After a year of record profits, Simon & Schuster continued to maintain strong margins, even with declining sales, in the first quarter of 2014. Sales fell 11 percent to $153 million (down $18 million), but OIBDA was up 8 percent (or $1 million) to $13 million. Parent company CBS said that sales a year ago had “benefited from the continued success of fourth quarter 2012 releases,” though even in that quarter sales were down 3 percent from the first quarter of 2012. As CEO Carolyn Reidy told us plainly, “we didn’t have as many strong books as we did the […]
