Archives for December 2006

AMS Files for Voluntary Bankruptcy Unable to secure new ongoing financing and with its previous loan facility expiring, troubled Advanced Marketing Services (AMS) filed a voluntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition yesterday. As part of the filing, the company has in place $75 million in debtor-in-possession financing from Wells Fargo Foothill, subject to the bankruptcy court’s […]

Briefs For CEOs still in need of some year-end remarks to share with employees, Macmillian head Richard Charkin has crafted an all-purpose address: “It’s been a great year for us in spite of a number of market difficulties. Underlying sales and profits are at record highs (allowing for exchange differences, changes in GAAP, varying retail […]

Schedule Notes This is the part where we’re supposed to explain our holiday schedule, except that we never really know what our publication habits will be like for the next couple of weeks. Some things are certain: we’ll have a weekly deal round-up coming soon as usual, and PublishersMarketplace.com remains live all the time — […]

Harry Has A Name J.K . Rowling announced today on her website the title of her still undelivered 7th book: HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS. More Lists USA Today does “something unusual by choosing a novel that was published last year as our Book of the Year”: The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, by Kim Edwards. […]

No Merriness at Waterstone’s A trading update from HMV on the 12 week period ending December 16 confirms the continuing bad news for chain booksellers in the UK, as same-store sales at Waterstone’s fell yet again by 3.7 percent. The company blames “continuing promotional activity in the book market” (e.g. deep discounts on frontlists aren’t […]

Good Quarter for Scholastic Better margins and improvement at their school book clubs, book fairs and continuity programs helped Scholastic to 6 percent sales growth in their second quarter, to $735.5 million, with net income up 12 percent to $75 million. In the children’s book publishing and distribution unit, sales were $443 million — up […]