News for Authors

It is an honor to bring stories and ideas into the world. Penguin Random House is committed to serving our Contributors (i.e., authors, illustrators, and other creators) and to bringing their culture-shaping perspectives and stories to readers. We have a responsibility to achieve greater inclusion not only within our workforce population but also throughout the community of creative and original voices we publish. And we know that our mission to publish books for everyone can be accomplished only if our Contributors’ demographics better represent the society we live in.

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Two years ago, amid myriad speculations in the media, on blogs, and in internet forums about the looming death of the book business, we were happily surprised to find that these speculations were far from the truth. In fact, the data showed a very stable progression of the industry’s revenue pool.

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BISAC codes are assigned to every title in the marketplace, and publishing teams work hard to assign the right codes—so, what exactly are BISACs and why do they matter? We demystify the process behind BISACs and take a look at some surprising marketplace trends they reveal.

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The most talked-about internet trend of the last year has been the huge growth in mobile browsing, driven by sales of smartphones and tablets. We review some surprising mobile stats and suggest what authors can do to take advantage of this trend.

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Who are eBook consumers and what are their reading habits? These questions are frequently posed to the Random House Research and Analytics team, and fortunately we have some great sources for understanding this technology-savvy group. One of those resources is data that we acquire through regular surveys of U.S. book consumers, which we can filter to look solely at eBook consumers. This has enabled us to get a good picture of who they are and their attitudes toward books and reading. What emerges is a portrait of the highly engaged reader: avid readers across digital and print formats, and technology “fast-forwards” who are more accessible than ever via both online and offline touch points.

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If you missed some of our great author webinars, do not fear! They are all recorded and available on the Portal. And, just to whet your appetite, here’s some of the advice we heard from experts from Twitter, Goodreads, Tumblr, and the Random House marketing team. Read more

Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) is a hot topic in business circles and a capability that Random House has been developing for some time. To get at the meaning behind the management-speak, we sat down with Nihar Malaviya, our SVP, director of  strategy, analytics & program development, and Alyssa Oles, manager of supply chain projects and business analytics.

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Publishing, if you listen to the media, blogs, or internet forums, is a dying business. The truth is another matter.For many years the book industry has been tracked by two separate organizations: the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) and the American Association of Publishers (AAP). I happen to have reporting going all the way back to 1982 in my office. For a long time, the organizations used very different methodologies to arrive at the total yearly sales volume for print and eBooks combined. Their numbers never came close to matching, which created a credibility problem. Read more