Archives for January 2005

Two Changes at the Top: Zacharius Succeeds Father, and Lever Moves to Sterling Marcus Leaver, CEO of the UK-based Chrysalis Books Group, is joining Sterling Publishing as of April 1 in the new position of evp and COO. Sterling CEO Charles Nurnberg says in statement, “Marcus will manage our growing financial and strategic demands, as well as our day-to-day business operations. I have gotten to know Marcus well over the last three years and know that his talent, energy and enthusiasm will benefit the entire company. His international experience will give us a distinct advantage, as we focus on developing […]

BAM Recovers for Good Holiday After a weak, storm-challenged third quarter, Books-A-Million bounced back with a comparable store sales gain of 2.9 percent in the final nine weeks of the calendar year. BAM registered $114.1 million in sales for the period. Sales for the first 11 months of their fiscal year stand at $441.1 million, with comp stores up 2.6 percent. “Because of our strong performance during the holiday season,” the company raised their earnings forecast by a penny per share. Press release AMS Sales Volume Will Drop as Borders Mass Market Business Ends Advanced Marketing Services announced that their […]

Holtzbrinck to Give Free Freight Holtzbrinck will move to free freight on shipping for books from all of its trade imprints and distributed trade clients, effective this November. President of the sales division Alison Lazarus says in an announcement, “Our customers have been asking for this, and our volume has reached a point where it is now possible to make this change. We believe it will help us remain competitive and allow us to have more consistent marketplace distribution for our titles.” The company notes that mass market titles have already been shipping free freight. Holtzbrinck college text book companies […]

The 2 Percent Solution Numbers should be pure, but how they are interpreted seems to vary widely, depending on both mood and context. In a holiday sales season that started with a brief flash of exuberance and then quickly fell flat, companies like Wal-Mart showing sales gains of up to three percent suddenly went from terrible to pretty good. All of this is just preamble for holiday results announced by Barnes & Noble. For the nine-week stretch leading up to January 1, comparable sales at their superstores were up 2 percent, to $1.04 billion overall. On the one hand, that’s […]

Sorry We had a number of computer problems yesterday, which led to our unusual “resend.” As a result, our Collins story ran in the latter edition only, so it’s repeated below in case you didn’t read it. Whitbread Winners The Whitbread category winners have been named, with the overall prize winner to be declared on January 25. Susan Clarke failed to win an award yet again for JONATHAN STRANGE & MR. NORRELL, though the UK press still treats it as a “surprise” every time. Bookies have made Orange winner Andrea Levy the favorite for the top prize. It’s the third […]

More Movement Martin P. Levin is returning home to Cowan, Liebovitz & Latman, to co-manage publishing mergers and acquisitions with Robert Halper and serve again as Counsel. Levin had been at Cowan ever since he retired from the Times Mirror Company in 1984, though he spent the last year working at The van Tulleken Company. While at van Tulleken, Levin is credited with being the “prime mover” in the recent sale of Walker & Co. to Bloomsbury. Levin says in a statement, While I enjoyed working in the international arena, I found that I could be most helpful to clients […]