In memos distributed to Random House employees Thursday,chairman Markus Dohle and Madeline McIntosh, president of sales, operation anddigital, detailed new plans for the publisher's digital operation while alsoannouncing new homes and leadership for the audio and information group unitsthat had been part of the old Crown Publishing Group.
Random House Audio Publishing and the Fodor's Travel Groupwill now report to Nina von Moltke who has been promoted to v-p digitalpublishing development, a newly created position. Amanda D'Acierno publisher ofRH Audio, and Tim Jarrell, Fodor's publisher, will report to von Moltke. RH'slarge print operations and Living Language brand will be overseen by D'Acierno.The other parts of the information group--The Princeton Review, Sylvan Learningand Prima Games--have become part of the Children's Book division. Tom Russell,head of TPR and Sylvan, and Debra Kempker, head of Prima, will report tochildren division president Chip Gibson.
In explaining the moves, Dohle said TPR, Sylvan and Prima"share a core consumer base" with the children's group and will benefit "fromthe educational orientation and consumer-marketing focus" of the children'sgroup. Moving RH Audio and Fodor's under von Moltke will let them continue to furtherdevelop their digital capabilities.
Von Moltke's appointment to v-p of digital development isone of three appointments made by McIntosh to create a senior leadership teamthat will direct new digital units that will support digital initiatives withinthe Random House publishing groups. In addition to von Moltke, Amanda Close hasbeen named v-p ditgital sales and business development. She will lead a teamthat will establish strategy, terms, policy and programs relative to newbusiness models, identify new business opportunities and mange existing digitalrelationships with different partners. Pete McCarthy has been appointed v-p, onlinemarketing charged with developing online methods to fulfill his mission to"partner with our sales reps, our publishers, and our retailers to ensure we'remaximizing our ability to convert consumer interest to incremental purchases."All three report to McIntosh.
Matt Shatz, who as v-p of digital had been a primaryspokesperson for Random's digital efforts, has left the company to join Nokia.
The memos, which contain a number a new appointments, areprinted below.
MARKUSDOHLE
CHAIRMANAND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER
MEMBEROF THE EXECUTIVE BOARD OF BERTELSMANN AG
February 25, 2010
TO EVERYONE AT RANDOM HOUSE, INC.
Wewant to share with you today our next steps forward in accelerating the company'stransition to digital, growing our physical book sales, and increasing theefficiency of our customer- author- and publisher-support services. To bestposition ourselves to accomplish these strategic priorities we are making anumber of changes and appointments in our Sales, Operations and Digital areasunder Madeline McIntosh, which she presents in accompanying memos. We also havecompleted the new lines of reporting we began undertaking in December for theAudio division and for the businesses that have comprised the InformationGroup.
Madelineis announcing the formation of new teams that will be fully dedicated todigital-content development, digital sales development, and onlinemarketing. I am very excited about these moves and about the additionsshe is making to her senior leadership team. Their mandate is to createand to catalyze publishing and entrepreneurial opportunities, bothself-starting and in partnership with our publishing divisions. Thee-publishing and online marketing activities originated and executed by theCrown, Knopf Doubleday, Random House, and Random House Children's BooksPublishing Groups will be indispensable to our authors and to our creative andcommercial growth, and I am confident that the new support provided to thosegroups at the corporate level will be key ingredients in ensuring our successduring and after the digital expansion.
AmongMadeline's new executive team, I have worked most closely with Nina von Moltke,who has reported to me as Vice President, Corporate Development. Nina's newresponsibilities as Vice President, Digital Publishing Development, are anatural progression from her previous role in which she applied her tremendousunderstanding of the evolving digital-publishing financial models to evaluatingnew corporate and divisional business opportunities. Aside from her new task ofsupporting the development of our digital content offerings across thedivisions, Nina will also oversee the Random House Audio Publishing and Fodor'sTravel Groups. Both groups provide excellent models of successfullytransitioning from analog to digital businesses, and I know that they and ourtraditional trade publishing groups will benefit by having them integrated intothe corporate-level digital publishing team.
AmandaD'Acierno, Vice President, Publisher, Random House Audio, Books on Tape, RandomHouse Large Print, and Tim Jarrell, Vice President, Publisher, Fodors, willcontinue to run their respective businesses, setting and implementing theirpublishing priorities and choices, reporting to Nina. We will furtherintegrate the publishing activities under the Living Language brand into thedigital content group, reporting to Amanda D'Acierno.
Wealso foresee expanded opportunities for The Princeton Review, Sylvan Learning,and Prima Games imprints as we bring them into the Random House Children'sBooks division. Tom Russell, who leads TPR and Sylvan, and Debra Kempker, whoheads Prima, will report to Chip Gibson. The former two businesses willcomplement and benefit from the educational orientation and consumer-marketingfocus of Chip's publishing teams. Prima and the Children's Group share a coreconsumer base as well as a like focus on brand management and strong license partnerships.The combination of this considerable expertise will benefit them both.
