Publishers Weekly
Judith Rosen
April 27, 2012

In an industry in transition it seems fitting that PW make a change of its own and for the first time in the 20-year history of the awards allow two sales representatives to share the honor. Ann Kingman started working at Dell in 1986 on the day after Bertelsmann purchased the company—and was told not to expect her job to last more than six months. Michael Kindness, who was recently named this year’s Random House Field Sales Rep of the Year, joined the company 12 years ago after buying books for Waterstone’s in Boston, Mass., and managing Wellesley Booksmith in Wellesley, Mass. They share the New England territory for part of the Random House adult list, and they’re the voice and creativity behind the Books on the Nightstand podcasts and blog, which can be found in the iTunes store and at booksonthenightstand.com. They also know every frontline bookseller in their territory, and what they like to read.

In a blog post earlier this month on Shatzkin Files, publishing consultant Michael Shatzkin dubbed Kindness and Kingman “the two reps who are the poster children” for Random House’s Rep 3.0 program. Introduced quietly three years ago and only being made public now, Rep 3.0 is a new way for Random House to continue to support bricks-and-mortar stores by repurposing its sales force. Instead of focusing only on frontlist and backlist orders, Random House reps provide marketing and publicity support for bookstores’ key titles. This includes interacting directly with customers, once the sole domain of booksellers.

Madeline McIntosh, president of sales, operations, and digital at Random House, is a big fan of both reps. “What makes the choice of Michael and Ann such a thrill for us,” she says, “is that they epitomize an exciting and fresh approach to the role of the Random House field rep. They have pioneered a redefinition of the role of the rep that emphasizes partnering with accounts on marketing outreach and direct outreach to the readers themselves. They have proven that the most exciting innovations for our industry involve both person-to-person contact and an enthusiastic embrace of the ways that technology can extend that relationship to benefit a broader human network.”

From a bookseller’s perspective, Random House’s shift in emphasis from stack-’em-high to sell-’em-through has made their reps—including Kingman and Kindness—more important than ever. In her nominating letter, Emily Crowe, manager and fiction and gift buyer at Odyssey Bookshop in South Hadley, Mass., wrote, “[they] display a caliber of both professionalism and innovation that is peerless…. They are the finest reps I have ever had the pleasure to work with, and they are the ruler against which all other sales reps are measured (and usually found short).” Carole Horne, general manager of Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, Mass., values that Kindness and Kingman have become “true partners” with the store. “If the role of the rep is changing, as it surely is,” she says, “they will be the model for the future.”

In fact, they already are. Many reps Facebook, blog, Pinterest, and Tweet, but Kindness and Kingman have taken it a step further with BOTNS, which they launched in 2008. The podcasts/blog came about, they explain, after a rep-pick presentation at Tatnuck Booksellers in Westborough, Mass., when a customer asked then owner Larry Abramoff if the pair could write a column in his monthly newsletter. “Customers trust what we’re saying,” says Kingman. “But we only see them once a year. How do we talk to customers more often?” Rather than write a bookstore column, they joined some of the earliest rep bloggers online and received three Book Blogger Appreciation Week Awards in 2009: Best General Review Blog, Best Book Club Blog, and Most Eclectic Taste. Although they frequently recommend Random House titles, they discuss other books as well. “We cover a broad range of topics,” says Kingman. And they are careful to only recommend books they like, such as Gabrielle Hamilton’s Blood, Bones, and Butter or Jim Lynch’s Truth Like the Sun. They know that their listeners could tell if they were faking it.

For Kindness and Kingman, extending a rep’s reach through social media and getting together with readers online and face-to-face is a better use of their time, and the buyer’s time, than sales calls where they discuss how many books to order up front or whether to order a book at all. “That’s thanks to [online ordering/catalogue system] Edelweiss, the unsung hero. Without [Edelweiss] we wouldn’t have the luxury to dream up these things,” says Kingman, referring to not just BOTNS, for which there are nearly 180 podcasts, but also their work connecting bookstores, readers, and libraries to each other. She and Kindness also credit other Random House departments for making it easier for them to reach the end reader.

