Another sign of the growing importance of audiobooks to the publishing industry is the promotion of longtime audio group president and publisher Amanda D’Acierno to the newly created position of global president of Penguin Random House Audio.
The announcement of D’Acierno’s promotion was made by PRH CEO Nihar Malaviya in an employee memorandum. In her new role, Malaviya wrote, D’Acierno will work to expand PRH’s audio publishing business globally by expanding the scope of the publishing catalog across all genres in both the adult and children’s segments, and also oversee the company’s investments in company-owned recording studios around the world. With her promotion, D’Acierno will join PRH’s global executive committee and will continue to report to Malaviya.
Since becoming president and publisher of PRH Audio in the U.S. in 2008, D’Acierno has led the group “through a period of strong growth,” Malaviya wrote, adding that under D’Acierno’s leadership, the division has increased its annual title production from 500 titles in 2008 to about 2,000 titles today.
In his memo, Malaviya called audio “a significant part of our growth over the past few years” and noted that he expects strong growth to continue. “As we look to the future, the audio business will continue to grow and evolve in many of the countries where we operate, driven by the changing retail landscape and consumer reading preferences, as well as technological developments such as AI,” he wrote.
Given these trends, Malaviya wrote, D’Acierno will “foster closer collaboration across all PRH Audio groups worldwide, serve as a key advisor to local teams across all territories, and continue our successful relationships with our global retail partners, including at Audible, Apple, OverDrive, Google and Spotify.”
At this year’s London Book Fair, D’Acierno took part in a panel discussion on the future of audio, highlighting the potential for growth in other languages such as French and Hindi. She also pointed to the evolving nature of the market: “We all remember when we did a British audio version and then an American English version,” she said. “So I think some of those little differences will change as the market expands and grows.”
