knew that the alliance between co-founder and former ceo Laurence Orbach and Chuk Kin Lau of Lion Rock Group — who control 47 percent of the shares — would have their […]