Perseus Books Group ceo David Steinberger wrote to the company’s 675 employees today to report on their most recent fiscal year (which ended June 30). He writes: “It was an extraordinary year, not just for the seemingly countless award winners and bestsellers we published and distributed and not just for beating our budget goals and delivering strong financial results, but also for the investments we continue to make in our future and the progress we are making in transforming The Perseus Books Group into a new kind of publishing and services company well positioned to thrive in the emerging digital […]
Archives for October 2012
People
At Dutton, Jamie McDonald has been promoted to publicity manager. Gryphon House, which publishes resource books for parents and teachers of young children, will be distributed by IPG as of January 1, 2013. The last surviving Price Stern Sloan co-founder Larry Sloan, 89, died on Sunday after a brief illness. After PSS was sold to Penguin in 1993, Sloan and Leonard Stern started Tallfellow Press, a business publisher now run by his daughter, Claudia. Before becoming a publisher “he played chess with Humphrey Bogart and wrangled PR for Mae West. He helped handle one of Elizabeth Taylor’s weddings, and his own was announced […]
Avon’s New Facebook App Doubles as Experiment in DRM-Free Purchasing; Amazon’s Whispercast For Bulk Kindle Distribution
Avon launched a Facebook app, Avon Social Reader, which excerpts up to 20 percent of approximately 30 titles and gives Facebook users the ability to share a given book, once browsed, in their News Feed or timeline. The app doubles as an experiment in DRM-free purchasing, allowing users to click through to buy the selected titles at AllRomance.com (though they can also choose to purchase DRM-enabled versions of the books at other online retailers.) The DRM-free editions will be delivered as secure Adobe ePub files. Avon vp, publisher Liate Stehlik said in a statement the DRM-free experiment was “a publishing […]
Pearson Pays $650 Million for Learning Services Company; Springer Hires JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs
Pearson announced Tuesday an agreement to acquire online learning services provider EmbanetCompass for $650 million from an investor group led by Technology Crossover Ventures and Knowledge Universe. Those services include providing colleges and universities with “program design and development, marketing and student recruitment, faculty training and support, data-driven student retention and learning analytics; student services (counseling, tutoring, mentoring), technology support and launch funding.” The investment is similar to Wiley’s purchase earlier in the month of Deltak.edu for $220 million. EmbanetCompass’s sales are expected to hit $130 million in 2012. Further to reports earlier this month that Springer‘s latest owners would […]
Mantel Wins Second Booker
Hilary Mantel won her second Booker Prize in three years for BRINGING UP THE BODIES. On accepting the prize, she said, “Well, I don’t know. You wait 20 years for a Booker Prize; two come along at once.” She is both the first woman and the first British person to win the award twice (and just the third two-time winner, joining Peter Carey and J.M. Coetzee). “I have to do something very difficult right now,” Mantel said. “I have to go away and write the third part of the trilogy. I assure you I have no expectations that I will be […]
The Next Celebrity Imprint: Johnny Depp
HarperCollins has taken a clear lead in celebrity imprint production, adding Johnny Depp’s Infinitum Nihil (the same name as his film production company) to a roster that already includes Dennis Lehane Books and Anthony Bourdain Books. In similar fashion, Depp’s line has announced a slate of two books so far: Historian Douglas Brinkley’s The Unraveled Tales of Bob Dylan (for publication in 2015), and a second collaboration with Brinkley, who is writing an introduction along with Depp to folk singer Woody Guthrie’s novel, House of Earth, for publication in January 2013. (Brinkley has been a HarperCollins author already for numerous […]