Random House Sales and Profits Up, According to 2006 Fiscal Report

Random House posted a 6.5 percent growth last year, according to 2006 sales data released Wednesday, during a press briefing in Berlin, by its parent company, Bertelsmann.

Random House sales jumped to $2.5 billion last year, helping the New York-based publishing arm of the German media conglomerate to raise its operating profit 9.6 percent to $242 million.

In a letter written to Random House staff, Peter Olson, Random House chairman and CEO, said the company’s fiscal performance “is especially impressive for having been achieved against the backdrop of a sluggish international book marketplace, a slightly unfavorable foreign exchange rate due to the dollar’s ongoing weakness against the euro—the currency in which our parent company reports annual results—and a relatively small increase to our credit loss reserves because of the AMS bankruptcy.”

He pointed out that the North American division of Random House had 201 New York Times Best Sellers in 2006, 37 of them coming in at No. 1.

Although the first three months of 2007 saw sales that continued the success of 2006, with several successful hardcover, paperback and audio best sellers from each of the company’s divisons divisions in the U.S. and Canada, Olson warned of the battle ahead in the coming year.

“Given the economic outlook ahead, it will be as tough as it has ever been to meet our budget targets for ’07,” he said. “But your ability to come through year after year—with your resourcefulness, your skills and creativity, and your dedication to our books and their authors and our booksellers—is what makes our company so special and so consistently successful.”