“A lot of what we do is working in teams,” adds Kingman. “A lot of bookstores may be called on by telephone sales, but we’re the people on the ground. That’s a crucial piece.” It means that she and Kindness don’t have to call on every account in their territory. They can also rely on the warehouse for quick turnarounds on orders so that they don’t have to worry if a store has enough inventory to last a month. It can be replenished within days.

Plus, as reps, Kindness and Kingman see themselves as uniquely positioned to talk with consumers. “Our whole career has been talking about books in ways that get people excited. That’s a skill that reps have. It’s a measure of Random House’s confidence in what we do beyond just taking orders,” says Kingman. “We believe that sales reps have a responsibility to grow new readers and to evangelize reading as a pastime.”

To help achieve that objective, last year they began holding a gathering with their listeners in conjunction with Northshire Bookstore in Manchester Center, Vt. Booktopia, as the BOTNS retreat has been renamed, came about in what Kindness describes as an idle moment when the two were staying at the Inn at Manchester, for a sales call at Northshire. Kindness thought, “Wouldn’t it be great if someone drove two hours to be with us [at the bookstore].” When he and Kingman posted their idea of having listeners join them and a select number of authors in Vermont to talk about books, they were surprised by the response. They capped attendance at 100 and sold out within weeks, more than nine months before the event.

“We really had no idea what we were doing,” says Kingman. “Afterwards, we figured out the benefits: people who are passionate about reading don’t have other people to share that with.” And because book lovers are used to hearing Kindness and Kingman every week, they felt comfortable attending. In addition to raising awareness about books and reading, Booktopia helps sell books. When Other Press author John Milliken Thompson toured for The Reservoir last summer, many of the people who came to hear him were brought by friends who had met him at the April retreat (Other Press is distributed by Random).

This year Random House asked Kindness and Kingman if they would offer more retreats in other communities, in addition to one at Northshire held earlier this month. Working with other field reps, Kindness and Kingman scheduled two more Booktopias: one at Square Books in Oxford, Miss., in June, and the other at Bookshop Santa Cruz in Santa Cruz, Calif., in October. Even though this kind of programming—bringing together readers and authors—could be considered something that bookstores more traditionally do, Kindness and Kingman are adamant that they are not stepping on the toes of booksellers in any way. “We very strongly value that relationship,” says Kingman. “None of this could have happened without bookstores. We view ourselves as partners with bookstores. We’re a crucial connection to the end readers. It’s only recently that people are realizing readers want to know what happens behind the scenes [in publishing]. That’s a lot of the value we bring. That’s our role, to bring a peek behind the curtain. We want to keep readers excited.”

Citing New York Times reporter Charles Duhigg’s new book, The Power of Habit, Kindness attributes part of their success as reps to Random House. “He has a whole chapter on embracing adversity,” explains Kindness. “Companies poised to succeed see adversity as a cause to change.” For Kingman, the transition in what it means to be a rep is personal. She needs to ensure that reps thrive; her 10-year-old daughter wants her territory when she retires.

Acknowledgments

PW extends its thanks to the jury for this year’s Rep of the Year Award: Becky Anderson, co-owner of Anderson’s Bookshop in Naperville, Ill., and PW Bookstore of the Year 2011; Sarah McNally, owner of McNally Jackson Books in New York City; Linda Barrett Knopp, general manager of Malaprop’s Bookstore in Asheville, N.C.; co-owner Michael Tucker and staff at Books Inc., headquartered in Berkeley, Calif.; Roberta Dyer and Sally McPherson, co-owners of Broadway Books in Portland, Ore.; Carole Horne, general manager of Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, Mass.; and Lanora Haradon, owner of Next Chapter Bookshop in Mequon, Wis.

