Inside the Australian and New Zealand book industry

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US staff at PRH, Macmillan to work from home; Madrid Book Fair postponed

In response to the global coronavirus pandemic, the US offices of Penguin Random House and Macmillan will remain open but staff have been instructed to work from home.

In an email on Friday, 13 March, PRH US CEO Madeline McIntosh told staff at the publisher’s offices in New York, Colorado Springs and Emoryville to ‘plan for today to be your last day in the office, for the time being’.

‘In addition to keeping yourselves safer, this will also keep the facilities safe for those who do need to be here. It will also help lighten the load on local infrastructures and help slow the spread of the virus,’ said McIntosh.

Macmillan said that its US offices were ‘shifting to a full-time work-from-home environment’ starting from Monday, 16 March, ‘out of an abundance of caution’.

In the UK, PRH UK is currently trialling remote working for London-based workers, ‘to ensure we are best placed to manage this should it become necessary’, while a spokesperson for HarperCollins UK said the publisher was preparing for increased numbers of people working remotely ‘if and when that becomes necessary’.

Meanwhile, more industry events, including the Madrid, Bogota and Tunis International Book Fairs, have been postponed due to coronavirus.

 

Category: International news