Documents filed with the SEC on Friday indicate that former HarperCollins CEO Jane Friedman has raised $3 million from Bay Area Holdings Inc., a fund of venture capital firm Kohlberg Ventures, for her new company, OpenRoad Integrated Media LLC. Jeff Sharp, an independent movie producer, and Chris Lederer, former CMO at HarperCollins, are listed as executives of OpenRoad, which lists a Spring Street address for its offices. Reiter, Kailas & Rosenblatt represented OpenRoad, described on the law firm’s website as “a start-up entity which is engaged in developing a platform for eBook marketing and publishing.” PW also notes that Sharp […]
Archives for August 2009
Venezuela's Crackdown on Book Imports Hurts Booksellers, Publishers
In March 2008, what was originally seen as a “minor bureaucratic change” to downgrade the import status of books from “essential goods” to requiring government certification of how many copies could be brought in has, according to Publishing Perspectives, begun “gradually choking off the flow of imported books, which make up 80% of the market in Venezuela” and created a “catastrophic” shortage of books. With bestselling titles, even if demand is great, only a select number of copies may be approved at one time and by the time a publisher is allowed to reapply for permission to import additional copies […]
Bloomsbury Earnings Preview: Earnings Bump Predicted
Bloomsbury will release its interim annual results on Thursday, and with upcoming fall releases from authors including John Irving, Margaret Atwood, William Boyd, Heston Blumenthal and Ben Schott, as well as the company’s recent acquisition of law, tax and accountancy publisher Tottel for £10 million, analysts are predicting an uptick in earnings later this year. Malcolm Morgan, of KBC Peel Hunt, said: “Specialist publishing is seen as having more fundamental attractions compared with trade publishing. Demand is more predictable, the origination cost is more controllable and the content more suitable to delivery across multiple media.”Scotsman
Canadian Publishers Express Alarm at High Indigo Returns
After a report in Quill & Quire earlier this month about “higher than normal” returns by Indigo Books & Music this summer, The Bookseller follows up with more information on what one publisher deems a “catastrophic” situation. Carolyn Wood, executive director of the Association of Canadian Publishers (ACP), confirmed that some members had mentioned they were having a hard time with Indigo returns. “I would say it varies between our membership. Some have mentioned it’s been a heavy summer, but others are OK.” She explained that the biggest problem publishers faced was the sudden loss of sales. “It has quite […]
Julia Child's Climb to the Top of the Bestseller List, 48 Years Later
When a book reaches #1 on the New York Times Bestseller List almost 50 years after its initial publication, as Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking did with the August 30 list, naturally news outlets – especially the NYT – are going to take notice and figure out why this would be so, and especially why it would be selling more than 22,000 copies in a given week, more copies than were sold in any full year since the book’s appearance, as per Knopf. “In a month, I’ve sold almost seven times what I sell, typically, in a […]
Fall Forecasts from the AP, NYMag
“Cautious optimism” is the buzzword of the AP’s fall preview, as a fall season crowded with titles (especially literary fiction, not to mention one by someone named Dan Brown) has publishers in a better mood. “It’s not that we’re back to the extremely strong sales of more than a year ago, but we’re trending upward,” S&S CEO Carolyn Reidy said. “After taking our expectations down for so long, we’re finally taking them up.” Or as Left Bank Books co-owner Barry Leibman phrased it, “”We were down 20 percent this summer, which I used to think of as horrible. But we […]