Category: Announcements
Added May 3, 2012 | Permalink

Random House’s distribution division RH Publisher Services is providing their client publishers with an “ongoing series of workshops, seminars, and collaborative exchanges” led by a variety of Random House executives, and including client executives as well. RHPS president Jeff Abraham says, “We see this not only as an opportunity to inform clients how Random House is analyzing and mastering the changes we all are experiencing, but also for us to learn from some of the innovative, entrepreneurial and creative ways that our clients are adapting to a changing world.”

Topics include the transition to digital, adapting to new retail patterns, direct-to-consumer marketing, and the increasing importance of library, academic and non-traditional marketplaces.

At this week’s annual RHPS ClientSummit, sessions include Behind the Numbers: Retail trends and Changing Consumer Behavior; a panel discussion on identifying successful direct-to-Consumer Marketing Campaigns: What Works and Why?; and Special Markets: How Random house Identifies the Right Book for the Right Consumer.

Category: Announcements
Added April 18, 2012 | Permalink

Publishers Weekly

Judith Rosen
March 29, 2012

The series expands on RHPS’s annual Client Summit, which takes place today and tomorrow in the company’s New York headquarters. More than 120 staff members from 28 client publishers, which include National Geographic Books, Beacon Press, and DC Comics, will meet with RH chairman and CEO Markus Dohle and Madeline McIntosh, president of sales, operations, and digital, along with other key RH staff to discuss topics ranging from marketing effectively online to understanding changing consumer behavior.

Category: Announcements
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The Little Publisher That Could

Prospero | The Economist

Z.P.
March 19, 2012

In 2001 Dennis Loy Johnson and his wife, Valerie Merians, decided to begin publishing books out of their apartment in Hoboken, New Jersey. In 2007 their imprint, Melville House, earned the Miriam Bass Award for Creativity in Independent Publishing, awarded to the best independent publisher. In their current location, an impressive space by the East River in the Dumbo section of Brooklyn, New York, they publish upwards of 50 books a year on everything from cooking to politics to classic novellas.

You recently published your 200th book and celebrated your tenth anniversary. What are your thoughts on the future of book publishing and Melville House?

I’m concerned with the survival of the printed book. I’m concerned with the fact that publishers seem very eager to abandon it for what’s sexy or trendy, or has better margins, which I fear will prevent the healthy evolution of the digital book. They’re not necessarily competitors; they are to some extent apples and oranges. I’m also concerned about the overall health of the marketplace. I’m not convinced it’s a great marketplace for literature and I’m worried about being able to disseminate our product in the future.

You’ve met acclaim for your book designs in the past. Do you see this as being an advantage in the print marketplace?

I think it’s very obvious to people that we care about the packaging of our books. I think people know that if we care about the outside of our books then we probably care about the inside of them, too. I recently read a survey that said 39% or 40% of people who bought books on Amazon looked at them in a bookstore first. They could know everything about the book online short of having seen it, but still the physical object had enough meaning to them to want to see it first. That resonates, happily, with the fact that Valerie and I came into this not as publishers but as artists. The object means a lot to us.

Do you consider yourself an artist?

Yes. Valerie and I struggle to call ourselves business people. We prefer to call ourselves people in business. It really isn’t second nature to us. We started this business in middle age and it’s been a sharp learning curve. We were struggling artists living below the poverty line. We knew how to work on a shoestring but at the same time we spent what we had to make a thing right. That’s the payoff. I mean it’s so hard, this business. If you’re going to do it, you’ve got to know why you’re in it. The first book we published, something got mucked up on the cover and we couldn’t bear to have it released. The books had been printed and loaded on the trucks but we called them back and we redid the cover, which was astronomically expensive. Now we’ve surrounded ourselves with people who remind us to behave within costs. But still if we do something we have to do it right. We got into this because we thought we could do it better. Now we have something that could conceivably outlast us. It’s a very satisfying feeling. When I walk into a bookstore and see that little house with the roof blown off it still throws me.

Is it still as exciting now as it was ten years ago when you started out?

