Harper gets WSJ coverage for noting that in its first five days on sale, Laura Lippman’s I’D KNOW YOU ANYWHERE has sold more ebooks (4,739) than hardcovers (4,000). Frank Albanese says, “This is the first book of ours of any consequence that has sold more e-books than hardcovers in the first week. What we’re seeing now is that if a book gets a good review, it gets a faster lift on the digital side than it does on the physical side because people who have e-readers can buy and read it immediately.”WSJ While bloggers will certainly make something drastic or […]
Archives for August 2010
People, Etc.
Christopher Dufault will rejoin Random House on September 1 in the new position of senior director, international marketing & British Commonwealth sales, based in New York, reporting to Cyrus Kheradi. He was at Random House before moving to Simon & Schuster, where most recently he was director, international sales planning. At Little, Brown Children’s, Melanie Chang has been promoted to vp and executive director of publicity. Sara Zick will join the publicity department on September 1 in the new position of associate director. She was previously publicity manager at Penguin Children’s.
Lagardere Publishing Sales Hold Up As Profits Slide
Lagardere Publishing reported “only a limited fall in net sales” in the first half of the year, down just 4 million euros compared to a year ago at 542 million euros, mostly due to comparisons against “exceptional” Stephenie Meyer sales last year. As for income, they only report recurring EBIT twice a year, which was 101 million euros, compared to 112 million euros a year ago. The company did warn that investors should expect “a sharper drop” in earnings in the second half of the year, both because of lower Meyer sales and a “less favorable than expected outlook” for […]
Bloomsbury Does Better with Publishing than Investments
Sales at Bloomsbury rose 4.5 percent in the first half of the year, to 36.8 million pounds, though pre-tax profit fell by a little more than half, at 949,000 pounds. Profits on the publishing side fell by 23 percent, mostly due to the inclusion of the new Bloomsbury Professional unit (based on their acquisition of law and tax publisher Tottel), “which is typically loss making in the first half of the year.” Investment income on the mountain of residual Harry Potter cash declined much more sharply, down from 842,000 pounds to 180,000 pounds, reaffirming that the company is much better […]
Another Cheap Color “Reader” On the Way, with Kobo Store: I Got Mine from Sharper Image
It’s official: the batch of knockoff eInk ereaders that never appeared this spring and summer has turned itself into a wave of faux-tablet LCD color readers landing this fall. We reported earlier on the two models headed for CVS and Copia’s repositioning of their not-yet-released line, and now Sharper Image has announced their own version of the same concept, the Literati Reader. With a $159 price tag, it’s slated for release in national chains including Best Buy, Macy’s, Kohl’s, and Bed Bath & Beyond. (The units actually come from MerchSource; the Sharper Image brand is just that–a licensable name.) Like […]
BN Proxy Filing Every Bit As Colorful As Burkle’s
Barnes & Noble filed their revised proxy documents with the SEC, angrily accusing investor Ron Burkle of….daring to want to buy more of the company. As asserted before, their largest concern is that Burkle’s Yucaipa and his friends at Aletheia want “to gain creeping control of Barnes & Noble…without paying a control premium.” The company says that raising the limit on their poison pill from 20 percent to 30 percent would allow the two companies to ally in taking over the bookseller. As we have pointed out before, they also question the extent to which Burkle’s other two nominees to […]