Penguin Australia
Penguin Australia is Publisher of the Year Second Year in a Row
Penguin Australia was named Publisher of the Year for the second year in a row at the 2009 Australian Book Industry Awards. In a remarkable result across the Australian publishing program, Penguin won nine of the twelve categories in which it had titles shortlisted. These included:
Book of the Year: Younger Children: Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes by Mem Fox, illustrated by Helen Oxenbury.
International Success Award: Penguin for Sonya Hartnett
Biography of the Year: The Lucy Family Alphabet by Judith Lucy
General Non-Fiction Book of the Year: The Tall Man by Chloe Hooper
General Non-Fiction Book of the Year: The Tall Man by Chloe Hooper.
Penguin also won Marketing Campaign of the Year for the Popular Penguins campaign and United Book Distributors (Pearson Australia's warehouse) won Distributor of the Year.
Vampire Academy Series Tops 250,000 Copies Sold in Australia
Richelle Mead's Vampire Academy series has now sold more than 250,000 copies in Australia. After seeing the terrific success Razorbill was having with this series in the US, Penguin Australia acquired rights and quickly identified VA as one of its key series/brands for 2009. An aggressive year-long marketing campaign helped underpin the sales targets, which included a dedicated online engagement strategy for the series, a major author tour to coincide with the publication of Blood Promise and an aggressive advertising campaign targeting viewers of the hit TV shows Vampire Diaries and True Blood.
After steadily growing the series all year, Blood Promise rocketed onto the bestsellers charts, debuting at number #1 on the children's Bookscan charts (the first title to knock Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series from the top spot) and #3 overall. Blood Promise has now sold over 40,000 copies through Bookscan. And six of the top 10 search terms at penguin.com.au relate directly to VA and in the six months since it launched, penguin.com.au/vampireacademy has grown from 3,000 unique visitors in its first month to 31,000 unique visitors in October and now accounts for 34% of all search traffic for the series.
Chloe Hooper's The Tall Man Wins Nine Major Literary Awards
Penguin Australia's The Tall Man by Chloe Hooper collected an astonishing array of awards during 2009, cementing its position as one of Australia's most critically acclaimed books of recent times. To date, Chloe has won nine major literary awards including the non-fiction prize at the NSW Premier's Literary Awards, Victorian Premier's Literary Awards and Queensland Premier's Literary Awards. Chloe won the Davitt Award for True Crime, the Ned Kelly Award for non-fiction, The Melbourne Prize for non-fiction and was named the inaugural winner of the John Button Prize. Chloe also collected the non-fiction prize at The Indie Book of the Year and won the General Non-Fiction award at the Australian Book Industry Awards. During the year, The Tall Man was also shortlisted at The Age Book of the Year, the Human Rights Award, The Walkley Awards and the Prime Minister's Literary Award.
Popular Penguins Sales March Past the Magical Million Mark
The Popular Penguin series has been a sales triumph in Australia, with summer marking a major milestone with the one millionth copy invoiced. Fifty new titles were added to the series in July including nine from Australian writers. The series has been universally applauded by the industry and by readers who have embraced not only the iconic nature of the series, but also the opportunity to discover the classics at an affordable price. Such is the popularity of the series that Penguin now has over 10,000 fans on its Popular Penguin Facebook page – 5,000 of these joining after the 50 new books hit stores in July. As of the end of November, there have been 140,000 unique visitors to popularpenguins.com.
Niche Media names Penguin as the ones to watch in Social Media
Penguin Australia continues to lead the Australian publishing industry with its social media activities. Our marketing team hosted Australia's first live Twitter Q&A event with Alain de Botton in May. We also became the first Australian publisher to launch a YouTube documentary series on its writers in September and we currently host Australia's biggest author fan page on Facebook, with Bryce Courtenay's page attracting 20,000 fans and growing. We have recently appointed a social engagement coordinator – another first for the Australian publishing industry – to oversee our growing social media presence which includes over 4,000 followers on Twitter, over 8,000 friends on Penguin's Facebook account and a YouTube channel which now ranks in the top 100 most watched in Australia.
Penguin Australia's willingness to engage with social media was highlighted at a recent Australian Interactive Media Industry night, when the Digital Director of Niche Media (publishers of Marketing Magazine in Australia) named Penguin as the company to watch in this space. One of our most successful and playful campaigns — for Mem Fox's Where is the Green Sheep? plush and boardbook — was submitted for best social media campaign at the AMIA awards:
http://www.youtube.com/user/PenguinAustralia#p/u/2/MoDimmG3y3Y
http://www.facebook.com/PenguinBooksAustralia
http://twitter.com/PenguinBooksAus/
http://www.youtube.com/user/PenguinAustralia