PENGUIN BOOKS LIMITED
The aim of this essay is to comment on how, over the last six years Penguin Books
Limited has grown and managed external and internal changes.
Sixty one years ago, Allen Lane, the managing director of the Bodley Head, a British
publishing company, revolutionised reading with the introduction of the first ten Penguin
paperbacks. Today, over 600 million paperbacks are sold yearly. At a time when there was
still little of entertainment, paperback books brought reading to the masses. Nowadays,
paperback books bring reading to the world.
During the last six years (1990-1996) Penguin Books Limited was faced with many
"environmentalist pressures," with a continuous change inside the company, and
competitors trying to imitate its successful innovations on both sides of the Atlantic.
The major achievement in 1990 was the introduction of a new computer system into several
parts of the Company. The Credit Control department was the first area and Stock
Management, Invoicing Systems, Warehousing, Distribution and Sales Services followed. Now
the whole of the Company's systems are incorporated and networked.
During this period a new lists including the Twentieth Century Classics Series
complementing the Penguin Classics, Arkana, the New Age list and Fantail, the mass-market
children's list were introduced.
Internal change that took place during that year was the closing down of the Penguin
Bookshops (that expanded to include 12 shops during the last decade), leaving just one,
the specialist Beatrix Potter "House of the Tailer of Gloucester", within the Group. This
change took place due to the fact that the Company was conscious that it had to
concentrate on the publishing rather than on the retail.
This decision brought a successful completion of a management buy-out of the shops. This
action also compensated the loss that the Company faced in august 1991, when Pearson (an
international enterprise quoted on the London Stock Exchange with major media interests
including many well-known names apart from Penguin, such as Longman, Pitman, Addison
Wesley, the Financial Times, Westminster Press, Mindscape, Thames TV and Madame Tussauds)
announced pre-tax profits of Pounds 40.7m for the first half of 1991- a drop of 58 per
cent on the same period of 1990. In this period books fell from a trading profit of
Pounds 2.1m to a loss of Pounds 13.4m with Penguin losing Pounds 8m.
In the following two years no major changes have been recorded. Although, 1993 was
generally a successful year for all Penguin group companies. Penguin UK had produced a
strong programme including some major best sellers and agreed to a joint venture with the
BBC for mass market paperbacks and film deals with two major Hollywood studios.
During 1993, Penguin accelerated its media involvement by publishing world-wide "The
Viking Opera Guide" as a book and CD Rom.
In 1994, the publishing industry realised that certain amount of people do choose books
on the basis of who publishes them rather than who writes them. The promotion became one
of the marketing tricks used by the publishing industry (that other industries have
already used for decades). First came promotions for individual authors and titles, in
1994 publishers took one step further by promoting the whole brand.
This move showed the change of publishers fighting for market share. "During the
recession they increased margins by cutting costs, now they are desperate to build
turnover," said P. Mountain, deputy editor of The Bookseller magazine.
In the next months it was seen how different publishers were competing in their own
different ways. Penguin and Wordsworth Editions declared a price war selling paperback
classics for Pounds 1 each. These "up-market" or "down-market" were the ways of selling
literature.
In September 1994 Pearson brought a new change by announcing that publishing should be
grouped by theme. As the result, entertainment- Ladybird Books, the children's publisher
was added to Penguin and became a subsidiary of the Penguin Group. As an outcome,
Penguin's world-wide business showed revenues of about Pounds 370m.
A major change took place in September 1995, when the official price-fixing of books
collapsed after nearly a century.
Penguin Books announced its withdrawal from the net book agreement (NBA), which has
restricted price competition since 1900. This took place due to the "environmentalist
pressures." As Max N. Adam, a managing director of Penguin Books Limited , said: "We had
to face reality. If books are going to compete against compact discs and videos, we've
got to have a level playing field and be able to discount like they do."
Penguin also was celebrating its 60th anniversary in 1995 with a major trade advertising
campaign. This campaign included a publication of 60 Penguin Sixties, small format
paperbacks, at 60p each.
In the present year (1996), Penguin Company is still benefiting from repeat contracts
for Penguin mini-paperbacks.
In January 1996 another major political change took place, not in favour for Penguin
Company. A legislation was produced which revives copyright protection to an important
group of writers. This legislation meant that publishers have to pay several million
pounds to the estates of writers, who died between 1925 and 1945. The change in UK
legislation (introduced as part of copyright laws across the European Union) was brought
in in order to cover the works which were previously out of copyright.
Taking the European Union single market that is taking place into consideration, one
should remember that "Nothing is "overseas" anymore," a statement by Kenichi Ohmae that
clearly defines he
borderless condition of current business approach. This brings up the international
dimension of Penguin - a dimension which is continually growing in importance. Overseas
Penguin has four major companies - Penguin USA, Penguin Canada, Penguin Australia and
Penguin New Zealand. Each of these companies does its own publishing but is monitored by
each other's publication programmes.
There are also several smaller marketing companies which carry stock and consignment on
behalf of the Group. These companies include Penguin South Africa, Penguin Italia,
Penguin Netherlands, Penguin Germany, etc. They do not currently have their own
publishing programmes but import from the group companies. Due to the socio-cultural
differences Penguin India, for example, operate differently as there are import
restrictions in operation and the solution is for Penguin India to do a large amount of
its own publishing. There are also resident representatives in Hong Kong and Singapore.
On the whole, one may conclude that Penguin has grown, with the help of acquisitions,
for example, from a loss- making business with revenues of Pounds 37m to one which in
1995 had world-wide revenues of Pounds 360m and profits of Pounds 34m, and remains one of
the world's largest book publishing groups.
The result of Lane being involved in a move towards democratisation has shown that
today, hundreds of thousands of books are available to millions of readers at a low
price, and the market seems to be growing daily, selling into more countries than any
other publisher, and providing a good example of how a company is dealing with change and
success by continuing the traditions of Sir Allen Lane.
Rawsthorn, Alice. "Books cartel collapses." The Financial Times, 27 Sep. 1995, p.18.
Stoner, James. "Management"(sixth edition). Prentice Hall 1995.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Snoddy, Raymond. "Pearson profits." The Financial Times, 13 Aug. 1991, p.15.
2. Snoddy, Raymond. "Pearson rises..." The Financial Times, 03 Sep. 1994, p.9.
3. Snoddy, Raymond. "Pearson shares fall." The Financial Times, 21 Sep. 1994, p.26.
4. Snoddy, Raymond. "Pearson buys stake in book distributor." The Financial Times, 27
Apr. 1995,
p. 26.
5. Marsh, Peter. "Publishers face copyright disputes."The Financial Times, 03 Jan. 1996,
p. 5.
6. Fishwick, Francis. "Profits left on the shelf." The Financial Times, 18 Jun. 1996, p.
14.
7. Snoddy, Raymond. "Mayer stands down at Penguin." The Financial Times, 21 Jun. 1996, p.
9.
8. Rawstorn, Alice. "Hollywood head to lead Penguin." The Financial Times, 06 Aug. 1996,
p. 16.
9. Schreuders, Peter. "The book of paperbacks." London: Virgin, 1981.
10. "Fame - financial analysis made easy"(update 88.a-October 1996); CD Rom.
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