As has been thoroughly reported, Amazon.com founder and ceo Jeff Bezos is purchasing the Washington Post and associated newspapers on a personal basis from the publicly-traded Washington Post Co. for $250 million in cash. The company reported “Bezos himself will buy the news organization and become its sole owner when the sale is completed, probably within 60 days. The Post Co. will change to a new, still-undecided name and continue as a publicly traded company without The Post thereafter.” The purchase ends “the Graham family’s stewardship of one of America’s leading news organizations after four generations.” And it makes Bezos a […]
Archives for August 2013
Houghton Files SEC Papers for $100 Million IPO
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt formally filed a preliminary prospectus with the SEC last Friday, preparing to offer shares to public worth up to $100 million. As reported earlier, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are the lead underwriters, joined by Citigroup, Credit Suisse and Wells Fargo. None of the proceeds will go to the company however; this offering is all returning some cash to HMH’s backers, and giving them a liquid public market to trade (and value) their shares. Houghton will not formally release second quarter 2013 results until later this month, on August 15 — though they essentially disclosed those results […]
About Last Week
There was abundant coverage of the Department of Justice’s proposed penalties against Apple following the finding of guilt in the ebook pricing trial but as far as we can tell no other outlet — even within trade publishing — has focused on the astounding elements of those proposals with respect to book publishing. In practical terms, Justice is asking Judge Cote to throw out the essential conditions of the signed settlements already agreed to with book publishers, to be replaced with far harsher and longer lasting conditions. The two important limitations on the original publisher settlements were a two-year limit […]
Hothouse Views
With Tuesday’s release of Boris Kachka’s HOTHOUSE, multiple takes on publishing are available this week. Robert Gottlieb‘s own condensed version of the history of FSG in the New Yorker is well worth reading, and includes some of his own asides. (“Alfred [Knopf] really promoted that borzoi, convincing a lot of people that ‘A Borzoi Book’ guaranteed quality. Readers couldn’t know that the Knopfs thought borzois were a particularly stupid breed of dog.”) Gottlieb finds “this vigorous and often diverting trot through the history of an important cultural institution is frequently slapdash and overwrought in its determination to show just how […]
People and More
Greg Stadnyk has joined Little, Brown Children’s as associate art director. He was at Penguin Children’s. Iris Blasi has been named marketing director, senior editor at Pegasus Books, effective August 12. She was formerly marketing manager at Open Road Integrated Media. Longtime Amazon employee Sarah Jane Gunter, who has worked most recently in the company’s Luxembourg and Paris offices, will become publisher of the Amazon Crossing imprint on September 1. As the company explains in a job listing, they are starting a branch of Crossing in Germany (Amazon Crossing DE), “to establish new foreign authors in Germany.” The Book Industry […]
Apple Replies to DOJ’s “Draconian and Punitive” Proposals
Following Friday morning’s filing of the Department of Justice’s sweeping requests in proposing penalties on Apple that would affect both the iBookstore as well as the entire digital content business, and put the company under extensive 10-year monitoring, Apple filed their reply on Friday afternoon with equal vigor: “Plaintiffs’ proposed injunction is a draconian and punitive intrusion into Apple’s business, wildly out of proportion to any adjudicated wrongdoing or potential harm.” The follow by calling the proposal “a sweeping and unprecedented injunction as a tool to empower the Government to regulate Apple’s businesses and potentially affect Apple’s business relationships with thousands […]