As Barnes & Noble opened the 2014 fiscal year with falling sales across all segments of the business, the biggest news is the admission that chairman Leonard Riggio’s interest in offering to buy the retail bookstores has gone nowhere and is “suspended.” You could have read the tea leaves in the decline in the bookseller’s shares over the last three trading days, with the stock dropping almost 5 percent to $16.67 on Monday. But that will be modest against Tuesday’s trading; shares were down 16 percent in the first hour (down roughly $2.75 a share). In a separate SEC filing […]
Archives for August 2013
TODAY Show Launches New Book Club With Shannon’s THE BONE SEASON
Samantha Shannon’s just-published fantasy debut THE BONE SEASON, already the beneficiary of a great deal of advance buzz, will receive an extra boost as a result of being the inaugural pick of The Today Show’s new Book Club. Shannon’s publisher Bloomsbury told the NYT that retailer orders “roughly doubled” when they were told of the selection. The Today Show tried another version of its Book Club about a decade ago before letting it fade away quietly, but current plans appear to be more ambitious. Selections by the show will be made every four to five weeks, with books “emblazoned with […]
Simon & Schuster, Barnes & Noble Resolve Terms Dispute
After more than eight months of contention, Barnes & Noble and Simon & Schuster have resolved their terms dispute, which agents, authors and some at the publisher itself say resulted in significantly reduced orders and display of S&S books in the bookseller’s stores since January. In a joint statement both Barnes & Noble and S&S said they “look forward to promoting great books by Simon & Schuster authors.” A letter to authors and agents from ceo Carolyn Reidy elaborated a little more on the resolution. Reidy thanked them for their support “during this most difficult period”, adding that she and […]
Briefs: More Funding for Open Road; Commonwealth Book Prize Discontinued; And More
Open Road Integrated Media announced it has received $11 million in Series C funding led by private equity group NewSpring Capital (whose technology fund NewSpring Growth Capital III supplied $8 million) with existing investors Kohlberg Ventures, Azure Capital, and Golden Seeds joining NewSpring in the financing, bringing the total amount Open Road has raised to $24 million. On Open Road’s blog ceo Jane Friedman said the new funding will be used for new technology, additional revenue streams, expand their International Publishing Partners Translation Program (which includes 8 partners to date) and further investment in “appropriate content and technology companies.” Andrea […]
People, Etc.
At IPG’s Trafalgar Square division, Brooke O’Donnell has been promoted to managing director of publishing, and Pam Harcourt has been promoted to publishing manager. Shannon Frech has joined the group a publicity associate, and Elizabeth Kepsel has been hired as sales associate. Sam Missingham announced on Twitter she is leaving The Bookseller in mid-October “to pursue other things.” PW has an extensive look at a basic stat: Rust Consulting confirms that about 23 million people qualify for a share of the consumer restitution to be provided as part of the ebook pricing settlements. That means the average rebate to land […]
More Search Power
We received a lot of great feedback on our new and expanded Super Search feature at PublishersMarketplace.com the other week. Now we have rolled in our “reviewers” data, and next we’ll be adding our big collection of over 80,000 book reviews from almost 11 years. (After that, if we can figure out a good way to do it, we will fold in our massive database of bestseller data.) The feature is far enough along that we recommend you try it (and bookmark it) as the first place to try for most of your common PM searches. The default setting will […]