I think even more so now. We have a ceremony now for each book that comes in. We pass it around the office and really just appreciate it. Plus, I never thought I’d see a new technology developed that would rival the physical book. It’s really exciting to think of what can be developed with it. For example we have the HybridBook project, which stems from our brainstorming about how we could include a bonus digital component with our print books. So now readers receive this bonus material by scanning a code inserted at the back of the book. It’s a good time to use our creativity to develop new ways to reach our readership and discover new forms for what the book can be. We started with a famous book blog so digital media is very much in our DNA.

You publish many older writers that are out of print in English, as well as established cultural figures and new fiction writers. Which do you get the most satisfaction from?

I love to discover old writers that have perhaps been forgotten. With Hans Fallada, for example, we found this great writer who had been overlooked for 60 years and had great success with it. But still nothing beats finding a new kid and giving him or her their first shot. That’s exhilarating.

Category: Clients in the News
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NEW YORK (Nov. 18, 2010) – Random House Publisher Services (RHPS), a division of Random House, Inc., the largest U.S. trade book publisher, has launched a marketing service for its clients, providing publishers with a range of robust tools for pursuing online marketing opportunities in support of both physical and digital book sales.

The new service includes a menu of options for developing and executing online marketing strategies and campaigns. Clients will have the opportunity to focus on specific frontlist titles or broader backlist campaigns. Jay Sones, most recently Manager, Digital and Paperback Marketing at Random House’s Crown imprint, will move to RHPS as the Senior Online Marketing Manager in charge of the program.

“Our goal with this new offering is to enable our clients’ authors to better connect with their readers and to help our publishers reach the maximum audience for each book,” said Jeff Abraham, president of Random House Publisher Services. “Our experience shows that these online marketing efforts, whether via Facebook, the Google AdSense Network, or any of the other tools we use can boost sales of books in all the formats that we represent.”

Publishers can choose from a broad array of options, including marketing strategy development, online advertising campaigns, online media tours with authors, consultation on backlist opportunities online, and single-title campaigns for key frontlist titles.

“The initial response has been beyond our expectations,” said Sones. “We have already signed up several clients and have campaigns in place with National Geographic Books and Beacon Press with others to follow shortly.”

About Random House Publisher Services

Random House Publisher Services, a division of Random House Inc., is the book industry’s leading provider of sales and distribution services to premium third-party publishers. Its wide range of service offerings includes sales, warehousing, physical and digital distribution, credit and collection, marketing and information technology. In addition to the National Geographic Society, its portfolio of clients includes Beacon Press, DC Comics, Rizzoli, Melville House, New York Review Books and many others.

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Category: Announcements, Press Releases
Added November 24, 2010 | Permalink

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The undead have created a whole new life for Quirk Books, the brains — or rather the BRAAAINS! — behind the monster best-seller “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.”

Quirk, an independent publisher that started with a series of tongue-in-cheek guides for surviving highly unlikely misfortunes, has established the hybrid “mashup” genre bending of out-of-copyright classics and horror-fied kitsch.

“It has in a way become kind of a modern, or a postmodern, classic,” said Quirk president and founder David Borgenicht, whose 15-person staff works in an inconspicuous building on a cobblestone-paved side street in Philadelphia’s Old City neighborhood. “That wasn’t at all our intent. It was simply too crazy not to publish.”

Ever look at something and ask yourself why you didn’t think of it first? That’s one way Quirk comes up with its titles.

“When we have an idea and say, ‘If this was a book, I’d buy it,’” Borgenicht said, “that instinct is key.”

It was creative director Jason Rekulak’s idea to add lumbering hordes of discourteous flesh-eaters to Jane Austen’s 19th-century comedy of manners, “Pride and Prejudice,” spawning a monstrous hit.

“Pride and Prejudice and Zombies,” Quirk’s first foray into fiction, debuted in April 2009 at No. 3 on The New York Times best-seller list. It since has sold more than a million copies, been translated into nearly two dozen languages, been made into a graphic novel and an iPhone game, and been optioned for the big screen.

