Media Decoder Blog: At Random House, Employees Will Enjoy 5,000 Shades of Green

Random House had its corporate Christmas party on Wednesday night in New York, and word is that Santa likes bondage. A lot.

Markus Dohle, the chief executive of Random House, promised employees — from top editors to warehouse workers — a $5,000 bonus to celebrate a profitable year. The cheering went on for minutes, according to people in attendance.

Call it 5,000 shades of green.

This year, Random House had the good fortune to publish E. L. James’s “Fifty Shades of Grey,” about an inexperienced college student who falls in love with an older man with a taste for trying her up and whipping her, among other delights. The book has topped the New York Times paperback best-seller list for 37 weeks and counting. The sequels “Fifty Shades Darker” and “Fifty Shades Freed” have been in the top five for a similar amount of time.

The e-books have been best sellers even longer.

Also, Random House has had other big best sellers including “Gone Girl,” a mystery by Gillian Flynn that has sold over one million copies; “Wild” by Cheryl Strayed; and John Grisham’s latest, “The Racketeer.”

The bonuses will be issued in the next paycheck. To be eligible for the complete bonus, employees must have worked a full year at the company; everyone else will receive a prorated gift.

Stuart Applebaum, a spokesman for Random House, a division of the German conglomerate Bertelsmann, confirmed that several thousand American employees would be covered.

The first book in the “Grey” series was originally published by a small house in Australia. But it was acquired by Vintage, a Random House division, at the beginning of the year and has been a publishing phenomenon almost ever since. According to Random House, the book has sold more than 35 million copies in the United States.

A version of this article appeared in print on 12/07/2012, on page B2 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Cheers for Random House In a ‘Fifty Shades’ Bonus.

Article source: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/06/at-random-house-employees-will-enjoy-5000-shades-of-green/?partner=rss&emc=rss