Mary Beth Roche has been promoted to vp, president and publisher at Macmillan Audio, and will continue to oversee the Quick and Dirty Tips website and podcast business as well as the Macmillan Speakers Bureau. JK Rowling is suing the Daily Mail for libel over an article from last fall that “misrepresented her comments” about single motherhood and caused her “great distress and embarrassment.” According to the Guardian, Rowling believes the Mail story, headlined “How JK Rowling’s sob story about her past as a single mother has left the churchgoers who cared for her upset and bewildered”, was “premised on […]
Archives for January 2014
Haights Cross Sells Recorded Books
Haights Cross Communications has sold Recorded Books to private equity fund Wasserstein & Co., with Northwestern Mutual and Lexington Partners also contributing investment capital, and financing from BNP Paribas. The company’s primary market is unabridged audiobooks for libraries, schools and the retail market, but they also distribute 100,000 ebooks through their One-Click Digital Platform. Recorded Books ceo Rich Freese says in the announcement, “This strategic partnership provides us with the resources to further broaden our content offerings and services for customers, and accelerate our growth into additional global markets.” HCC used to report publicly until they filed, and emerged from, a […]
MacAdam/Cage Files for Chapter 7 Bankruptcy
Years of financial woes and the death last April of founder David Poindexter culminated in San Francisco-based publisher MacAdam/Cage filing voluntarily for Chapter 7 bankruptcy earlier this month, after failing to find a buyer since fall 2012. The 140-page filing, agreed upon by the Poindexter estate trustee Emeigh Poindexter on December 20 and filed in Northern California bankruptcy court on January 17, lists nearly $1.4 million in liabilities from unsecured creditors (along with an additional $64,000 from secured creditors) against approximately $130,000 in assets, the vast majority of which is book inventory stored at a space operated by Publishers Storage […]
Amazon Continues Growing, But Less Than Analysts Guessed; Income Rises At Bertelsmann
Amazon reported fourth quarter sales after the close of the market on Thursday, with sales of $25.6 billion (up 20 percent) and net income of $239 million, or 51 cents a share. (That’s a profit margin of less than 1 percent.) Analysts were expecting slightly higher sales and considerably better earnings, so the stock is down about 9 percent — or roughly $35 a share — in morning trading so far. Before you get carried away, however, note that the stock was up $19 a share yesterday ahead of the earnings. And even at today’s lower levels, shares are still 37 percent […]
Context: Looking Across Amazon, Google Play, iTunes and More
Most publishing-focused media is looking solely at Amazon’s fourth quarter earnings report from yesterday, but Google also reported earnings Thursday evening. The search giant’s sales and profits both rose 17 percent. Their sales are smaller than Amazon’s (about $17 billion, versus $25.5 billion) — but they had profits of over $4 billion (which is more than Amazon’s lifetime earnings). More importantly, with Google pushing their consolidated Play store and Apple continuing to grow iTunes sales, it’s time (long past time, actually) for us all to be looking across the digital media competitors. Amazon‘s total “media” sales for the year were […]
March Indie Next Picks; and Costco’s February Choice
The No. 1 Indie Next Pick for March is SHOTGUN LOVESONGS by Nickolas Butler, and Isla Morley’s novel is the first of our 2014 Spring/Summer Buzz Books to make the ABA lists (most of our featured titles don’t land until April or beyond). The full list includes: The Enchanted, by Rene Denfeld Gemin, by Carol Cassella After I’m Gone, by Laura Lippman The Weight of Blood, by Laura McHugh The Museum of Extraordinary Things, by Alice Hoffman The Accident, by Chris Pavone A Circle of Wives, by Alice LaPlante The Spinning Heart, by Donal Ryan Above, by Isla Morley Bark: […]