Wiley announced a strong fourth quarter and a good end to a fiscal year that included multiple restructuring charges as the company has remade itself into a “global provider of knowledge and knowledge-enabled services.” Fourth quarter sales of $457 million were up $16 million and income was significantly higher on a more normalized period, even with another $26 million in restructuring and amortization charges. Full-year sales of $1.775 billion were up $14 million, and earnings per share rose 12 percent. The stock is up in early trading on the better-than-expected report. CEO Stephen Smith says in the announcement, “We exceeded our annual […]
Archives for June 2014
Softer Early Sales Figures For Clinton’s HARD CHOICES
Several news reports in advance of Wednesday’s full Nielsen Bookscan count, offer premature judgments about the opening sales figures for Hillary Clinton’s HARD CHOICES. BuzzFeed reports, based on the Barnes & Noble sales feed managed by Bookscan, that the book topped Barnes & Noble’s bestseller list with “just over 24,000 hardcover copies sold” in its first week on sale, 319 copies ahead of Diana Gabaldon’s novel WRITTEN IN MY OWN HEART’S BLOOD. From that data point the piece concludes “the numbers do indicate that Hard Choices has not performed as well in its first week as Clinton’s first memoir, LIVING HISTORY, did […]
Appeals Court Upholds Ruling That Pre-1923 Sherlock Holmes Stories Are in Public Domain
The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a 2013 lower court ruling holding that 46 Sherlock Holmes stories and four novels created by Arthur Conan Doyle before 1923, along with the signature characters in those books such as Holmes and Dr. Watson, are in the public domain. The original suit by Leslie Klinger sought clarification after the Conan Doyle Estate demanded (and received) $5000 in licensing fees for an anthology of new fiction featuring Sherlock Holmes published by Random House, then demanded additional fees for a follow-up anthology slated for publication by Pegasus. Klinger won that suit last December, after which […]
Apple Settles with States & Consumers In Sealed Agreement
Apple has agreed to settle with the plaintiff states and consumer class in an agreement filed under seal with Judge Denise Cote late Monday. The amount they will pay has not been disclosed yet, and the tendering of those payments is dependent upon the outcome of Apple’s appeal of the verdict against them — so it would be some time before any of those monies are dispersed. Those terms are likely to be revealed in a second filing, by mid-July. In a letter from Steve Berman of Hagens Berman, on behalf of the plaintiff parties, he writes that all sides […]
Charting Publishers’ Performance
People were interested enough in Lagardere Publishing’s chart of their performance since 2006 – and what it might or might not say about the effect of ebooks on publishers’ financial results — that we dug in to produce similar charts for the other largest publicly reporting publishers. (Which means everyone but Macmillan.) Complications abound, of course. Everyone reports slightly different measures of profit margin, and special transactions over the years can significantly skew the results. Our first chart is a composite that aggregates the annual results of all 5 reporting companies (Hachette; Harper; Simon & Schuster; Penguin; and Random House). Results originally […]
People, Etc.
Lisa Barnes has moved over to the Random House Speakers Bureau as assistant agent director. Previously she was assistant director of publicity at Ballantine Bantam Dell. Julie MacKay has joined The Robbins Office as foreign rights manager. Previously she worked in the foreign rights department at Janklow & Nesbit. Julianne Lewis has joined February Media as publicist. Previously she worked in marketing and publicity for the South Carolina Book Festival. Hilary Mantel was named a Dame of the British Empire as part of the Queen’s Birthday Honors. KF Literary Scouting is now scouting for V&R Editoras in Brazil and Latin […]