As noted by CNN, independent bookstores have turned a corner against fierce online competition by focusing on events, community, and the personal touch. To find out how they are surviving and thriving in the digital age, we spoke with three booksellers: BookPeople in Austin, Texas; The King’s English Bookshop in Salt Lake City, Utah; and Bank Square Books in Mystic, Connecticut.
Would your readers like to immerse themselves in the world of your book? Now you can help them do just that, using the online magazine platform Flipboard.
Flipboard is a news and social media aggregation platform with eighty-five million users that allows people to easily create magazines from content that is already on the web. Read more
Many students around the country have dedicated time this summer to reading one book in particular: a common reading book assigned by a college or university to incoming first-year students. Over the past several years there has been a dramatic rise in the number of college and universities (now more than three hundred) that assign a common reading book—from small liberal arts colleges to large public institutions to Ivy League universities. Read more
RH Studio is the brainchild of Peter Gethers, a longtime Random House editor and a writer of books, screenplays, and television series. He conceived of the Random House Films unit in 2005, as a way to expand the readership and sales potential that our publishing teams see in books they acquire, by pitching appropriate titles to partners in the theatrical film industry. Read more
Have you ever wondered what your followers on Twitter are reading and what they are saying about books? A new book discovery tool called BookVibe lets you keep up with book trends, find new reads, and tune in to book chatter on Twitter. BookVibe utilizes a sophisticated algorithm to scour the Twittersphere for conversations about books, measure online buzz, and detect sentiment around books. Read more
The demand for licensing rights for our authors’ books continues to grow with the expanding global marketplace. When an editor acquires a new book, subsidiary rights become a negotiating point discussed with the literary agent. The Subsidiary Rights groups create additional revenue streams for our authors by licensing the rights granted by agents to our authors’ works. The rights we offer can potentially include English-language reprint rights, foreign-language translations, audio versions, book club editions, pre- and post-publication magazine excerpts (known as first and second serial rights); and occasionally performance rights (for film, television, or stage adaptations). Read more
Are you familiar with Food52, BarkBox, or American Reading Company? These innovative emerging companies share something in common: Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments (BDMI), the venture capital arm of Bertelsmann, has made investments in all of them. BDMI takes minority equity stakes in early-stage companies on the digital media landscape in North America and Europe. With offices in New York and Berlin, BDMI has its radar attuned to new companies that show entrepreneurial and game-changing promise, and can benefit from Bertelsmann’s worldwide network of diverse businesses. Read more
Instagram addicts will be happy to learn that the platform recently added a video feature. Now there’s more than one way to express and promote your interests on the Facebook-owned platform used by more than 130 million people. Read more
MARKUS DOHLE
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER
MEMBER OF THE BERTELSMANN MANAGEMENT SE EXECUTIVE BOARD
July 1, 2013
To Our Authors,
Today, Random House and Penguin are officially united as Penguin Random House. For us, today is a beginning, and I very much want to reach out to you on our first day as a new company, because it all begins with you: you and the books you write and entrust to us to publish. For us, this is a sacred trust, one that before today Penguin and Random House have honored separately. Now it is a commitment and a privilege that unifies us. Read more
MARKUS DOHLE
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER
MEMBER OF THE BERTELSMANN MANAGEMENT SE EXECUTIVE BOARD
July 1, 2013
To Our Literary Agents,
Today, I am proud to write to you from the officially united Penguin Random House. Read more