• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Login
  • Register

Publishers Lunch

The Publishing Industry's Daily Essential Read

  • Publishers Marketplace
  • Site Guide
  • Help

Corporate: Sales Fall At Lagardere Publishing; HMH Buys Channel One News

May 13, 2014
By Michael Cader

First quarter sales at Lagardere Publishing fell 26 million euros (or 6.2 percent) in the first quarter, to 393 million euros, “due mostly to the comparison” to a strong quarter a year ago, which included sales of the Fifty Shades trilogy in France. Similarly, for the US unit, HBG USA ceo Michael Pietsch said they “had a tough comparison due to Q1 2013 movie tie in bestsellers of Nicholas Sparks’s SAFE HAVEN, Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl’s BEAUTIFUL CREATURES, and Stephenie Meyer’s THE HOST, but new bestsellers made up most of that ground…. Ebook sales slowed from last year’s first quarter pace, while downloadable audio continued to grow.”

In a nod to the company’s now-public standoff with Amazon over terms negotiations, Pietsch remarked, “We are encouraged by strong performance of our publications at book retail chains and independent bookstores.”

In the US, ebooks comprised 34 percent of sales, “in a market that is contracting slightly,” the company said, but in the UK ebooks grew to 40 percent of adult trade sales, compared to 31 percent a year ago.

Separately, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt announced the acquisition of Channel One News, a digital content provider “dedicated to encouraging kids to be informed, digitally-savvy global citizens.” The company’s daily news programs are exposed to 5 million school children daily through satellite and online. HMH says it “will bring significant video and cross-media production capabilities in-house” and is part of their “continued development of high-quality digital content.”

Filed Under: Earnings Reports, Finance, Free, Publishers

sidebar

Primary Free Sidebar

Login


Forgot password
Quick Pass users click here to log in
Get Full Access
The publishing industry's essential daily read

Each Publishers Lunch Deluxe subscription includes full access to our searchable multi-year archive of industry news, a nightly email reporting 10 to 50 deal transactions, and our database of industry contacts, scripts, and posting privileges.

Learn More

RSS Automat

  • Rupert Murdoch to Retire from News Corp and Fox Boards September 21, 2023 NYT
  • OpenAI's New DALL-E3 Lets Artists Opt-Out of Future Training; Rejects Request to Mimic the Style of Living Artists September 20, 2023 TechCrunch
  • Another Response to AI-Generated Books: KDP Lowers Limit On Number of Titles You Can Create, "To Help Protect Against Abuse" September 18, 2023 KDP Forum
  • TikTok (and Instagram) Stars Sell Cookbooks September 18, 2023 NYT
  • Actor and UK Harry Potter Audiobook Narrator Stephen Fry Demonstrates How His Voice Was Copied By AI Without Permission September 18, 2023 Deadline
  • Neal Sofman, Legend of Bay Area Independent Booksellers, dies at 75 September 15, 2023 SF Chronicle
  • Major Textbook Publishers Trying Suing Shadow Library LibGen Again September 15, 2023 Torrent Freak
  • Deesha Philyaw Has Seven-Figure Deal with Mariner for "The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman" in 2025 and "Girl, Look" September 14, 2023 AP
  • Copyright Office Doubles Down on Declining to Register Award-Winning Midjourney-Created AI Art September 12, 2023 Copyright Review Board document
  • Sarah Weinman on How Richard Osman Found His Way to Mysteries and Success: "The simple answer is that they are really good" September 12, 2023 Esquire
© 2023 Publishers Lunch. All Rights Reserved.