As Italy’s Mondadori waits on today’s board review of their offer to buy the book publishing operations of rival RCS, the company reported results for the first half of 2015. Book division sales of 123 million euros were down 4.3 percent compared to 128.5 million euros a year ago, but EBITDA increased significantly, to 8.5 million euros (up 3.4 million euros), attributed to their “radical restructuring process” as they continued their “actions aimed at reducing fixed costs and cost of personnel.” They took 3.2 million euros in restructuring costs during the period. eBook sales rose 18.6 percent in the first […]
Archives for July 2015
People
Martha Millard is joining Sterling Lord Literistic in August after more than 35 years running her own agency, the Martha Millard Literary Agency. Her clients include notable science fiction writers William Gibson, Michael Swanwick, Allen Steele, Elizabeth Hand, Marc Weissbluth M.D., Diane Simone Vezza, Julia Scully, and Ian McDonald. In addition, Alison Mackeen will join the agency as an agent, focusing on serious non-fiction across a broad range of categories, including psychology, health, sociology, education, urbanism, lifestyle, history, literature and the arts. Previously she was a senior editor at Basic Books. In the UK, Suzie Dooré will join Harper UK on September […]
Blackboard Owners Hire Bankers to Sell Company
Software company Blackboard, a staple of high school and college classrooms, is exploring a sale, hoping for a valuation of up to $3.4 billion, Reuters reports. According to “people familiar with the matter” Blackboard’s majority owner Providence Equity Partners has hired Deutsche Bank and Bank of America to run an auction and two anonymous people suggest the target would be “a valuation between 14 times to 17 times EBITDA,” currently at around $200 million annually. Providence took Blackboard private in 2011 for $1.64 billion (and took on $130 million in net debt.)
eBooks: Kobo in Mexico, Amazon In NY Schools
Kobo is joining with Mexican publisher and retailer Libreria Porrúa (with almost 70 bookstores) and bookstore chain Gandhi (with close to 30 stores) to power a new ereading service for Mexican readers called Orbile. They plan to launch an ebookstore in September with a catalog that will include over 70,000 titles. Both Porrúa and Gandhi will sell Kobo devices in their stores. Separately, the New York City Board of Education has a pending three-year contract with Amazon for ratification that will pay the etailer at least $30 million for ebooks selected by individual schools. Amazon will also build a “unified ebook storefront” for the […]
Five Americans On Booker Prize Longlist
The longlist for the Booker Prize was announced Wednesday morning, including titles by five American authors — A LITTLE LIFE (Doubleday/Picador) by Hanya Yanagihara, A SPOONFUL OF BLUE THREAD by Anne Tyler (Knopf/Chatto & Windus), LILA by Marilynne Robinson (FSG/Virago), THE MOOR’S ACCOUNT by Laila Lalami (Pantheon/Periscope) — as well as agent Bill Clegg’s forthcoming debut novel DID YOU EVER HAVE A FAMILY (Scout Press/Jonathan Cape). Only one title, The Chimes by Anna Smaill, does not have an announced US publisher. Four independent publishers have titles on the longlist, including Garnet Publishing’s Periscope imprint, Pushkin Press’s One imprint, both of which appear for the first […]
People
Ann Rule, 84, author of more than 35 bestselling true crime books including The Stranger Beside Me and Small Sacrifices, died July 26 in Seattle from heart failure. Simon & Schuster president & ceo Carolyn Reidy said in a statement: “By deciding to focus her books on the victim, Ann Rule reinvented the true-crime genre, and earned the trust of millions of readers who wanted a new and empathetic perspective on the tragic stories at the heart of her works. She will be remembered not only for her many books, but also for her ongoing and tireless work on behalf […]