The title and cover of Jeff Kinney’s fall release DIARY OF A WIMPY KID: Old School was revealed at Symphony Space in New York Monday morning during a live webcast. The book goes on sale November 3 and follows Greg Heffley “as he goes on a weeklong field trip to a farm and deals with a generation gap between the kids and their chaperones.” Abrams is touting a global release strategy with this tenth title in the bestselling Wimpy Kid series. The new book will launch simultaneously in the US, UK, Canada, Germany, Australia, Turkey, Greece, Japan, Brazil, Spain, Romania, Portugal, Hungary, Sweden, Taiwan, Latvia, and Norway […]
Archives for April 2015
People, Etc.
In the UK, Parragon has promoted Wendy Friedman to president, creative, responsible for setting the top level creative direction for all of Parragon’s product output across its Books and Kit & Gift divisions. Darren Witherall moves up to president, EMEA, responsible for all of Parragon’s businesses in the UK, Australia and New Zealand, India and Germany. Finally, Kim Brown has joined as president, North America. Previously she was svp, merchandise at Baker & Taylor. All promotions are effective May 1. Target‘s Book Club pick for May is The Secret Life of Violet Grant by Beatriz Williams. Forthcoming J.K. Rowling‘s next […]
Houghton to Buy Scholastic’s Education Technology Business for $575 Million
Scholastic announced it has signed a definitive agreement to sell its Educational Technology and Services business to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Company for $575 million in cash. Scholastic expects to have net proceeds of $360 million to $370 million after taxes, fees and expenses. The business unit they are selling had sales of $249 million, with $40 million in operating income, for the fiscal year ended May 31, 2014 — with sales of $175 million and operating income of $17 million for the first nine months of the current fiscal year. The deal is expected to close in the current calendar quarter. Scholastic says it will “focus on […]
Statistics 101: Juvenile Book Sales Did Not “Plummet”
The internet is so full of groundless stories about book publishing these days that the most efficient approach is for us to ignore most of them. But PW posted a story Thursday, “Juvenile Book Sales Plummet,” that is simply wrong and should be cleared up before the meme gets set. The thrust of the piece was this: Juvenile print book sales “plunged in the week ended April 19, 2015, compared to the similar week in 2014. Unit sales in the juvenile nonfiction category fell 39% in the week and dropped 46% in fiction at outlets that report to BookScan.” But they simply misunderstand how to make reasonable year-over-year […]
Media Remains Moderate At Amazon; With Reports from Google and Pearson
Amazon reported first quarter sales through the end of March after the close of the market on Thursday: Net sales rose 15 percent to $22.72 billion, with a net loss of $57 million, or 12 cents a share — slightly ahead of analysts’ expectations for the company. Media sales (the category in which they include books and ebooks) remain the lowest-growing part of their business, as in recent quarters: North American media sales of $2.969 billion were up 5 percent (or $144 million) but international media sales fell on the strengthening dollar. Sales of $2.32 billion were down 12 percent (or $322 […]
People, Etc.
At Hannigan Salky Getzler Agency, Tanusri Prasanna has joined as an associate, specializing in children’s books. She will work with Carrie Hannigan on children’s and YA projects and with Josh Getzler on special projects and contracts. (With a PhD in jurisprudence from Oxford, she has worked in the office of the general counsel, and interned at Foundry Literary + Media and Knopf Children’s.) Danielle Burby has been promoted to junior agent and foreign rights manager. She represents YA, women-driven crime fiction, and women’s fiction. At Clarkson Potter, Amanda Englander was promoted to editor. Caroline Osborn has joined Little, Brown Children’s […]