Amazon continues to grow sales and produce very little income, reporting revenues of $13.18 billion for their first quarter (up 34 percent) and net income of $130 million (down 35 percent). North American media sales of $2.197 billion were up 17 percent, and international media sales of $2.513 billion rose 21 percent. The press release leads by trumpeting having persuaded authors of 130,000 KDP titles to make their works exclusive to Amazon so that Prime members can borrow them for free. In the investor q&a Thursday night, cfo Thomas Szkutak reiterated of the recent DOJ action that “we do think […]
Archives for April 2012
What Judge Denise Cote’s Past Rulings May Say About The eBook Price Fixing Case
When the Department of Justice sued Apple and the “Agency Five” publishers, they requested the case be presided over by Southern District Court of New York federal judge Denise Cote, since she was already hearing the proposed class action lawsuit that merged a number of actions in New York and California. We thought it might be instructive to look at some of the key cases Judge Cote has ruled on since she was appointed as a federal judge in 1994 that may provide some insight into how she might approach the ebook price fixing suits by the federal government and […]
People, Etc.
R. Todd Noden has joined Books-A-Million as cfo, replacing Brian White, who resigned from the company “to pursue other endeavors.” Noden was most recently cfo of Dobbs Mills and vp, accounting and financial analysis of Racetrac Petroleum. Scholastic svp, chief accounting officer Dennis Campagna will resign from the company on April 30 to pursue other opportunities, according to an SEC filing. He joined Scholastic only last December. Current evp, chief administrative officer and cfo Maureen O’Connell will once again act as chief accounting officer on an interim basis, as she did before Campagna was hired, until a permanent replacement is […]
Tor/Forge to Go DRM Free
As you may know already, on Tuesday afternoon Macmillan division Tom Doherty Associates–comprising the Tor, Forge, Orb, Starscape, and Tor Teen imprints–announced on their blog that their entire list of ebooks will be available DRM-free “by early July.” In a separate, following notice, Tor UK said that it will do the same. They added that “we are consulting with our authors at the moment and we will announce our plans in more detail in due course.” President and publisher Tom Doherty writes: “Our authors and readers have been asking for this for a long time. They’re a technically sophisticated bunch, […]
Devices: Another 11.8 Million iPads; Glowing Review for New Nook; and More
Apple reported second quarter earnings after the close of the market on Tuesday, reporting sales of 11.8 million iPads for the period (compared to 4.7 million iPads in the same quarter a year ago). As ceo Tim Cook noted, in two years they have sold 67 million iPads worldwide (“and to put that in some context, it took us 24 years to sell that many Macs and 5 years for that many iPods and over 3 years for that many iPhones.”) The company says they saw “very strong growth in iPad sales around the world with sales more than doubling […]
People, Etc.
At the Penguin Press, Lindsay Whalen has been promoted to editor. Chul R. (Charles) Kim will join the Museum of Modern Art’s department of publications as associate publisher on May 7. He was most recently director of publications and editor in chief at the Cooper-Hewitt. Prior to that he was editorial, publicity, and rights director at Welcome Rain Publishers. Lauren Lavelle has been promoted to assistant publicity manager at Scribner. McNally Jackson Books events coordinator Michele Filgate is leaving on May 3. She will work part-time as a bookseller at the Community Bookstore in Brooklyn, Shelf Awareness reports, and spend more time on her […]