Penguin Group (USA)

Penguin Random House announced the launch of social retail platform "My Independent Bookshop" yesterday. The website, now in beta, allows users to compile their 12 favorite titles to create a virtual bookshop. Authors can participate as well and set up shop with their most recent works. The recommendation engine is linked to major social channels such as Facebook, Google+, and Twitter, allowing bookshop creators to share their favorite works with their friends and family.

Today German-based Bertelsmann, owner of Penguin Random House (PRH), released its 2013 fiscal-year results. In a letter to PRH staff, CEO Markus Dohle predicted a bright future for the company.

Spanish media group Prisa said yesterday it had agreed to sell Alfaguara, publisher of Nobel-prize-winning author Mario Vargas Llosa and several other editorial brands, to Penguin Random House for 72 million euros (US$100 million).

Penguin Random House is majority owned by German media group Bertelsmann, while Pearson, the owner of the Financial Times, holds a minority stake. Bertelsmann and Pearson last year completed the merger of their publishers Penguin and Random House.

Since the merger that has created Penguin Random House, there has been precious little speculation (except by me, as far as I can tell) about what this new behemoth in trade book publishing could do to exploit their scale in new and innovative ways.

Their scale advantage is huge. PRH has something in the neighborhood of half the commercial trade books published, bestsellers and below. (You see numbers as low as 25% for this and most of the time estimates put it around 40%.) For several decades, the big US book clubs

The National Book Foundation presents the 2013 National Book Award Finalists in the categories of Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry and Young People's Literature.

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.

Author Solutions, Penguin’s self-publishing imprint, has been a bit controversial for a while. Last year an anonymous poster claiming to be an AS employee had some pretty damning things to say about the company’s business practices. Last July, Penguin bought the self-publishing firm, shocking some industry onlookers:

    "What does Author Solutions bring to the table? Well, for starters, around $100m in annual revenue. Roughly two-thirds of that money comes from the sale of services to writers, and only one-third from the royalties generated by the sale of their books.…"

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE) -- Penguin Group (USA) and Cala Enterprises will launch the publication of the Book by Ismael Cala, The Power of Listening –on sale August 6-, with a book cover selection contest. The Power of Listening was written by Ismael Cala, Host of “CALA” a primetime talk show on CNN in Spanish & CNN Latino and one of the most important Latino Television interviewers in the United States and Latin America -considered by many the “Larry King Latino”-.

The Jim Henson Company and Grosset & Dunlap, an imprint of Penguin Young Readers Group, are reaching out to fans and fantasy writers to enter The Dark Crystal Author Quest, an online contest that will award one winner with a $10,000 contract to write the first book in a new young adult series based on the world of the classic fantasy film. Beginning today, entrants can visit www.darkcrystal.com/authorquest to read contest rules and guidelines and review all the background materials, descriptions, and history needed to create a submission. Entries will be accepted beginning October 1, 2013, and must be received no later than January 1, 2014. The site is a preview of the upcoming official Dark Crystal website, www.darkcrystal.com, that will be the online destination for all things Dark Crystal.

Apple Inc. (AAPL) executives were prepared to abandon plans to enter the e-book business on the eve of the company’s 2010 debut of the iPad, Penguin Group USA Inc. Chief Executive Officer David Shanks testified in the U.S. government’s civil antitrust trial against Apple.

Shanks, called on the second day of the trial in Manhattan federal court, yesterday described his company’s decision to sign a deal known as an agency agreement for Apple to sell Penguin’s electronic books. He said Penguin signed on after initially resisting Apple’s pricing model.