Children'sBooks will further expand to include the Tricycle Books young readerspublishing program under Nicole Geiger, currently part of Crown's Ten SpeedPress. Tricycle now will be a Berkeley-based imprint of Alfred A. Knopf Booksfor Young Readers and its frontlist and backlist will continue to be sold byChildren's Sales.
Thesenew homes for Audio, Fodor's, The Princeton Review, Prima, Sylvan Learning, andLiving Language; our newly established digital-development teams; andMadeline's appointments in Sales and Operations will help us grow sales andfoster greater collaboration internally and with our authors, customers, andreaders. I thank you for your support of these growth initiatives and for allour colleagues who will implement them.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________MADELINE MADELINE McINTOSH
PRESIDENT
SALES,OPERATIONS AND DIGITAL
February 25, 2010
TO EVERYONE AT RANDOM HOUSE, INC.
Sincereturning to Random House in December, I have had the great experience ofre-engaging with many of my former colleagues in Sales and Operations. I've been gratified to learn more about the ways in which the teams led by ANDREWWEBER, Senior V.P., Director, Operations and Technology, JOAN DEMAYO,Senior V.P., Director, Children's Sales, and JACI UPDIKE, SeniorV.P., Director, Adult Sales, have risen to the various marketplace challengespresented in the last few years. Of those, one of the greatest has been tocreate new systems, policies and programs to harness the opportunitiespresented by the explosive growth of the digital channel.
Whileeveryone in my group has played a part in "managing digital" over the lastyear, the time has come to be more explicit regarding those individuals to whomwe will look for digital business leadership in the future. The greatnews is that, in working with Andrew, Joan and Jaci to map out our needs forour digital and physical businesses, we have found that the people we need arealready here at Random House: we have been able to realign our group toprovide the resources required to ensure healthy digital growth while alsocontinuing to invest in maintaining our leadership position in the printmarketplace.
Itis in this context that I'm delighted to announce the new leadership structurefor Random House Sales, Operations and Digital. Andrew, Jaci and Joancontinue in their current roles. Joining them as my direct reports are: NINAVON MOLTKE, V.P., Digital Publishing Development; AMANDA CLOSE, V.P., DigitalSales and Business Development; and PETE MCCARTHY, V.P., Online andDigital Marketing. Their new roles and departments are detailedbelow. A number of related changes within Andrew, Joan and Jaci'sdepartments are described in a following memo.
Digital Publishing Development
AsV.P., Digital Publishing Development, NINA VON MOLTKE will havetwo key areas of responsibility: partnering with our publishing divisions tohelp accelerate and broaden their own digital programs, and oversight for thoseRandom House, Inc. publishing lists for which digital distribution andweb-enabled commerce are already the core business.
Reportingto Nina will be ANDREA SHEEHAN, formerly V.P. & Director, DigitalStrategy and Business Development at the Random House Publishing Group, now inthe newly created position of V.P., Digital Publishing and Product Development,which she will take on upon her return from maternity leave. In Andrea'stime in the Random House Publishing Group, she has provided critical leadershipin the area of digital product innovation: together with her team, Andreahas spearheaded various initiatives around e-book format development, e-onlycontent, IP development, redesign of online presences and mobile applicationsfor major brands and authors, and innovations in digital marketing tools.
ARandom House hallmark and point of pride has always been our decentralizedapproach to publishing entrepreneurship, and that will not change for ourexpanded digital mandate. By acting as facilitators and catalysts,Nina and her team's role will be to help each publishing division bring its ownunique vision to market as successfully as possible. Initial examples ofservices to be provided by this team include: strategic support in drivingdigital growth for key content categories; expertise in alternative businessmodels (such as serializations, subscriptions, and advertising), contentbundling or disaggregation; and start-up support for original digitalpublishing programs. The team will also be responsible for the ongoingbacklist conversion project.
Alsoreporting to Nina will be AMANDA D'ACIERNO, V.P., Publisher, RandomHouse Audio, Books on Tape and Living Language; TIM JARRELL, V.P.,Publisher, Fodor's Travel Publishing; FABRIZIO LAROCCA, V.P., CreativeDirector; and SUSAN LIVINGSTON, newly appointed as Director, DigitalBusiness Management and Planning. All four are crucial "digital veterans"who will now be able to share their expertise more broadly.
Toensure that our digital efforts receive the appropriate publicity support andthat we communicate effectively to our internal and industry stakeholders, SHEILAO'SHEA is named Director of Publicity, Digital Initiatives, reporting toNina. She will work closely with the publicity departments across thedivisions, as well as coordinate publicity efforts for the Fodor's Travelgroup. Stuart Applebaum will continue to be our main media contact forany major corporate announcements and inquiries.
