Barnes & Noble reported fiscal 2016 first quarter sales, through August 1, on Wednesday morning. Even with the high-profile summer releases, sales at the retail bookstores declined $16 million (or 1.7 percent) to $939 million for the quarter. “Core” Nook-free sales inched up 1 percent, and same-store sales rose 1.1 percent. But don’t infer that means they sold more books. “Comparable sales in books slightly declined,” the company said in their investor conference call, with toys and games still the growth star for the company, up 17.5 percent in the quarter. In the release, the company blamed the modest decline on “store closures, […]
Archives for September 2015
People, Etc.
As Harper UK absorbs Harlequin UK as an operating division, Harlequin managing director Tim Cooper will leave the company after 12 years. Lisa Milton will take over as executive publisher of Harlequin UK on November 2, reporting to ceo Charlie Redmayne. (Milton was moved aside from her position as managing director at Orion this summer as part of a broader realignment of executives there in preparation for David Young’s retirement at the end of the year.) Laura Tisdel is returning to Viking, as an executive editor, starting on October 5, after four years at Reagan Arthur Books and Little Brown. At Knopf & […]
People
Kensington has promoted Lynn Cully to publisher, less than six months after she rejoined the company in April as director of sales. (Previously Cully was publisher at Kensington when she left the company in 2000 to devote more time to her family.) President and ceo Steven Zacharius said in the announcement: “Even though w interviewed many well-qualified people over the past year, we chose to wait until the absolute perfect candidate was available to take the job –- and I’m glad we did. Lynn is the ideal Publisher for Kensington. She’s wonderful with accounts, agents, authors and co-workers. A voracious reader […]
Corporate: McGraw-Hill Education Files for IPO; Meredith Sold to Media General
As indicated recently by Reuters, McGraw-Hill Education did indeed file preliminary paperwork with the SEC last week to launch an IPO, probably before the end of the year. For filing purposes they use a placeholder value of $100 million, though the actual offering is expected to look to raise up to five times that amount in actual proceeds. For the first six months of 2015 MHE had sales of $670 million, with a net loss of -$256 million. In 2014, the company had sales of $1.856 billion and a loss of -$331 million. As of June 30, the company carried […]
People, Etc.
The National Endowment of the Humanities announced the ten winners of this year’s National Humanities Medal, including authors Annie Dillard, Jhumpa Lahiri, Larry McMurtry, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, and Alice Waters. The winners will receive their honors at the September 10 ceremony at the White House. Separately, Stephen King and Tobias Wolff are among the recipients of the National Medal of Arts, also presented at next week’s ceremony. At Chronicle, Taylor Norman has been promoted to associate editor, children’s. Carolyn Bull will join the Little, Brown Children’s design department as junior designer for licensed books. Previously she was a design intern at […]
Groff’s Fates and Furies Leads October Indie Next List
The October Indie Next List is up, led by Lauren Groff‘s novel Fates and Furies as the No. 1 pick. You can start reading Groff’s novel, as well excerpts from six other recommended October titles — Gold Fame Citrus by Claire Vaye Watkins, The Secret Chord by Geraldine Brooks, Bats of the Republic by Zachary Thomas Dodson, A Line of Blood by Ben McPherson, The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr, and The Gilded Life of Matilda Duplaine by Alex Brunkhorst — right now in our Buzz Books 2015: Fall/Winter. The rest of the list features: City on Fire, by Garth Risk […]