Almost 3 months ago we had the annual industry statistics from the AAP for 2013, providing the basic narrative for book publisher revenue last year: Actual measured trade sales were $6.44 billion, down by 1 percent from the banner 2012, driven by a strong finish in November and December. Trade ebook sales declined for the first time ever — marginally, down $15 million, to $1.471 billion — and ebooks comprised 21 percent of all trade sales, still ranking as the third-largest format behind hardcovers and trade paperbacks. On Thursday, the separate joint BookStats project from the AAP and the BISG […]
Archives for June 2014
People, Etc.
At Penguin Random House in the US, Tom Cox has been promoted to vp, adult mass merchandise and distributor sales, the company’s newly formed cross-company division, reporting to Jaci Updike. In addition, Penguin vp, director of distributor sales Ken Kaye will retire at the end of 2014 after more than 45 years in the industry. International sales director Simon Littlewood is leaving Random House UK, where he has worked since 1997, by “mutual agreement.” Deputy ceo of Penguin Random House UK said Ian Hudson said, “Sadly, after much discussion we have been unable to find a mutually suitable role for Simon within Penguin […]
S&S Expands eBook Lending Program to All Libraries
Simon & Schuster announced that its pilot ebook lending program, which was originally available to a handful of libraries and then had branched out to twenty systems, will now expand to libraries nationwide, providing access to its entire catalog of frontlist and backlist titles as ebooks. As in the original pilot program, each S&S title acquired by a library for digital lending is available for unlimited checkouts, one user per copy at a time, for one year from the date of purchase. The ebook program also allows users to purchase their own copies via a “Buy it Now” button through a given library’s […]
The New Old Big Five
With a few more hours to think it through, it’s fairly tricky coming up with a precise ranking of the largest trade publishers if we limit the companies to a comparable set of North American-only revenues. (Case in point, yesterday at different points in time the NYT called Perseus the sixth- and eighth-largest trade publisher — we’re not sure either is correct if you look at the “publisher” part of the company rather than the distributor part.) To the extent that the biggest companies report their sales, they generally do not break out their revenues by territory. So we’ve done some further […]
Barnes & Noble To Spin Off Nook As Public Company; Reports Weak Finish to Fiscal 2014
Barnes & Noble announced before the opening of the stock market Wednesday that it intends to split off its Nook Media division from the retail side, creating two separate, publicly traded companies. Shares rose over 10 percent in early morning trading on the news, up to roughly $22.5 a share. The seeds for such a spin-off were laid in the initial creation of Nook Media LLC (which includes details on how BN stores would display and sell Nook devices follow a possible separation). BN hopes to take the steps necessary to complete the separation by the end of March 2015, […]
People, Etc.
Arabella Stein is stepping down as co-director of Abner Stein after a leave of absence to “pursue a new direction”, the Bookseller reports. Stein began at Abner Stein in 2002 and moved up to co-director in 2011 after the death of her father (and the agency’s founder & namesake). Sandy Violette and Caspian Dennis will remain as co-directors, and said in a statement: “We would also like to thank Arabella wholeheartedly for her contribution to the agency. We will of course miss Arabella but fully support her decision, and wish her every happiness and success in the next stage of […]