Reporting on the first half of the year ending June 30, Quarto revenue decreased by 5% to £41.8m, adjusted EBITDA increased by 14% to £8.4m, adjusted operating profit was down by 6% to £2.1m, and adjusted* pre-tax profit dropped to £0.3m. Publishing segment operating profit rose by 5% to £2.4m on £29.9m revenue (a 2% drop) while Co-Edition segment operating profit declined to £0.5m on £11.8m revenue, a 12% decrease. For the year, revenue was up 3% at £110.7m, adjusted EBITDA increased by 7% to £23.0m, adjusted operating profit was 1% higher at £11.2m, adjusted pre-tax profit was 1% lower […]
Archives for August 2009
Dominick Dunne Dies at 83
Dominick Dunne, the former movie producer who found a second career as a bestselling author and true crime correspondent for Vanity Fair, died earlier today at his home in Manhattan after a long battle with bladder cancer. He was 83. At the time of his death he was putting the finishing touches on his new novel Too Much Money, which Crown is scheduled to publish in December. “Crown has lost a great storyteller, chronicler, and friend in Dominick Dunne, with whom we enjoyed a more than twenty-five year association that included five best-selling novels, two collections of essays, and a […]
Children's Publishers Withold Payments from Bologna Book Fair
Th Bologna Book Fair plans to scale back the 2010 edition to three days (March 23-25) and that has children’s book publishers very unhappy. The Bookseller reports that a group of up to ten publishers are refusing to confirm their booking or make payment until the fair organisers agree to extend the fair back to four days or to reduce the exhibitor’s fees by 25%. A meeting will take place next week between the PA and the Bologna fair organisers to try to resolve the situation.The Bookseller
The Daily Google: EPUB Format, More on the Open Book Alliance
Google Books will make over one million public domain titles available in EPUB format in order “to make these books more accessible by helping people around the world to find and read them in more places.”Google Books Blog The Internet Archive’s Peter Brantley tells the Guardian about the Open Book Alliance, a “hodgepodge” of corporations like Microsoft, Yahoo and Amazon as well as libraries and journalists who oppose the Google Books Settlement. “We see this as an organization that’s really quite heterogeneous in its composition,” he said, “each of [organization] whom, by the way, has very distinct and very specific […]
Kindle Krunching Returns
After an absence of several weeks, we’re back to comparing the Kindle Top 10 versus the new USA Today chart, which now incorporates Kindle sales data. Most of the titles declined on the USAT list with the exception of Ronald Kessler’s In the President’s Secret Service, which posted big gains (reflected in the Kindle sales jump as well.) Here’s our chart, ranking the books according to their position on the Kindle bestseller list, with their USAT ranking and related data indicated first: [D} 4 South of Broad, Pat Conroy (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday)Last week: 2#1 KindleLast week: 1 [D] 28 The […]
People
At Random House Publishing Group, Kristen Fassler has been named Deputy Director, Marketing, reporting to Sanyu Dillon, and Carolyn Schwartz has been appointed VP, Director of Ad/Promo, reporting to Stacey Witcraft. Both begin their positions on September 3. David Inman has been appointed sales and marketing director of Quarto UK, reporting to Ken Fund. Previously he was international sales director for the Octopus Group. J.P. Hunting has joined HarperCollins UK as key account manager for children’s sales. Previously he was the children’s book buyer for Borders UK.