Alongside Simon & Schuster’s new Author and Agent portals, reported yesterday, Random House and Hachette Book Group told the NYT they are working on similar efforts. Random House’s Stuart Applebaum “said a date had not yet been set, but that the site would provide sales data in all formats, in addition to marketing tools and related information.” Sophie Cottrell indicated Hachette’s portal would launch “sometime in 2012.” That’s the news portion of the Times article. The rest underscores the narrative thread that will apparently drive NYT publishing coverage for the foreseeable future: everything is a response to Amazon. Publishers sharing […]
Archives for October 2011
Accounting Gift Provides Borders With One Month of Profit
Borders’ latest monthly operating report is testimony to the value of gift cards for any bookseller. In its final month of liquidation the company was able to book the value of all unredeemed gift cards–worth $156.2 million. Thanks to that gift of accounting, they recorded an operating profit for the first time…in a long time. Net income for the month was $66.1 million.
Another Frontier for Kindle: Japan
Amazon is moving quickly on their expansion of the Kindle platform into multiple languages. Both the Nikkei business daily and Jiji press in Japan report that the company is close to launching a Japanese Kindle store, “hoping to start the business in time for the Christmas sales season.” Japanese publishers were understandably concerned about ebook pricing, but Nikkei says Amazon has been discussing “a framework in which the timing and scope of price cuts would be discussed with publishers in advance.” Japan’s electronic content market is already estimated to comprise $850 million, which is considered small since that’s about three […]
McGraw-Hill Misses Estimates, As K-12 Sales Are Hit
McGraw-Hill reported sales and earnings below expectations and pared back their full-year earnings forecast this morning. Sales at McGraw-Hill Education, which will be kicked out of the corporate nest next year to stand on its own, fell 11.1 percent, to $937 million. Adjusted operating profit fell by the same percentage, at $314.7 million. The decline came almost entirely from the School Education group in particular, where declining state textbook adoptions drove a 21.4 percent drop in sales to $420.4 million. Higher ed and professional sales were “essentially flat.”
Cain Campaign Buys the Book
Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain is helping his book sales the old-fashioned way–using campaign funds to buy copies, apparently at full price. The campaign bought the books from Cain’s own independent company, THE New Voice, Inc., which sells the books at list price of $25. The $36,511 reported spent on books would buy roughly 1,450 undiscounted copies–though the amounts are a little fuzzy, since the campaign paid Cain’s company for other booklets and services as well, and keeps revising the total amounts paid. The FEC has ruled in the past that a campaign can “purchase copies of [a] book from […]
eNews: Kobo’s Tablet, Berkley/NAL’s Digital Imprint, S&S’s Author Portal, 11 Million iPads, Google’s Bookshelf, and More
Kobo is joining the ereader/tablet movement with their just-announced Vox, dubbed “the People’s eReader.” Selling for $199.99 and shipping as of October 28, it runs Android 2.3 and promises easy web browsing, e-mail, and access to “over 15,000 hot music, video and game apps.” It weighs 14.2 ounces (lighter than Nook Color or Kindle Fire), and a vibrating Kobo pulse icon signifies pages with more social activity. Kobo says it comes with three free color ebooks. Berkley/NAL has announced a digital imprint (actually they call it an “e-initial eBook imprint”) launching in January 2012, InterMix. The line will debut with […]