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 Walker has resigned her position at Penguin Press, where she was most recently senior editor. She can be reached at andrea.b.walker@gmail.com.
In the UK, Alan Hurcombe will join Egmont in September as cfo for the company’s English language and Western European operations. Hurcombe was most recently group managing director of Scholastic UK.
Poet John Hollander, 83, died Saturday in Branford, CT. His poetry, known for their “wit and technical mastery” according to the NYT obit, was collected in volumes including THE NIGHT MIRROR (1971) SPECTRAL EMANATIONS (1978) and A DRAFT OF LIGHT (2008).
Commonwealth Writers announced it will discontinue the Commonwealth Book Prize, instead refocusing efforts on its Short Story Prize going forward. The 2014 prize, open to works of unpublished short fiction between 2,000 and 5,000 words, with regional winners collecting £2,500 and the overall winner receiving £5,000, will be chaired by former Granta deputy editor Ellah Alfrey.
Hastings Entertainment reported results for its second quarter early Monday morning. The company reported a net loss of $4.1 million (or 50 cents a share), while overall book comps decreased 14.9 percent for the quarter (as compared to 2.5 percent increase a year ago), primarily due to “a relatively weak new release schedule” and a fall in trade paperback sales, along with “the decline in sales of the Fifty Shades trilogy, when compared to the second quarter of fiscal 2012, accounted for over half of our decline in book revenues.”
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