McGraw-Hill’s exploration of a sale of their education publishing division is down to one final bidder, Apollo Global Management, which has been tipped as interested since the sale process began earlier this year. But press account continue to give an exaggerated depiction of the process. Apollo is the last bidder left and, as sources have indicated to us for some time, is bidding less than McGraw-Hill wanted, at something under $2.5 billion. Which only makes sense, since McGraw-Hill’s own SEC documents describing to shareholders what an indepedent Education company would look like listed $2.455 billion in assets, and an anticipated […]
Archives for November 2012
People
Melanie Tortoroli is joining Viking as associate editor, reporting to Wendy Wolf. She was previously an assistant editor at Norton and will focus on acquiring and editing nonfiction at Viking. Katie Levine has joined HarperCollins as assistant manager, corporate communications. Previously she was a communications specialist for employee communications at HBO. At Simon & Schuster, Charlotte Gill has been promoted to director, retail field sales. Allison Carroll has been named editorial assistant for Harlequin Desire and Romantic Suspense. She was previously editorial assistant and website manager for Dorchester Publishing. This Thursday night’s “not-quite annual gathering” of hundreds of San Francisco […]
Harper Reports “Solid” First Quarter and “Significant” Revenue Gain From Thomas Nelson
News Corp. reported first quarter earnings after the close of the market Tuesday. As usual, the release says almost nothing about book publishing results in particular, though at least this time they actually mention Harper by name, in relation to the acquisition of Thomas Nelson, which News Corp deemed a “benefit” to the overall company. Operating income at the newspaper-dominated publishing division fell almost in half for the second straight quarter, at $57 million, compared to $110 million a year ago. The publishing results reflected a $67 million charge related to closing News of the World (as compared to $17 […]
Bookselling: All 57 Cokesbury Stores to Close; Argosy Book Store Suffers Storm Damage; and More
The United Methodist Publishing House will close all 57 of its Cokesbury retail shops — 38 standalone bookstores and 19 operating in seminaries — between January and April 2013, the Tennessean reports. 185 full-time and 100 part-time employees will lose their jobs as a result. “This is just part of the evolution that bookstores are all experiencing,” a company spokesperson told the paper. “The stores have been declining as a percentage of sales for Cokesbury and the cost to operate them have been increasing. They’re no longer financially viable.” They are changing their focus to sell books online and through […]
People, Etc.
Philip Rappaport has joined Open Road as senior editor, focusing on nonfiction and serving as editorial liaison for Open Road’s publishing partners. Most recently he was executive editor at McClelland & Stewart, and worked at Bantam Dell and the Free Press. Michael Szczerban has been promoted to editor at the Simon & Schuster adult trade imprint. As you may have noticed, Leslie Kaufman is covering books and publishing for the New York Times while Julie Bosman is on maternity leave. Recently she has been writing obituaries and prior to that Kaufman covered environmental issues for the paper. The AAP has […]
Donnelley Will Take Over All US Warehousing for HarperCollins
HarperCollins is further expanding their supply chain agreement with RR Donnelley to rely on the printer for all warehousing and order shipping in the US as of summer 2013, from a “centrally located Donnelley distribution facility. Harper will close Thomas Nelson’s Nashville, TN warehouse (as they did with Zondervan’s warehouse in June) and will no longer use their Scranton, PA distribution center to ship reorders. As of early 2012, Harper had moved the shipment of all new releases to a Donnelley facility. The publisher will still manage customer service, credit, collection, IT, and freight services from Scranton. They declined to […]