In another sign of the ever-increasing importance of audiobooks to the publishing industry, Penguin Random House has promoted longtime audio group president and publisher Amanda D'Acierno to the newly created position of global president of Penguin Random House Audio.
The announcement of D'Acierno's promotion was made by PRH CEO Nihar Malaviya in a memo to staff. In her new role, Malaviya wrote, D'Acierno will work to expand PRH's audio publishing worldwide by increasing the size of the publisher's catalog across all genres in both the adult and children's segments, as well as oversee the company's investment in in-house recording studios around the world. With her promotion, D'Acierno will join the PRH global executive committee and continue to report to Malaviya.
Since becoming president and publisher of PRH Audio in the U.S. in 2008, D'Acierno has led the group "through a period of robust growth," Malaviya wrote. He added that, under D'Acierno's purview, the division has increased its annual title output from 500 titles in 2008 to approximately 2,000 titles today.
In his memo, Malaviya called audio "a significant part of our growth in recent years," noting that he expects growth to remain strong. "As we look to the future, the audio business will continue to grow and evolve in many of the countries where we operate, driven by the shifting retail landscape and consumer reading preferences, as well as by technological developments such as AI," he wrote.
Given the trends, Malaviya wrote, D'Acierno "will foster closer collaboration across all PRH Audio groups globally, acting in a pivotal advisory role to local teams across territories and continuing our successful relationships with our global retail partners at Audible, Apple, OverDrive, Google, and Spotify, among others."
A this year's London Book Fair, D'Acierno took part in a panel examining the future of audio, where she emphasized the growth potential in other languages such as French and Hindi. She also pointed out the evolving nature of the market: "We all remember when we used to do a British version audio and then an American English version," she said. "So I think, as the market expands and grows, some of those slight differences will change."
