Following in the footsteps of its sister company in the UK, Penguin Random House (PRH) South Africa has chosen BiblioSuite publishing software to elevate its product management workflows and improve communication with business partners and retailers. Prompted by Amazon’s arrival in South Africa in 2024, the move will help PRH South Africa to save time and resources in the creation, management and distribution of its product data; improve communication with business partners; and enhance the quality and timeliness of its metadata to maximize online discovery and sales throughout the region.
The Requirement
Replacing its proprietary system, PRH South Africa needed a publishing solution that would centralize and streamline its bibliographic workflows and the dissemination of its ONIX feeds—both for its in-house titles and those of the PRH imprints it publishes across South Africa, including Cornerstone, DK, Ebury, Egmont and Transworld.
The Solution
Selecting the same, highly-configurable solution as Penguin Random House UK, Hachette, Macmillan Publishers, Faber, Bloomsbury, and many more world-leading publishers, BiblioSuite is empowering the team at PRH South Africa to:
Compile enhanced metadata in ONIX format with the hope to boost online sales—increasing visibility and accessibility of its data across departments, and synchronizing the data to form a single source of truth for all.
Create and send tailored ONIX feeds to Amazon and other business partners and retailers, to increase discoverability of its products online and ensure they’re displayed as they should be with all advanced data sets and assets, including ‘search inside the book’.
Integration with PRH UK — enhancing connectivity and reporting internally by enabling the team to import ONIX data from PRH UK’s system—saving both publishers a lot of time, minimizing manual effort when dealing with reports, and eliminating human error.
“BiblioSuite was definitely the right choice for Penguin Random House South Africa. With thanks to the Biblio system and the help of the Virtusales team, we are one of the first publishers in South Africa to now have a live feed with Amazon. BiblioSuite has streamlined our processes, making it so easy to tailor and disseminate our feeds, fortifying our business relationships for the future!”
Estienne van Wyk, Head of Data & Analysis, Penguin Random House South Africa
“It’s been fantastic working with the team! BiblioSuite has enabled Penguin Random House South Africa to fast-track the supply of quality data to Amazon, to boost discoverability and sales.”
Nathan West, Project Manager, Virtusales Publishing Solutions
About Penguin Random House South Africa
Penguin Random House comprises the adult and children’s fiction and non-fiction print and digital trade book publishing businesses of Penguin and Random House in the U.K., U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India and South Africa, Penguin’s trade publishing activity in Asia, as well as Dorling Kindersley worldwide, and Random House’s companies in Spain, Mexico, Argentina, Uruguay, Colombia, and Chile.
Penguin Random House acquired full ownership of Random House Struik in December 2013, and so began the integration of Penguin and Random House in South Africa. Penguin Books South Africa and Random House Struik officially merged in January 2015 to form Penguin Random House South Africa. The merger combined the strengths of both companies, while still maintaining the distinctive characters of all the great local and international imprints which operated under the Penguin and Random House Struik umbrellas.
We have an ongoing commitment to protect the editorial freedom of our authors, publishers and imprints, and to maintain the breadth and diversity of publishing for readers of all ages. We are also very committed to supporting as broad a range of bookselling as possible so our readers can access our content across a multitude of platforms and channels.
About BiblioSuite
BiblioSuite is the most advanced suite of publishing software for optimizing workflows. It empowers publishers by enabling them to manage all their products—from books, journals and articles, to Open Access publications, eBooks, digital platforms and beyond—in a single system. Being content-led, the system allows publishers to fully utilize their IP and maximize their income (regardless of the publishing formats chosen).
BiblioSuite is proven to help publishing houses of all shapes and sizes to save time, reduce duplication of efforts and increase access to key information, documents and media files company-wide.
By choosing the BiblioSuite’s comprehensive system, your publishing house will be able to:
Manage multiple formats including books, eBooks, audiobooks, journals, OA publications, packs which include non-book products, merchandise and more;
Easily maintain high-quality metadata and enhanced ONIX feeds;
Control and record all aspects of safety-testing (if applicable);
Create, store and distribute all your digital assets in a single system;
Create costings and schedules for production;
Raise purchase orders within the BiblioSuite system;
Manage contacts, marketing and publicity in a single, comprehensive and integrated system;
Generate and authorize contracts with software that enables full rights management;
Handle complex royalty calculations and payments, using multiple currencies and generate statements on demand;
Improve operational performance, save money on excess stock, and spot new revenue streams;
And much, much more.
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