Deal Reports Just e-mail to deals@PublishersMarketplace if you aren’t using the online form linked below. Report a deal using the online form The Key As usual, the handy key to our Lunch deal categories. While all reports are always welcome, those that include a category will generally receive a higher listing when it comes time to put them all together. “nice deal” $1 – $49,000 “very nice deal” $50,000 – $99,000 “good deal” $100,000 – $250,000 “significant deal” $251,000 – $499,000 “major deal” $500,000 and up FICTION Debut Susan Gilbert-Collins’s COOKING WITH THE INSECURE CHEF, about a young woman […]
Archives for November 2008
Carson Proposal
David Vigliano is shopping a proposal from Johnny Carson’s attorney/agent/manager Henry Bushkin, “painting him as a sad, depressed man who cheated on his wives, was tormented by his mom and refused to visit his son in a mental hospital.” So much for client-attorney privilege. Bushkin’s lament: “At one time we did everything together. At the end, he treated me like everybody else – like I didn’t exist. At the end, it was like I was an irritant. In many respects, he was the saddest guy I ever knew.”NY Post, of course
Lagardere Was Up
We heard back from Lagardere’s head of communications and our question about their third quarter earnings report has been cleared up: a typo mislabelled the year in one column of the publishing unit’s results. For the just-reported third quarter, Lagardere Publishing recorded sales of 655 million euros, which was indeed a slight increase of just over 1 percent from 648 million euros a year ago.
WorldCatFight
OCLC posted a new policy for the transfer of WorldCat biobliographic records recently that quickly provoked a worried reaction from community members. Terry Reese at the Oregon State University library posted concerns that the service was trying to claim ownership over data contributed by individual libraries: “What OCLC has going for them is the WorldCat database that has been created by publicly funded institutions (like the Library of Congress, universities and public libraries)…. What we have here is OCLC looking to claim ownership over metadata within WorldCat and outside of WorldCat – and I don’t believe that this is something […]
People and More
Chief executive of Oxford University Press Henry Reece has announced he will retire in 11 months, after 11 years in the position. A search is being organized, and the university hopes to announce a replacement next spring. With sales of close to 500 million pounds a year, it is the largest university press in the world. The National Association of Independent Publisher Representatives’ Call Report newsletter notes that Workman Publishing has purchased the Como Sales group, covering Northeastern territory (via Shelf Awareness). Workman’s Steve Pace is running the organization, functioning as house reps the company, though it’s possible they will […]
What Schwalbe's Cooking
The NYT provided advance publicity this weekend for former Hyperion editor-in-chief Will Schwalbe’s new venture, Cookstr.com. Katie Workman is both editor-in-chief and chief marketing officer. Going live later this month, it presents recipes from chefs who are also well-known cookbook authors (and often Hyperion authors, such as Nigella Lawson and Jaime Oliver), and aims to sell print copies of those cookbooks as well. Schwalbe says they will start with about 2,500 recipes from 100 cookbooks. The article says that Nielsen Bookscan recorded cookbook sales for 2007 of 13.9 million copies, down almost 7 percent from 14.9 million copies sold in […]