Wattpad announced in a press release that it has raised $46 million in Series C funding, led by OMERS Ventures with participation from August Capital, Raine Ventures, and Northleaf Venture Catalyst Fund. Wattpad’s existing investors also participated in the round. The company will use the funds to expand their staff in Toronto and move to new office space, along with “support[ing] product development and community growth.” CEO Allen Lau admits to Gigaom they don’t really need the money, and still have much of their previous round of $17.3 million in financing from 2012 on hand. Over half of their users […]
Archives for April 2014
People, Awards, Etc.
Longtime St. Martin’s executive Matthew Baldacci will move to Scholastic as vp of marketing for the trade publishing division on April 28. Baldacci will oversee marketing and brand strategy for all trade imprints, reporting to Ellie Berger. He is currently vp, associate publisher, marketing and sales operations at SMP, where he has worked since 1998. Lauren Donovan will join Penguin Children’s as publicity manager on April 14. Most recently she was a senior publicist at Random House Children’s. Leonello Brandolini joins Hachette Livre as an international consultant and editor-at-large, reporting to Arnaud Nourry. He was most recently chairman and ceo of […]
NYC Stores: Rizzoli Closes This Week, Village Shakespeare & Co. Said to Face Lease End
Rizzoli Bookstore on New York’s 57th Street will close at the end of the day on April 11. The store reports that they “have been scouting out new locations in Manhattan, and are delighted to report that we have seen several very promising spaces.” They add that they “are looking forward to remaining a vital part of the city’s cultural fabric for many years to come.” In the meantime, after their historic building’s exterior was denied landmark status, a new application has been made to landmark the building’s interior, which “is currently under review by the Landmarks Preservation Commission’s Research […]
Fiction Leads Rebound in Pre-LBF Dealmaking
As promised on Friday, we now have complete comparison statistics on the pre-London Book Fair dealmaking. Overall deal volume in the five weeks prior to the international fair (through the Friday before the event) has continued its growth for the second year in a row. Deals with US print publishers have increased to their highest level since 2010, now well above the low point in 2012, and deals with digital-focused publishers continue to add modestly to the totals, as show in this chart: Publisher investment continues to lag behind 2010, however, though it too has […]
LBF Announcements: Isaacson’s Innovators; Chevalier’s Othello; Shatzkin and McCarthy’s Digital Marketing Agency
Simon & Schuster likes to officially announce their Walter Isaacson books at the London Book Fair. Acquired some time ago, and already previewed online by the author, they will publish Isaacson’s THE INNOVATORS: How a Group of Inventors, Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution, in world English on October 7. The book “focuses on the dozen or so most significant breakthroughs and the people who made them: the computer, programming, the transistor, the microchip, video games, the internet, the personal computer, software, the web. The book opens with Ada Lovelace, who wrote the first computer algorithm, and continues […]
People: Peter Matthiessen, 86, Dies, and More
Peter Matthiessen, 86, died on April 5 from complications of leukemia, with which he was diagnosed 15 months ago. He was the author of more than thirty books, including THE SNOW LEOPARD (1978), which won the National Book Award for nonfiction, and SHADOW COUNTRY (2008), a National Book Award winner in fiction. His final novel IN PARADISE will be published on Tuesday, and was the subject of a NYT Magazine profile in this weekend’s issue. “We are deeply honored to be custodians of Peter’s final, characteristically bold work of art,” said Riverhead publisher Geoffrey Kloske in a statement. His editor […]