In keeping with tradition, publishing ceos are thanking employees and celebrating the year’s accomplishments through year-end letters. Simon & Schuster ceo Carolyn Reidy writes that, “despite today’s challenging retail environment, with two weeks remaining in December we are well positioned to surpass last year’s financial performance, a tribute to the passion and effort put forth by all of you across the company and throughout the year.” Among 2015’s triumphs at the company, “We have created and perfected-in short order and at multiple imprints within the company-a successful business publishing digitally savvy YouTube personalities and entrepreneurs…. With each successive book throughout the […]
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Knopf Celebrates 100, Live and In Print
Yes, Knopf threw itself a grand party “in honor of its authors” — with over 200 of them in attendance — as well as a celebration of 100 years of publishing at the New York Public Library on Thursday night. The event was complete with a rented klieg light truck, six real borzoi dogs greeting guests at the door, a musical number from author of M Train Patti Smith, and even an exclusive after-party. But they are also celebrating with a hardcover book, provided to last night’s one thousand or more guests, that “offer[s] the simple facts of our century […]
Simon & Schuster’s Year-End Letter
Simon & Schuster ceo Carolyn Reidy wrote to employees on Friday afternoon with her holiday wishes following “another successful year in which we enjoyed outstanding publishing across the board, in every category and from all our publishing imprints and divisions.” Much of the letter is a highlights reel, with one standout: “To my mind, the most satisfying publishing event of the year belongs to Anthony Doerr’s #1 New York Times bestseller All the Light We Cannot See, a book that we published with exceptional passion and skill, which galvanized staff across the company and at our bookseller partners, and that […]
Macmillan Resumes Agency, Will Test Subscriptions
Macmillan ceo John Sargent told authors, illustrators and agents in a letter that the company reached their own multiyear deal with Amazon “late last week” for both print books and ebooks, starting January 5, restoring a fuller agency model for ebooks. That agreement comes as Macmillan’s consent decree with the government governing discounts expires today. (The same legal restrictions on Penguin Random House expire today as well.) Sargent writes, “All our other retailers will also be on the agency model, leaving Apple as the only retailer who is allowed unlimited discounting. Irony prospers in the digital age.” Under the current injunction against […]
Dohle Looks to Year Ahead
Penguin Random House ceo Markus Dohle’s year-end “thank you” letter to employees focuses more on what’s coming than what happened — aggregating “some of the successes that we’ve been able to achieve together publishing” in a separate highlights video. Dohle congratulates employees on “making sure we have hit every one of our integration targets to date” and points to the big work still to come next year. “In our systems, IT infrastructure, and distribution environments, 2014 was a year of preparation; 2015, will be one of implementation: Most of the process changes we’ve laid the groundwork for will take effect next […]
Penguin Random and National Book Foundation Launch National Readathon
January 24, 2015 has been proclaimed National Readathon Day, a “marathon reading” session across the country to raise money in order to help fund the National Book Foundation’s efforts to promote literacy and reading. The “quixotic new event” was created by Penguin Random House, which brought to the idea to the NBF this summer, the Washington Post reports. NBF executive director Harold Augenbraum calls it “a terrific opportunity to broaden the awareness in communities across the country and to infuse funds into our community-based programs.” PRH is joined by Goodreads and Mashable as co-sponsors. Individuals and reading “teams” (which can […]