![]() Danek-Akey ’s role was to develop a new network design that consolidated four warehouse facilities into one center in Westminster, Md. fulfillment operations that needed to be merged. In 1998, BDD ’s parent company, Bertelsmann, bought Random House and in unifying it with BDD, found itself with a lot of overlapping U.S. It signaled to her that this was a place where she could advance her career. But even more impressive to Danek-Akey was that a woman headed BDD ’s supply chain at a time when few females were given such opportunities. She was drawn to the company because it was then a smaller publisher with a lot of growth potential. We mutually benefit from our greater scale and scope, ” Danek-Akey says.ĭanek-Akey joined the publishing industry as an industrial engineer for Penguin Random House predecessor company Bantam Doubleday Dell (BDD) in 1996. “It ’s a win for them, a win for our booksellers and a win for us. Penguin Random House filled all its unused warehouse capacity with third-party clients. That enables Penguin Random House to optimize its supply chain by reducing the number of shipments retailers receive. It acts as a third-party logistics provider for approximately 40 other companies, including National Geographic, and it has a 95 percent customer match with those publishers, meaning they are mostly shipping products to the same locations. Today, 15 percent of the annual volume Penguin Random House ships is other publishers ’ books. “We saw an opportunity to really ramp up our third-party logistics business. “We knew that because of the building consumer demand for e-books we would be shipping fewer of our own physical books, ” Danek-Akey says. When the first Kindles were introduced, the company saw an opportunity to expand its physical supply chain to serve outside publishers. “We just had to learn to be good at managing both. “We deliver about 460 million books a year to customers and 20 percent of that is digitally, ” Senior Vice President of Fulfillment Annette Danek-Akey explains. It wasn ’t a print or digital proposition it was print and digital. While others rapidly moved to favor e-publishing, Penguin Random House took a more balanced approach and continued to invest in its physical supply chain. Publishers such as Penguin Random House always believed digital would be more of a complement to print reading, rather than a complete replacement. Print is still very much in vogue and massive warehouses still play a crucial role in getting books in readers ’ hands. E-books sales actually fell 5 percent in the first half of the year compared to 2016, according to the Association of American Publishers, accounting for only 17.1 percent of the total trade book market. Ten years after its predicted demise the print market is as robust and resilient as ever. Seuss reprints and Dan Brown releases would be replaced by server rooms and distribution would be as simple as ones and zeros traveling over a Wi-Fi network.īut it didn ’t happen. ![]() Soon, giant book warehouses stuffed with Dr. It seemed like the days of print editions and book spines were numbered. ![]() ![]() The first e-readers hit the market in 1998 and the first Amazon Kindles arrived nine years later, signaling the leading online bookseller ’s belief in the future of digital books. Censorship, in the form of book bans like those enacted by Escambia County, are a direct threat to democracy and our constitutional rights,” said Nihar Malaviya, CEO of Penguin Random House.The endurance of print books has Penguin Random House investing in its physical supply chain. “Books have the capacity to change lives for the better, and students in particular deserve equitable access to a wide range of perspectives. The Pensacola News Journal, which covers Escambia County, reported earlier this year that the bans in this specific school district started when a teacher brought a list of more than 100 titles she wanted to be purged since then, the district has said it will review the more than 100,000 titles in all its libraries. The wave of book bans hit some states harder than others, with Texas and Florida seeing the lionshare of bans. Of those books banned, the organization found 41% had LGBTQ themes or lead characters and 40% had people of color as protagonists or lead characters. In that school year alone, PEN America reported there were 1,648 unique book titles banned in 138 school districts across 32 states, impacting around 4 million children. The battle to ban books in public school libraries has been around for decades, but saw a revitalization in the 2021-2022 school year amid concerns that public schools were overstepping their role and educating children about social issues. An Escambia County School District spokesperson told Forbes the district is unable to comment on pending litigation. ![]()
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