Irish poet Seamus Heaney, 74, died in a hospital Friday morning after a short illness. He won the Nobel prize for literature in 1995. (Click here to see many of his works currently in print in the US.) Leanne Silverman joined Rowman & Littlefield as senior acquisitions editor in their Boulder office earlier this week. She will focus on their archaeology, anthropology and communications lists. Silverman was formerly a senior acquisitions editor for Westview Press. In an update to yesterday’s post on Matthew Shear, the family asks that anyone wishing to make a donation in his donor do so to either the American […]
Archives for August 2013
Random House Has Lower Sales, Higher Earnings
Bertelsmann reported results for the first six months of the year, including the last financial report for Random House Inc. as a standalone company, covering the period right up to the merger with Penguin. Sales were “slightly lower” than last year’s record first half, falling 32 million euros (or 3.4 percent) to 915 million euros for the period. Operating EBIT “soared” by 4 million euros (or 3.5 percent) to a mid-year record of 117 million euros. Among the major contributors were sales of “more than four million” English-language units of Dan Brown’s INFERNO in the first six weeks on sale, […]
Hachette Has Softer Second Quarter But Remains Up for the Year
Lagardere reported first-half of the year results after the close of the market in France on Thursday. Sales at Lagardere Publishing were 495 euros in the second quarter — and 917 million euros for the formally reported first half, up 3.1 percent on a like-for-like basis, and 12 million euros higher on a topline basis from a year ago. (They say negative foreign exchange movements cost 15.5 million euros.) That means they gave up some ground up in the second quarter, after a strong first quarter that was 25 million euros ahead of the prior year. Earnings rose more, with […]
Briefs: Amazon Appeals to Supreme Court, Adds Kindle Mexico; and More
On August 23, Amazon filed a brief with the US Supreme Court, asking it to hear their challenge to New York’s 2008 law requiring the etailer to collect sales tax in the state due to their network of online affiliates (Amazon Associates). The New York Court of Appeals upheld the law in a ruling in March 2013. The company hired former Solicitor General Ted Olson, now at the Washington, DC office of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, who filed the petition, to represent them in the matter. (Irony alert: Apple’s lead law firm in the ebook pricing cases is the New […]
On Matthew Shear
St. Martin’s Press publisher Matthew Shear, 57, died on Wednesday after a three-year battle with cancer that was unknown to nearly all of his colleagues. He joined St. Martin’s in 1995, and prior to that he worked at Bantam. The memorial service is tomorrow at 10:00 at Riverside Memorial Chapel (180 W 76th Street in NYC), with the family greeting guests starting at 9:00. The family will also receive guests at their apartment, 895 West End Avenue, Apartment 4A, after the service and all day Saturday. The family asks that those wishing to make a donation in Shear’s memory do so to the […]
Books In the News
The NYT Magazine has a big profile of Norman Rush, running in advance of the September 10 release of SUBTLE BODIES. The AP provides an advance look at the work of their own reporters Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman included in the forthcoming September 3 release ENEMIES WITHIN: Inside the NYPD’s Secret Spying Unit and bin Laden’s Final Plot Against America.” They lead: “The New York Police Department has secretly labeled entire mosques as terrorism organizations, a designation that allows police to use informants to record sermons and spy on imams, often without specific evidence of criminal wrongdoing. Designating an […]