Penguin Random House Two-Day Transit Program to Include Penguin New Releases, Backlist

Distribution centers to expedite account orders on weekends

This week, Penguin Random House (PRH) announced that, for the first time, Penguin adult and children’s print new releases, frontlist, and backlist will be part of the company’s annual Two-Day Transit holiday shipping program.The initiative also includes titles from Crown Publishing Group, Random House, Knopf Doubleday, Random House Children’s Books, and Penguin Random House Audio titles, across all physical formats, as well as titles from all Penguin Random House Publisher Services (PRHPS) clients.

The 2015 program kicks off this week and runs through January 31.

Orders received in the Penguin Random House order system by 3:00 p.m. EST will ship no later than the following business day, with transit time, barring inclement weather, of no more than two days. Titles will ship from PRH’s Westminster, Maryland, and Crawfordsville, Indiana, distribution centers. Both have added weekend shifts so that title orders received on Friday and Saturday throughout the pre-holiday and year-end periods can be fulfilled by their staffs more quickly than in previous years.

“Thanks to our successful completion of this year’s distribution center and systems post-merger integrations, we are thrilled to finally be offering Penguin books, as well as complete frontlist and backlist titles from Random House, to our two-day participants,” said Jaci Updike, president, Penguin Random House sales. “We believe faster replenishment will continue to be an enormous help to our customers’ sell-through in November and December, as our in-demand titles will not only be in stock, but also can be highly visible to consumers through in-store display.”

Ruth Liebmann, PRH vice president, account marketing, added, “This year’s Penguin Random House holiday rallying cry is ‘two days from our dock to your door.’ Booksellers tell us they love that our initiative enables them to spend less time in the backroom worrying about levels on our titles, and more time on the selling floor, assisting and hand-selling to their customers.”