Dohle Reflects on "Successful Year"

In his annual year-end letter, Random House chairman Markus Dohle thanked the publisher’s employees across the globe for their work the last few years in aligning Random’s “culture, organization and strategy.” The collaborative approach helped make 2011 “another successful year,” Dohle wrote, although his message didn’t contain many numbers. Dohle stressed the importance of creating a new organization aligned with the changing marketplace a company that is “more flexible, efficient, and agile. And our author-centric and audience-oriented strategy is being widely and effectively implemented and carried forward by each of you. In short, we aren’t reacting to change, we are driving it.”

Dohle also highlighted Random’s worldwide reach, noting the company has placed “hundreds of our titles on the North American, U.K., German, and Spanish national bestseller lists,” while also publishing a record number of first time fiction authors.

‪”Every corner of our company contributed to our publishing achievements this year,” Dohle wrote, noting that “Random House is and will always be an editorially driven company, and now our authors are enjoying additional readership and revenue from our diverse and expanding digital reach and know-how. From direct-to-digital publishing and app development to direct-to-consumer marketing and social-networking promotions, we are continuing to take every advantage of the shift to digital and the explosive boom in digital-device reading.”

For 2012, Random’s publishing priorities and business investments will be “focused on our authors, our retailers, and our readers, and in the coming year, we will strive to do even more for them: added services and an enhanced portfolio of offerings for our authors; increased support through ever-greater supply-chain efficiencies across all channels of distribution for retailers, particularly physical booksellers; and for our readers, closer connections with their favorite authors, and easier discovery of their page-turning stories––wherever they are, whatever format and platform they choose.”