Digital Sales and Business Development
AMANDACLOSE, currently V.P., Group SalesDirector, Crown Publishing Group, will now become our V.P., Digital Salesand Business Development. Amanda earlier served as our V.P., OnlineSales, and she stepped in with great agility when Jaci and I asked her tocoordinate the cross-functional team evaluating Apple's new e-bookprogram. Her expertise, infectious enthusiasm, and astute analytical,technological, and product instincts will be invaluable in maintaining ourposition as the market leader in digital sales.
Reportingto Amanda will be JEFF WEBER, formerly Associate Sales Director, Amazon,now Director, Digital Sales; RANDI ROSENKRANZ, Senior Manager, DigitalChannel Development; and LILLY KIM, Account Manager, Digital Sales.
Thisteam's responsibilities will include: establishing strategy, terms, policy andprograms relative to new business models; identifying and prioritizing newopportunities for sales or licensing; connecting potential partners with theappropriate internal stakeholders; developing expertise in activities in othermedia categories that might apply to our own; and crafting programmaticmerchandising support for our publishers' new lists of original digitalcontent.
Theyalso will manage the overall digital relationships with our existing partners,including Amazon, Audible, Barnes & Noble, Google, Ingram Digital,Overdrive and Sony. Selling and merchandising our publishers' lists willcontinue to reside within Jaci and Joan's existing Online Sales departments,thus providing our publishers and accounts with sole points of contact at theproduct level. By focusing entirely on the opportunities and challengesof the digital channel, Amanda's team will ensure we are maximizing volume andprofitability, embracing innovation, and learning from our experience.
Online and Digital Marketing
PETEMCCARTHY, V.P., Online Marketinghas been leading Random House's corporate consumer online marketing efforts forthe past two and a half years. During this time, he and his team have partneredwith divisional marketers and with Chris Hart's Applications Development groupto create increasingly innovative approaches to reaching consumersonline. While his department was originally created to exploredirect-to-consumer sales, they have found their greatest success in drivingconsumers directly to retailers' shopping carts - whether on the web or inbricks & mortar. Their recent work with Doubleday on the "secondwave" campaign for Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol is an excellent exampleof the sales magic that can be created by combining corporate technology andanalytics expertise with the publisher's stellar creative campaign.
Tobe successful in connecting our books with the largest audience possible, it isexactly this type of innovative, retailer-aligned approach that we believe willhelp to set Random House ahead of our competition. Therefore, we are nowformally repositioning and expanding this department. As a member of ourdigital senior management team, Pete's mission will be to partner with oursales reps, our publishers, and our retailers to ensure we're maximizing our abilityto convert consumer interest to incremental purchases.
Newlyreporting to Pete will be CHRISTINE MCNAMARA, currently our V.P.,Director, Adult Sales, Borders Group and Books-a-Million. Taking on thenewly-created role of V.P., Partnership Development, she will be fullydedicated to integrating our online marketing efforts with those of ourretailers and vice versa. We can look forward to having her bring herdeep understanding of sales and publishing (as well as her excellent sense ofhumor) to bear in these new efforts.
Continuingto report directly to Pete is CHELSEA VAUGHN, Director, Online MarketingOperations. Chelseawill oversee the project management and analytics components of the campaignsin which her highly creative team, which includes Senior Managers Erica Curtisand Joanne Korn, is involved and ensure the dissemination to marketersthroughout the company of any new techniques or tools created or discovered atthe corporate level. Her team has continually helped us improve ourability to precisely and efficiently spur frontlist and backlist sales.
Pete's department willcontinue to have oversight for randomhouse.com, corporately-managede-mail marketing lists, and our activity on Facebook, Twitter, and elsewhere onthe web. They will be working to further develop category-basedonline communities such as suvudu.com,the highly successful science fiction & fantasy site launched lastyear. Making all these efforts possible are CAMILLE COLLETT,Director, Web Production and JINNY KWON, Creative Director, newlytransferring from Crown online marketing.
As with Nina von Moltke'sdigital publishing department, Pete's team will act as incubators andcatalysts, adding extra creativity and support to the excellent title andcategory marketing programs that will continue to be anchored at the divisionallevel.
Asyou may already know, Matt Shatz, until now V.P., Digital, hasaccepted an exciting new opportunity as Head of Strategic ContentRelationships at Nokia, where he will be working to develop and growNokia's digital content business. Matt has been instrumental inadvancing the Random House digital strategy and initiativessince 2007. While all of us are very sorry to see him go,we do take comfort in the fact that we'll be able to work with him as a partneras he establishes Nokia's publishing related initiatives.
Please join Andrew, Jaci,Joan and me in congratulating Nina, Pete, Amanda and their teams on theirexciting new responsibilities as we expand and advance our digital-publishingopportunities.
