In Penguin's ongoing struggle to nudge aside its backlist competitors, the house is relaunching its classics line this coming January with an ambitious two-year undertaking that involves a complete redesign of the entire list of more than 1,300 books. No doubt, the move comes in response to Modern Library's aggressive marketing to general readers, while Oxford's extensive critical notes have increased the number of course adoptions for its World Classics series.
Launched in 1946 with E.V. Rieu's translation of Homer's Odyssey, Penguin Classics was the only paperback contender in the category for many years. (Rieu's Odyssey was the house's leading title for 15 years, until the publication of Lady Chatterley's Lover.) Oxford, which had been publishing hardcover classics since 1901, introduced its World Classics in paperback in 1980. And two years ago, Modern Library joined the fray, adding a paperback counterpart to its hardcover line, which dates back to the days of Boni and Liveright in 1917. For the most part, the three brands overshadow the more limited offerings from the New York Review of Books, Norton Critical Editions and Barnes & Noble's house brand.
Penguin's makeover, the first since 1985, is more than cover-deep. The new classics will be printed on non-yellowing paper in bigger type with wider margins. There's also a touch of subliminal branding: the author's name and the penguin colophon will both be printed in the line's distinctive shade of orange.
"I work very closely with my colleague in London, Helen Fraser, and we talk about how important it is to keep the Penguin Classics number one," president and publisher Kathryn Court told PW. "The classics are not only a big piece of who we are as a publisher, but our jewel in the crown."
While covers and interior designs are changing, prices will stay the same. "We have always tried to be competitively priced with other trade paperbacks," said Court. "Some of the more popular books are close to mass market prices. Pride and Prejudice is $8; Great Expectations is $8."
For the most part, booksellers applaud Penguin's plans. "Anything that reinvigorates a series of books helps," said Kris Kleindienst, co-owner of Left Bank Books in St. Louis, Mo. "It was time," agreed fiction buyer Bridget Mason at Borders. "They were getting a little tired."
At most bookstores, there's only room for one edition of each title, except for popular books such as Moby-Dick and Don Quixote. With the relaunch of the Penguin Classics, stores with strong classics sales have had to reconsider which line to stock most heavily. "I'd really been moving toward Modern Library," said Candler Hunt, manager and buyer at the Dupont Circle branch of Olsson's Books and Records in Washington, D.C. "But now I think the packaging of the Penguin Classics might be more eye-catching."
Even at larger stores like Barnes & Noble, "it is not possible or desirable to carry every edition of every title," said buyer Salvatore Cordaro. "Our Barnes & Noble Editions are in most cases our bestselling editions of the classics, regardless of format. They're very attractive and the price points are as low as mass markets." Still, each line has its strengths, Cordaro admitted. "Penguin Classics contains many titles that are exclusive to Penguin—for example, books by noted 20th-century novelists like Kerouac, Steinbeck, Greene and Stegner," he said.
For Borders fiction buyer Robert Teicher, price is a major consideration. "Even $1 can make a difference," he said. "From our standpoint, you can be competitive by being cheaper." He is encouraged, however, by sales for the various trade paperback classics lines. "We're finding," said Teicher, "that people are buying trade paperbacks for their libraries."
At Left Bank, a deciding factor can often be the depth of publisher discounts. "I have to say that sadly it makes a difference to me if I'm getting [Penguin or Random House's] 46% and free freight or [Oxford's] 40% and no terms," said Kleindienst, explaining why she stocks fewer Oxford titles.
On top of special discounts, the revamped Penguin Classics will try to outshine the competition with brightly jacketed "deluxe editions" without the traditional black spine, like Herman Hesse's Siddhartha and Murasaki Shikibu's unabridged The Tale of Genji, translated by Royall Tyler. The deluxe classics are also slightly larger, closer in size to a true trade paperback than the smaller pocket size typically associated with most classics lines.
In addition, the line will gain added breadth by incorporating series such as the 60-year-old Penguin Portables, the Twentieth-Century Classics and Penguin Nature Classics. "I handle both the Portables and the Classics," said executive editor Michael Millman, "and I realized that there was no reason they had to be separate. Many authors in Portables are the same as in the Classics. The Portable Steinbeck should be an extension of the Steinbeck Classics."
Penguin is planning to spend a minimum of $500,000 on marketing, publicity, advertising and promotion, according to Maureen Donnelly, v-p, director of publicity. In January, the house will send Court and Millman on a 40-city radio satellite tour. There will also be an ongoing series of "Penguin Classics Presents" panels with authors such as Dava Sobel (who translated Letters to Father: Suor Maria Celeste to Galileo, 1623—1633 (Jan.) by Virginia Galilei), and Robert Fagles (who translated The Iliad and The Odyssey, both due in January). A revamped Web site and online publicity are also in the works.
Though Penguin is focusing on the backlist, the house isn't neglecting its frontlist classics. Next summer, it will put The Letters of John and Abigail Adams straight into paperback, along with a new literary translation of four volumes of Freud.
For their part, Oxford and Modern Library have been putting more emphasis on hardcovers. Oxford has reprinted cloth editions of some of its classics, with new introductions from contemporary authors, like Stephen King on Matthew Lewis's The Monk or Rick Moody on Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge. At Modern Library—which has published 180 titles in paperback and six new ones each month—new translations always come out in hardcover first. "We'll typically do galleys and maybe even get quotes," said publishing director David Ebershoff. This approach helped Modern Library's hardcover translation by Gregory Hays of Marcus Aurelius's 2,000-year-old Meditations leap onto the Washington Post's bestseller list last summer.
How Penguin's makeover will shake out on bookstore shelves remains to be seen. But by all accounts, the 2003 rebranding of the Penguin Classics has been a strong reply to Modern Library's new look, and will likely have sales reverberations for many years to come.