“Quirk has great quality to their books and an incredible design sense,” said University of Baltimore professor Arnold T. Blumberg, who teaches a class on zombies in popular culture. “It’s kind of heartening: You hear about how old-fashioned print is dying and here’s a company creating things that get widespread attention, good-looking books that stand out on the shelf, that you want to own.”

The book’s success says as much about the iconic nature of “Pride and Prejudice” as it does about the popularity of zombies, he added.

“Jane Austen, and that one book especially, has become a major cultural touchstone for so many people,” he said.

The runaway success of “Zombies” established Quirk, a privately held company that does not release financial data, as creator of the mashup genre. It also launched a cottage industry of copycats from “Jayne Slayre” to “Little Vampire Women.”

“To some extent it saturates the market, but at the same time we know what made ‘Pride and Prejudice and Zombies’ work wasn’t just the title,” Borgenicht said. “It’s a lot more thoughtful, hard work in order to create something that will be remembered and read, that goes beyond being just a gratuitous novelty.”

When the blogosphere started buzzing months before the release of “Zombies,” Rekulak knew the company had a hit and wanted to capitalize on the momentum. He quickly came up with “Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters,” released just five months after its predecessor, which also became a best-seller with more than 375,000 copies in print.

“There are discussions and articles about the (mashup) trend, what it all means, where it came from. I can say undisputedly that it came from Jason at Quirk Books, directly from his head,” said “Sea Monsters” author Ben H. Winters.

Winters, who also wrote sci-fi Tolstoy mashup “Android Karenina” for Quirk, said the company’s success lies in its “clearly defined aesthetic.”

“It’s parody but it doesn’t feel cynical,” he said. “They’re laid back, funny, interesting people doing laid back, funny, interesting work.”

Quirk recently left the Victorian era for space, the final frontier, with “Night of the Living Trekkies” and its heroes using their science-nerd knowledge to battle zombies descending on the hallowed ground of a Star Trek convention.

“All the Trekkie stuff checks out,” Rekulak said. “We have yet to receive a single angry letter — and you know if there was a problem, we’d get them.”

About a decade ago, Quirk made its bones with outlandish how-to handbooks combining information and humor with clever graphic design and packaging. “The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook,” co-written by Borgenicht and released in 1999, offers funny-but-true illustrated tips on surviving shark attacks, quicksand and other implausible calamities.

“It became a huge hit and got us up and running as a real company,” Borgenicht said. “It’s the best business plan ever — get a best-seller right out of the gate.”

More than a dozen “Worst-Case” books, cards, games and calendars followed, which “brought us financial and industry capital and gave me the clarity of vision about the kind of books I wanted us to do, which is really entertaining, crossover books.”

Quirk has since published 200-plus titles with irreverent takes on history, dating, childbirth, cooking, pop culture, fitness and careers. Among the less risque titles, found in places ranging from Williams-Sonoma and Urban Outfitters to bookstores and comic book shops: “Booze Cakes,” ”The Encyclopedia Shatnerica,” and “The Big Book of Porn.”

“Every aspect of the book has to work as hard as it can: great concept, great title, great package, great writer, great marketing,” Borgenicht said. “If you have that, you’ve got something of value.”

Ideas are usually generated by Quirk’s creative team. Once a concept is green-lighted, freelance writers are hired to work with in-house editors and graphic designers — a setup that allows the company to control more of the rights to their titles and more easily adapt them into other formats.

Readers should expect more mashups with classic novels as well as all-original content like “Trekkies” in the coming year. Borgenicht also hinted at a “sci-fi slash political satire” book on deck for 2012, in time for the next presidential election.

“We provide something that’s entertaining and informative and cool that you’d be proud to display on your coffee table, or the back of your toilet,” he said. “And, you know, for my money, we’re perfectly happy to be on the back of your toilet — more reading goes on there than at the coffee table.”

