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Client

Penguin Random House

Client

Penguin Random House

Project

24/7 Production Firepower

Industry

Cable Media & Entertainment

Services

Innovation

Service Design

Background

Penguin Random House is a company formed by the merger of book publishers Random House and Penguin Group. Penguin Random House markets itself as “the world’s first truly global trade book” publisher. Penguin Random House employs circa 10,000 people globally and publishes approximately 15,000 titles annually under its 250 divisions and imprints.

Brief

BORN was approached to develop an Author Portal in order to consolidate all it’s authors data into one central repository. PRH divisions including Random House, International Trade House, Transworld Books and Ebury Publishing.

Goals

PRH wanted BORN to develop an easy-to-use dashboard where authors could: view detailed sales information plus bestseller and review history for every title, download book jackets, royalty statements, sold subsidiary rights. In addition, the solution would have the ability for users to browse marketing tips, download the PRH Facebook App, and sign up for webinars to learn about the latest trends from experts.

Challenge

The portal had to provide authors with functionality that would be useful to them, but not overtly complex to need online training or support to navigate through the tools.

Strategy and Insight

The aim of the project was to encourage authors to self-serve, through a well-designed interface. The dashboard also needed to host current events, topical news and other sector information such as Bestseller Rankings and Customer Reviews.

Solutions

BORN developed an device agnostic cloud-based solution to enable authors to access commercial data, Royalty Statements and Subsidiary Rights information relating to the performance of their titles (printed, eBooks and audiobook). Finally, a Resource section was build to connect readers, through articles and videos, archives, industry news pages and community contacts.

Outcome

Homepage Sales Data was a critical addition to the site which allowed data was to be made available right on the Author Portal homepage. In addition, this page housed the latest weekly unit sales figures for individual titles and all of an author’s titles in aggregate.

Long-Term Value

BORN continues to support PRH with image retouching, typesetting, book formatting and cover art-working.

Improved Functionality

Expanded Graphing Capabilities

• Dive into the details for any title by accessing our new graphing tool • Break out consumer sales by format
• See units shipped to retailers by format or retail channel
• Improved graph functionality allows individual formats for a given title At-a-Glance Sales Figures • Toggle between “Units Sold to Consumers” and “Units Shipped to Retailers”
• Chart to quickly show how a title is selling across print, eBook, and audio formats