When a Mass-Market Is Still a Mass-Market

by Jim Milliot and Steven Zeitchik, PW NewsLine -- Publishers Weekly, 11/23/2004

With the category of mass-market facing slowing sales owing to discounts and retail changes, Penguin is conducting an innovative experiment. The company tells PW that next month it will test a new format that will increase the size about 3/4 of an inch in length and 1/16th of an inch in width--but still be considered mass-market.

The new format will fit in existing racks and will feature slightly larger type. It will also be strippable, making for easier returns, and will sell for an un-mass-y price of $10. (It's a test that at the moment includes just one title, Minette Walters' Disordered Minds.) Penguin CEO David Shanks, in a piece that runs in PW next Monday on the general state of mass-market, says he hopes it will address the issues facing the format.

In other Penguin news, the company has promoted Nancy Perlman, who had been overseeing inventory as director of hardcover and juvenile operations, to be director of "intergroup business development and corporate projects." She'll "work with different departments to look at different opportunities to work between Penguin U.S. and other divisions of Pearson," said spokesperson Marilyn Ducksworth, such as looking at Penguin U.S. books that overlap with areas like education or Penguin Canada.