10 minutes with: Joanna Prior, managing director of Penguin General

Publishing chief discusses how the rise of the ebook has affected the industry, the value of a good cover design and why there is no glass ceiling in the sectorTell us a bit about your role at Penguin and how you got there.I am the managing director of Penguin General Books, which is one of seven adult divisions within the newly formed Penguin Random House publishing conglomerate. Our authors include novelists Zadie Smith, Colm Toibin, Nick Hornby, John le Carre, Zoe Heller, Jonathan Coe, Jonathan Safran Foer, Mohsin Hamid, Penelope Lively, India Knight, Ali Smith, Dave Eggers, Marina Lewycka and non-fiction writers such as Antony Beevor, Clare Balding, Claire Tomalin and Alain de Botton.I've been running Penguin General for four years and before that I was marketing and publicity director across all of Penguin Publishing. I've been at Penguin for just over 15 years in total and before that I had a very brief spell as editor of the Sunday Telegraph magazine, was marketing and publicity director at the then small independent publisher Fourth Estate (now part of Harper Collins) and began my career as a book publicist at Heinemann.The rise of the ebook has brought about enormous changes to the publishing industry in recent years. How has Penguin responded to this?Penguin published the first ebooks in the UK very early in the 21st century and well before most readers knew they wanted to consume books this way. Penguin's ebook sales now account for about 12% of total... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'

[ The Guardian | 2014-02-12 00:00:00 UTC ]
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