Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services lowered their debt ratings on Education Media & Publishing Group and its Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishers to CCC from B-. They note “the rating outlook is negative…. In addition, we revised the recovery rating on Houghton Mifflin’s first-lien credit facilities to 3, indicating our expectation of average (50% to 70%) recovery for lenders in the event of a payment default, from 2.”Summary
Archives for February 2009
What Should BEA Do?
BEA show director responds to some of the chatter (and complaints) about the recently-announced decision to keep BEA in New York and change to a mid-week rather than a weekend show. “This fall we went through a process of recreating the event as if there never had been a BEA before… The location seemed like an easy choice, you’d base it in the capital of the publishing world, just like the biggest gaming show is in Vegas and the auto show is in Detroit.” As for dates, “after booksellers, the majority of attendees are professionals and they are not typically […]
Stanza to Support Adobe PDF and Protected ePub
As anticipated, Lexcycle’s Stanza Reader for iPhone/iPod Touch will license PDF and EPUB rendering technologies as well as support for Adobe’s eBook content protection technology. The capability will launch “next quarter.” That opens up a significant world of books to the platform, comprising “a wide variety of commercially published eBooks from major publishers.” And it contrasts to Kindle 2, which still does not offer native support for PDF files. In a presentation this morning at TOC, Lexcycle’s Neelan Choksi said “the one thing we’ve focused on from day one is that it’s all about the readers.” A survey of users […]
Borders to Cut Music Further
Borders to pushing music and DVD suppliers to change their trading terms, Billboard reports. “At the best, it wants vendors to go to scan-based trading payment terms, which means paying for product when it is sold…or it wants 365-days ‘dating,’ the term for payment scheduling. At the least, it wants more dating for slower moving titles. Sources say Borders is giving vendors about 10 days to come back to the chain with proposals. Borders plans a similar move for video, although its slightly less drastic than its plans for music.” (NB that a fight over scan-based trading is part of […]
Grisham Coming Soon to eBooks
Agent David Gernert tells the WSJ that he is close to finalizing an agreement with Random House to make John Grisham’s 22 novels available in electronic form for the first time. “There was a period when John and I felt it was a good idea to watch the world of e-books evolve before diving in. Now that it’s a more mature marketplace, he will be available very soon in all digital formats.”WSJ
Harper Children's to Close Bowen Line
In another paring at HarperCollins, Susan Katz announced that “to further streamline our publishing operations, we will close The Bowen Press.” Katz says “as the book world becomes increasingly challenging, we must continue to be extremely cost conscious.” The unit will also move offices, to join the rest of Harper at 10 E. 53 street. Spokesperson Eric Crum says there is no firm date for the move yet, since they are upgrading the offices first.