In a memo to employees issued this morning, Madeline McIntosh, U.S. president and chief operating officer of Penguin Random House, announced that Norman Lidofsky will retire as the Penguin Group (USA)’s president, director of paperback sales, at the end of 2014.
Lidofsky has been with Penguin for 32 years in a variety of sales positions. In her memo, McIntosh wrote that Lidofsky “helped propel the careers of Harlan Coben, Nora Roberts, John Sandford, Catherine Coulter, W. E. B. Griffin, and Tom Clancy. He has led the way in building the trade paperback program into an industry force… He has helped to keep Penguin Classics vibrant, sustaining its presence as one of the most trusted and recognized sources of classic literature in the world… He has helped Plume come into its own… And he was instrumental in the birth of Riverhead Books twenty years ago.”
Lidofsky’s pending retirement continues the reworking of the joint PRH executive sales organization and is another departure of high-ranking Penguin executives. At the end of 2013, Dick Heffernan, head of Penguin’s hardcover and children’s sales, retired, and Doug Whiteman, whose last position at Penguin was executive v-p of operations, moved to Acelero Learning Inc. In January, PRH created a united PRH sales executive team in which Lidofsky reports to Jaci Updike, senior v-p, director, adult sales, PRH.