Category: Clients in the News
Added October 26, 2010 | Permalink

 Publishers Weekly

 Calvin Reid
 October 4, 2010

In the latest round of changes to impact a major U.S. manga publisher, Random House, which has published manga, or Japanese comics, under its Del Rey imprint since 2003, will cease publishing its manga licenses and shift them back to Kodansha USA Publishing, a subsidiary of Kodansha Ltd., one of Japan’s largest publishers and the original licensor of manga to Random House and other U.S. publishers. Under their new arrangement with Random House, Kodansha USA Publishing will begin publishing Kodansha-originated manga directly into the U.S. market, shifting from a licensing relationship to a sales and distribution arrangement with Random House Publisher Services in December.

Originally announced in 2008, Kodansha USA Publishing has set up offices on Park Avenue South in Manhattan and will be under the direction of president and CEO of Kodansha USA Publishing,Yoshio Irie. In addition, under the new arrangement Del Rey Manga associate publisher Dallas Middaugh will move his duties from the publishing side to RHPS and continue to work with Kodansha’s publishing program.

Random House Publisher Services president Jeff Abraham said, “We are thrilled to have a publisher as distinctive as Kodansha USA Publishing join the Random House Publisher Services portfolio.

In an e-mail interview with Irie, he said that while Kodansha USA Publishing will now directly oversee the publishing of Kodansha-originated English-language manga licenses, Kodansha still plans to “to work with local partners in foreign territories.” He said that Random House will continue, “handling much of the publishing side, such as editorial, production, sales and marketing.” Irie will be based in Tokyo while KUP general manager Kumi Shimizu stays in New York.

Since its launch, the Del Rey Manga list has been licensed entirely from Kodansha Ltd. under a copublishing agreement between the two houses. While Irie emphasized that KUP will gradually take over Del Rey’s licensed manga, he also said that they will evaluate each series on a per-title basis to decide which series KUP has “the capacity” to continue.

Although a Random House spokesperson told PW that the new arrangement would not affect non-manga graphic novels published by Villard/Del Rey, they declined to comment on the status of remaining Del Rey Manga staff, such as licensing manager Mutsumi Miyazaki and editor Tricia Narwani, who have both worked with Del Rey Manga line virtually since its beginning. Del Rey Manga marketing manager Ali Kokmen was laid-off earlier this summer.

Kodansha first announced it was setting up a U.S. office in 2008 and since then has published at least two classic manga works, the post-apocalyptic sci-fi epic Akira by Katsuhiro Otomo and the metaphysical sci-fi police thriller Ghost in the Shell by Shirow Masamune, under the new Kodansha Comics imprint. Irie declined to announce the titles it plans to release, but said the house will announce titles “ for 2011 later this year.”

Since its launch in 2003, Del Rey Manga has published more than 500 titles across more than 40 series and the house has had a major impact on the growth of the category in the U.S. But after years of explosive sales growth, manga has plateaued and indeed declined over the last two years. Despite the declines, manga still accounts for about 50% of all graphic novels sold in the U.S. Irie said Kodansha’s plan was to continue to “expand the manga market in the U.S. “ He said KUP will itself license its manga from its parent company and Irie emphasized that there would be “continued licensing of Kodansha manga to other licensees.”

Asked about sales declines in the manga market, Irie said he believed them to be “temporary” and said that “fans who started reading manga when it first came to the U.S. market are now familiar with reading manga. They remain a good audience for young adult manga, which is a very popular genre in Japan, and we expect that as our fans grow up, their kids will start reading manga too. We think this is a good opportunity to expand across all demographics.”

Category: Announcements, New Clients
Added October 11, 2010 | Permalink

National Geographic to Utilize Random House’s E-Book Distribution Capabilities and New Online Marketing Service

WASHINGTON (Aug. 30, 2010)—National Geographic Books, a division of the National Geographic Society, today announced a multiyear extension of its sales and distribution partnership with Random House Publisher Services (RHPS), which began in 2005. National Geographic Books will continue to utilize the full range of Random House’s sales and distribution services for its physical books. Additionally, with the new agreement, National Geographic will employ Random House’s advanced e-book distribution platform and new online marketing services, launching this fall.

