Effective July 1, the University of Pennsylvania Press (Penn Press) will manage the distribution of Wharton School Press’s (WSP) frontlist and backlist titles, expanding the channels through which WSP sells and providing strategic sales and marketing support related to distribution.
Earlier in 2021, WSP, the book publishing division of The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, designated Penn Press as its agent for sublicensing agreements, and this new development will authorize Penn Press to play an active role in the worldwide distribution of the business books brand. Among the services Penn Press will provide in this collaboration are digital asset management, warehousing, and marketing to all retail and wholesale channels. In addition to their physical distribution centers in North America and the UK and printing facilities spanning three continents, Penn Press plans to use premiere online platforms to increase WSP’s sales reach.
“As Wharton School Press celebrates its 10th year in operation, we are thrilled to build on our roots in digital publishing to reach a new level of growth through the partnership with Penn Press, an organization with more than 130 years of publishing experience,” says WSP director and publisher Shannon Berning. “This partnership will enable WSP to expand the availability and impact of the business books we publish by Wharton faculty and other leading experts.”
The first book to be newly published under this distribution partnership is Wharton professor Peter Cappelli’s The Future of the Office: Work from Home, Remote Work, and the Hard Choices We All Face (Wharton School Press, August 10, 2021). This quick-to-market book, which will address the pandemic-related return-to-office and work-from-home issues facing organizations and workers globally, epitomizes the fast-reading, accessible translation of research for which Wharton School Press is known.
The partnership between the two presses is the latest in Penn Press’s longstanding history of collaborations with University institutions such as the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, the Penn Institute for Urban Research, the Arthur Ross Gallery, the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, and the Penn Museum for Archaeology and Anthropology. With both publishing companies working to promote scholarly research and innovative thinking, the partnership will allow for both University brands to increase their global reach and readership.
“This agreement between Wharton School Press and Penn Press is a milestone for both of our organizations,” notes Penn Press director Mary Francis. “This is an exciting and advantageous partnership that highlights the overlap of our shared missions: to publish and disseminate the timely and path-breaking scholarship that the University is producing.”
