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Penguin Group (Canada) Named Publisher of the Year!

Tuesday, June 17, 2008 – TORONTO
Penguin Group (Canada) was awarded Publisher of the Year this past weekend by the Canadian Booksellers Association at the 2008 Libris Awards at BookExpo Canada.

Accepting the award on behalf of Penguin Group (Canada), President and Publisher David Davidar thanked authors, agents, booksellers, and staff for their contributions to the company’s success. The CBA Libris Awards, nominated and voted on by members of the Canadian bookselling community, honour outstanding achievement in Canada’s bookselling industry. In awarding Publisher of the Year, booksellers consider the profile of bestselling authors published, commercial successes in the marketplace, marketing programs, co-op advertising initiatives, and contributions to the Canadian bookselling industry.

In 2007, despite the drop in the U.S. dollar and massively reduced book prices, Penguin reported a record year, crossing the $100-million mark for the first time in its thirty-year history, following a remarkable three years of double-digit growth in Canada. In March 2008, Penguin achieved record market share with Canadian sales representing 18 percent of total books sold in Canada (as reported by BookNet).

Canadian authors Jack Whyte and Stuart McLean played a pivotal role in the year’s success, with the authors reaching cumulative Canadian sales of over 800,000 and 1 million copies respectively in 2007. Knights of the Black and White, the first book in Whyte’s Templar Trilogy, shipped a record 107,000 copies in mass market. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini (with sales now exceeding 200,000 copies in hardcover), The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards, and Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert accounted for sales of approximately three quarters of a million copies in 2007, each with long runs in the #1 bestseller spot and an ongoing presence on bestseller lists from coast to coast.

To round off a year full of great books, the announcement of Ken Follett’s The Pillars of the Earth as an Oprah Book Pick during the holiday season produced an advance of 77,000 copies, and the book joined its sequel, World Without End, in the #1 spot on the Globe and Mail bestseller list on December 1. From October to December, the two books combined shipped almost a quarter of a million copies.

Other notable Canadian successes were Ysabel by Guy Gavriel Kay, Sylvanus Now by Donna Morrissey, The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai, The View from Castle Rock by Alice Munro, Spanish Fly by Will Ferguson, The Architects Are Here by Michael Winter, The Mission Song by John le Carré, Exit Ghost by Philip Roth, Strawberry Fields by Marina Lewycka, The Penguin Book of Canadian Short Stories edited by Jane Urquhart, and The Penguin Book of Crime Stories edited by Peter Robinson.

Top non-fiction bestsellers included Prisoner of Tehran by Marina Nemat, Heart Matters by Adrienne Clarkson, Wikinomics by Don Tapscott, Nixon in China by Margaret MacMillan, The Age of Turbulence by Alan Greenspan, The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge, The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan, This Is Your Brain on Music by Daniel Levitin, Unlikely Utopia by Michael Adams, and Canadians by Roy MacGregor.

Penguin also made its largest ever foreign rights sale on the highly anticipated prequel to Anne of Green Gables. Before Green Gables by Budge Wilson, authorized by the estate of L.M. Montgomery and published in February to coincide with the 100th anniversary of Anne.

Commenting on Penguin’s performance to date in 2008, Davidar said, "We look forward to the remainder of the year with a great deal of optimism. We have a stellar fall list and with this vote of support from Canadian booksellers, we expect nothing but success."

Fall highlights include new novels from Joseph Boyden, Donna Morrissey, Amitav Ghosh, John le Carré, and Philip Roth; a new book on Canada by John Ralston Saul; the release of two more books in Penguin’s Extraordinary Canadians biography series; the concluding volume in Tim Cook’s award-winning 90th anniversary history of the The Great War; Colin & Justin’s Home Heist Style Guide; and The Daily Planet Book of Cool Ideas by Jay Ingram.

For more information please contact:

Yvonne Hunter
Director, Publicity and Marketing
Penguin Group (Canada)
416-928-2409 Direct
416-471-4973 Mobile
yvonne.hunter@ca.penguingroup.com

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