Pearson won’t report its preliminary annual earnings until February 27 but Thursday the company provided a short trading update indicating that for the year as a whole, Pearson generated approximately £2 billion in digital revenues and approximately £600m in revenues in emerging markets. They also expect to exceed their full year earnings guidance by 10 percent (with the original forecast being 83p per share), attributing the good news to “rapid growth in digital services, our expanding position in developing economies and the continuing transformation of our business portfolio.” Penguin’s results are said to be “strong” during the holidays, with expectations […]
Archives for January 2012
Supreme Court Upholds 1994 Law that Put Some Foreign Works Back Under Copyright
By a 6 to 2 vote, the Supreme Court upheld a 1994 law extending copyright protection in the US to works under copyright in other countries that are part of the Berne Convention, in the case Golan v. Holder. The challenge was brought by a group of orchestra conductors, musicians, and publishers who lost access to works that had been in the public domain and went back under copyright after the law was passed. The law in question “mainly applies to works first published abroad between 1923 and 1989.” Congress was essentially required by the World Trade Organization to amend […]
People, Etc.
Cambridge University Press chief executive since 2002 Stephen Bourne will relinquish his position in April–but will stay with the organization thereafter as president, “focusing on international relations and helping the new management team with a range of transitional matters.” He says, “Those who know me well will recognise that this is a momentous step for me…. I look forward to continuing to work with them in achieving a smooth transition to a new model by which the Press will continue its remarkable balancing act between prosperity and outstanding service to a global public.” At Penguin Press, Virginia Smith Younce has been […]
Guessing Bertelsmann’s Results; Adding Grain of Salt
As often happens, ahead of Bertelsmann actually announcing their annual results, Germany’s Manager Magazin is claiming to report what’s in store. Bear in mind the publication has been wrong before in their pre-reporting (which is amusing, since Bertelsmann’s Gruner + Jahr owns part of the magazine). What they claim is that Bertelsmann will miss their own expectations, with sales up 2 percent for the year and profits falling slightly, by 0.9 percent, to 650 million euros. They also claim that sales at Random House have fallen to “approximately 1.7 billion euros” and EBIT will be down about 5 percent at […]
Coming Soon: Baseball Novel From Grisham; Picture Book from Jill Biden; and More
Doubleday announced an April 10 publication date for John Grisham‘s next novel CALICO JOE, set within the world of major league baseball in 1973. USA TODAY Simon & Schuster Children’s will release DON’T FORGET NANA, GOD BLESS OUR TROOPS, a picture book by vice president Joe Biden’s wife Jill Biden, on June 5. The AP reports the book, illustrated by Raul Colon, is “told from the point of view of granddaughter Natalie Biden and a tribute to soldiers and their families.” In a brief interview Biden said: “I really feel that you write your best about what you know best…That’s […]
eNews: Another Textbook Reader (From Chegg); eBooks Are 28% of Sourcebooks’ Sales; Cemetery Dance’s Digital Subscription; and More
Taking advantage of interest around Apple’s press conference tomorrow, textbook rental company Chegg is wading into the morass of too many proprietary ereading platforms for students with yet another product. Their cloud-based eTextbook Reader is HTML5-based, developed by 3D3R, an engineering team recently acquired by Chegg. The app is currently optimized for iPads and computers, though the company says other platforms are on the way. Their product uses publisher-supplied PDFs, and the company says they have about 40,000 textbooks available from all of the major publishers. (The WSJ says Kno claims about 150,000 titles, with options to either purchase or […]