In a Monday bankruptcy court filing, Nebraska Book Company said they have not been to secure their planned exit financing of $250 million yet. A hearing to confirm their reorganization plan scheduled for October 4 has been moved to October 27. The company said lenders were citing “various macroeconomic indicators, including a tightening of capital markets, as possible concerns with the debtors’ procuring the exit financing at this time.” Borders reported another $65.9 million in operating losses on sales of just $13.7 million for the month of August. (“Other revenue”, however, was $126.8 million, nearly double the $57.6 million from […]
Archives for September 2011
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Kelli Martin has joined Amazon Publishing in Seattle as senior acquisitions editor at Montlake Romance. Most recently, she was a senior editor at Harlequin, and has also held editorial positions at HarperCollins and Disney-Hyperion. Penguin Group publishing coordinator Matthew Boyd has been promoted to publishing manager and manager of special marketing initiatives. He “will continue to look for innovative ways to promote Penguin’s books, processes to better communicate information between imprints and departments, and partnerships to help Penguin Group reach new audiences.” Kate Gales has joined Simon & Schuster as a senior publicist. Previously she worked at Overlook Press. Literary […]
eNews: Will Facebook “Like” Reading?; Color Purple to Open Road; and More
Facebook is expected to make significant announcements at Thursday’s f8 developer conference about integrating media into the site, including “a huge package of wide-ranging news, video and music partnerships, and a structure for sharing content activity inside and outside of Facebook.” AllThingsD reports that the motto for the event is, “Read. Watch. Listen.” The “read” theme may apply more to news (Yahoo is said to be among the “publisher” partners)–though Tech Crunch says the “like” button will get more nuanced, with the addition of “Read,” “Listened” and “Watch” buttons (plus one called “Want”). ATD TC Open Road has licensed ebook […]
The Posthumous Files: James Cain, Reynolds Price, and Gerald Schoenfeld
In the ample flow of deal news, this week’s reports include a trio of posthumous publications: Hard Case Crime will publish James M. Cain‘s THE COCKTAIL WAITRESS, a previously unpublished manuscript that he was still working on upon his death in 1977. Founder and editor Charles Ardai told the NYT he was tipped off to the manuscript’s existence by Max Allan Collins, but it took him five years to obtain a copy and several years more to convince Cain’s estate to let him publish the book, which will appear as a hardcover in fall 2012. NYT Scribner will publish a […]
Bookselling: Two-and-A-Half Openings, and Two Closings
Quincy Books in Quincy, IL will open in space formerly occupied by Waldenbooks. The store is owned by Cowley Distributing, which operates six other stores in Central Missouri and bought two additional Borders properties as well as the one in Quincy. Quincy Herald-Whig New and used shop Ugly Dog Books will open in Attleboro, VT, with owner Kim Ward Storch committing to support three local charities. For every hardcover purchase of $8, customers can choose which of those charities will receive $4 from that purchase. The shop’s grand opening is set for October 8. Attleboro Patch Books-A-Million will close an […]
Slight Wait on Borders IP Sales
The hearing to approve the auctions of Borders’ intellectual property assets set for today has been postponed to Thursday afternoon at 2:00. In the meantime, Barnes & Noble continues to decline to comment on what they purchased, though court filings so far imply the bookseller is acquiring almost everything that was up for sale (including domestic rights to the Borders names and web URLs, along with the customers lists to the extent that the privacy policy allows their sale and reuse) except for licenses to various Borders’ trademarks in other territories. Under the approved auction rules, Borders is supposed to […]