Friday, February 14, 2014

10 minutes with: Joanna Prior, managing director of Penguin General

Publishing chief discusses how the rise of the e-book has affected the industry, the value of a good cover design and why there is no glass ceiling in the sector

joanna prior
Joanna Prior of Penguin Books: 'I don’t believe there is a glass ceiling in publishing.' Photograph: Penguin General Books

Tell us a bit about your role at Penguin and how you got there.


I am the managing director of Penguin General Books, which is one of seven adult divisions within the newly formed Penguin Random House publishing conglomerate. Our authors include novelists Zadie Smith, Colm Toibin, Nick Hornby, John le Carre, Zoe Heller, Jonathan Coe, Jonathan Safran Foer, Mohsin Hamid, Penelope Lively, India Knight, Ali Smith, Dave Eggers, Marina Lewycka and non-fiction writers such as Antony Beevor, Clare Balding, Claire Tomalin and Alain de Botton.


I've been running Penguin General for four years and before that I was marketing and publicity director across all of Penguin Publishing. I've been at Penguin for just over 15 years in total and before that I had a very brief spell as editor of the Sunday Telegraph magazine, was marketing and publicity director at the then small independent publisher Fourth Estate (now part of Harper Collins) and began my career as a book publicist at Heinemann.
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