Penguin Random House has reorganized and expanded its independent bookselling sales teams and created a new sales group to sell adult titles from PRH distribution clients to indie accounts. The change is being made, the publisher said, to deepen its relationships with independent booksellers.
In a memo, Kim Shannon, senior v-p of adult and education sales, explained that, effective with its fall 2022 list, PRH will form a new adult field sales team under the direction of Beth Koehler, v-p of field sales. The new unit will sell books published by the majority of the adult client publishers in the Penguin Random House Publisher Services division to indie bookstores. This sales team will consist of 10 regionally-based reps, all of whom will report to regional sales directors.
More extensive changes are taking place in the children’s sales division. Underpinning the changes to the children’s group is the move to a unified management team, which will be responsible for selling all children’s titles to all sales channels for Penguin Young Readers, Random House Children’s Books, DK, and Penguin Random House Publisher Services.
Heading up the different sales channels are Enid Chaban, v-p of online sales; Becky Green, v-p of national accounts; Todd Jones, v-p of field sales; and Mark Santella, v-p of mass merchandise sales. All five channel heads will report to Felicia Frazier, senior v-p of children's and education sales.
Within the field sales unit, PRH “will be launching new programs that partner with independent bookstores to drive engagement with local educators and schools,” Frazier wrote in a memo. As part of the field reorganization, reps will have smaller territories, which will position them to tailor marketing and merchandising plans to the needs of individual stores, PRH said.
In addition, Green has been named of director of PRHPS children’s sales, and will lead the launch of a new sales team dedicated to growing children’s sales for PRHPS. In forming the group, PRH is adding two new positions. The first will be filled by Molly Humphrey, national account manager at PRHPS, selling to Amazon; another open position will sell to Barnes & Noble and Books A Million.
“It’s been inspiring to see the indies reinvent so much of what they do during Covid, and to witness the incredible hard work and entrepreneurial spirit that has guided so many of them through the last couple of years,” wrote Jaci Updike, president of U.S. sales at PRH. “We are thrilled to be able to find new ways to support our customers, our books, and our authors, and we are very much looking forward to a successful and rewarding 2022 partnership with independent booksellers.”
