Hello, I'm Rihanna Dillon. Welcome to a bonus episode of The Penguin podcast.

I'm back with another never-before-heard moment from Ask Penguin.

Because we've had so many amazing guests and fascinating moments this series, we couldn't fit them all in.

As host of the Penguin podcast, I have the immense pleasure of meeting some of the brilliant

people behind your favourite books and putting your questions to them. And we get a lot of questions

about what goes on behind the scenes at Penguin. Back in 2024, I was lucky enough to spend

some time with Simon Prosser. He's publishing director at Hamish Hamilton, one of the many

imprints that are part of Penguin, and he's the editor of so many prize-winning writers.

Names like Zadie Smith, Bernardine Evaristo, Ali Smith, Aaron Dutty Roy, the list goes on and on.

Now, I don't know about you, but Editor is a title that I hear a lot, especially recently, on this job, but I'm not always 100% sure what it means on a day-to-day level. So I asked Simon to talk me through a day in the life of an editor. But actually, first, I wanted to find out what exactly is an imprint?

So an imprint is like a label.

So it's like a record label within a conglomerate.

So the Penguin Random House is the conglomerate.

That's divided into division, quite a number of divisions.

I'm part of a division called Penguin General.

And within that division there are, I think, five imprints.

There's Hamish Hamilton, there's Viking, there's Fickory, there's Penguin Life,

and there's actually Sandy Cove, the Irish part of our business as well.

And some of those imprints were started within Penguin.

Some of them like Hamish Hamilton were, I think possibly only Hamish Hamilton, within Penguin General, was started outside.

It was an independent publisher started in 1931, I think it was, by Jamie Hamilton.

It was a sort of posh Scott.

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