In the holiday fiscal second quarter, ending December 31, HarperCollins had sales of $381 million and operating income of $65 million–a considerable improvement from sales of $305 million and a mere $23 million in operating income a year ago. Parent News Corp. says they had “higher sales at the general and the children’s book divisions which were partially offset by higher royalty and manufacturing costs.” It’s the first quarterly improvement in sales after five straight declines (so yes, the bar is lower). Operating income had already turned positive in the first quarter of this year, reported in early November. Two […]
Archives for February 2010
Macmillan Launches A New eBook Price Point Now–At Amazon As Well As BN.com
Buy buttons for Macmillan’s physical books have yet to return at Amazon (at least in any meaningful way), but the publisher quietly launched what may soon be just a remnant of their earlier strategy to keep up the price of ebooks: the “enhanced” edition. Kristin Hannah’s WINTER GARDEN, which released yesterday, was one of the few (if only) Macmillan books you could buy directly from Amazon, which was offering the Kindle version only and not the trade hardcover. But the book carries the curious digital list price of $29.99–three dollars higher than the print book list price. The Amazon information […]
Pershing Square's Ackman on Borders: "We Don't See It As a Likely Bankruptcy."
As part of a segment on CNBC’s Fast Money Tuesday evening, Pershing Square CEO and founder Willam Ackman – Borders’ majority stakeholder and holder of a $42.5 million loan that will come due on April 1 – prognosticated on the retailer’s chances of survival: “I think [bankruptcy] is a low-probability event. The company’s made a lot of progress in last 12 months from operational and a financial point of view” and “really stabilized itself financially.” He later added: “The stock trades as if it’s going to go bankrupt at $1 a share…[but] we’re going to see more when company reports […]
ScrollMotion Signs on Textbook Publishers for iPad Deal
Pearson, McGraw-Hill, Kaplan and HMH are among several textbook publishers that have signed with Scrollmotion to adapt and develop textbooks as applications, test-prep and study guides for the iPad. Scrollmotion will take and adapt digital files provided by publishers for the iPad, and then add extra features, which the WSJ reports “include applications to let students play video, highlight text, record lectures, take printed notes, search the text, and participate in interactive quizzes to test how much they’ve learned and where they may need more work.” To date textbook adoption on e-readers has been slow (as Amazon could attest with […]
People and Announcements
Howard W. Reeves, publisher of Abrams Books for Young Readers and Amulet Books, will become editor-at-large of the company. Following Brendan Deneen’s departure, FinePrint Literary Management has hired Pouya Shahbazian as a literary manager/producer, specializing in book-to-film and TV deals for clients and also running FinePrint Productions, producing and packaging film and television projects. He co-founded ManDown Pictures & Management in 2007 after working at the Broder-Webb-Chervin-Silbermann Agency. CEO of Activision’s Guitar Hero franchise (and before that chief operating officer at Yahoo) Daniel Rosensweig has joined online textbook rental company Chegg.com as president and ceo. At Publishing Technology, Douglas Wright […]
Burkle Complains to Barnes & Noble Board; "Allow me to acquire up to 37%" Stake Like the Riggios
We return to another of the hot topics of recent months: what does investor Ron Burkle and his investor-friends at Aletheia Research want with Barnes & Noble now that they have built 19 percent and 17 percent blocks of the company’s stock, respectively? Are they looking to take control of the company, force it private, or simply overthrow the Riggio family from control? Yesterday Burkle filed with the SEC to indicate the acquisition of more shares, accompanied by a letter that he sent to the BN board. He makes it clear that he would like to “wag[e] a successful proxy […]