As part of its new digital service offerings for National Geographic, RHPS will produce creative campaigns for social media and the Google Content Network; provide sales and marketing data enhancements; and assist in the development and distribution of marketing videos, online ads and other engaging e-content.

“We are delighted to renew our relationship with RHPS because of its unwavering commitment to our adult and children’s publishing programs, its investments in and expansion of their supply-chain services, and its efforts to find innovative ways to meet our growing business needs,” said Nina Hoffman, president, National Geographic Books. “As the industry landscape continues to evolve, we look forward to connecting more deeply with our readers through the unique suite of online tools and services RHPS has created for us while continuing to build a quality, diverse list.”

Jeff Abraham, president of RHPS, added, “The broadening of our partnership illustrates how a close and collaborative relationship between our publishing, marketing and sales teams can contribute to the long-term success of one of the most recognized brands and respected publishing programs in the marketplace. National Geographic’s fall publishing program is very strong, and we’re especially thrilled to see tremendous bookseller response across all distribution channels for ‘Great Migrations,’ which will be a major marketplace title this holiday season.”

Since 2005, NGS has been supported by RHPS in developing numerous bestsellers, including “National Geographic Kids Almanac” and the “National Geographic Readers Series,” as well as other high-profile titles such as “The Blue Zones,” “National Geographic Journeys of a Lifetime,” “500 of the World’s Greatest Trips,” “National Geographic Image Collection” and the quintessential “National Geographic Atlas of the World, 9th Edition.”

About National Geographic

The National Geographic Society is one of the world’s largest nonprofit scientific and educational organizations. Founded in 1888 to “increase and diffuse geographic knowledge,” the Society’s mission is to inspire people to care about the planet. It reaches more than 375 million people worldwide each month through its official journal, National Geographic, and other magazines; National Geographic Channel; television documentaries; music; radio; films; books; DVDs; maps; exhibitions; live events; school publishing programs; interactive media; and merchandise. National Geographic has funded more than 9,400 scientific research, conservation and exploration projects and supports an education program promoting geographic literacy. For more information, visit nationalgeographic.com.

About Random House Publisher Services

Random House Publisher Services, a division of Random House Inc., is the book industry’s leading provider of sales and distribution services to premium third-party publishers. Its wide range of service offerings includes sales, warehousing, physical and digital distribution, credit & collection, marketing and information technology. In addition to the National Geographic Society, its portfolio of clients includes Beacon Press, DC Comics, Rizzoli, Melville House, New York Review Books and many others.

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Category: Announcements, Press Releases
Added September 30, 2010 | Permalink

 Publishers Weekly

 May 11, 2010

Quirk Books is moving its distribution to Random House. The Philadelphia-based indie press–one of PW’s fastest growing publishers of 2009–is currently distributed by Chronicle Books. With the new agreement, which is for three years, Quirk will move its distirbution operation to Random House on January 1, 2011. The move in  part, a rep from Quirk confirmed, is due to the expanded suite of digital distribution options Random House offers.

Category: Announcements, New Clients
Added | Permalink

 Publishers Weekly

 Lynn Andriani
 April 13, 2010

Soho Press signed a distribution agreement last week with Random House Publisher Services. The New York independent publisher had been distributed by Consortium since 2003, and was distributed by FSG prior to that.

Bronwen Hruska, who took over as publisher of Soho in December, said, “During our time with Consortium, we grew significantly, thanks to Julie Schaper and the savvy Consortium staff. But looking to the future, I believe Random House Publisher Services is the right distributor to take us into the next phase of Soho’s life. I was convinced by the excellent reputation of Random House and their aggressive approach towards getting books out there-a feat that’s getting harder and harder in this economic climate.”

Random House will begin selling Soho’s list as of January 1, 2011, and will handle worldwide English-language distribution. Soho’s entire front and backlists (with some exceptions) are currently available in multiple e-book formats, and the house has been handling all of its digital asset management in-house. However, as of January 1, RHPS will take over in the complete distribution of Soho’s e-books.

Category: Announcements, New Clients
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