Amistad Press founder Charles F. Harris, 81, died December 16. Harris began his career at Doubleday in the 1950s and also worked at Random House and Howard University Press before founding Amistad in 1986, which he sold to HarperCollins in 1999 (and stayed with until 2003.) The NYT covers the growth in personalized children’s books, from UK-based Lost My Name to Sourcebooks‘ Put Me In the Story program and others. But the paper may be a little off-base in dismissing the impact. While 2 percent growth in print units is hailed as a renaissance, adding a percent or two to children’s […]
Archives for December 2015
2015: The Year In Mergers
The intense M&A activity from 2013 and 2014 carried over into 2015, though the sale of domestic trade publishers was modest, so the common perception was of fewer mergers. In trade, the biggest deal might be the one that never happened. Up until the end of the summer, it was widely expected that Pearson would exercise their option to have Bertelsmann buy out their 47 percent share in Penguin Random House. Instead, Pearson raised cash by selling the Financial Times and then their share in The Economist, and a sale to Bertelsmann — whether outright, or in the “steps” that Bertelsmann […]
More to Come — And A Free Trial to Check It Out
We’ll be back tomorrow with our last “scheduled” edition for this week, including a look back at the year in M&A, though PublishersMarketplace remains in operation 24/7 and will continue to present news, deals, bestsellers, jobs and more as they come in (including 7 new job listings just from yesterday). And we will return next week, at least occasionally, with more unique insights and stats and whatever news there is to share, at least for our PM member/Publishers Lunch Deluxe audience. In the meantime, we are bringing the traditional holiday free trial offer at PublishersMarketplace.com: Join now and check out everything […]
People, Etc.
Christopher Richards will join Penguin Press on January 11 as associate editor. Previously he was an associate editor at FSG. At Penguin Random House, Andrew Rein is promoted to sales director, mass merchandise national accounts. Bloomsbury has agreed to acquire some family law publishing properties from Nexis Lexis and Jordan Publishing that are being spun off as a condition for regulatory approval of RELX (Reed Elsevier)’s purchase of Jordan. Bloomsbury is paying £1.4m minus deferred income. At the same time, Bloomsbury says trading conditions have been “good…in broad terms” but sales for the year remain dependent on final holiday results. We will […]
Which Print Is Back, Where? A Nuanced View of 2015 Stats So Far
It’s a little too soon to close the books on trade publishing statistics and trends for the year, with reporting for the two biggest sales weeks still to come, but the “good year for print books” meme has been going strong since September and will continue through other popular accounts in the weeks to come. This turns out to be deja vu all over again, as we note from our own archives that the exact same “print is back” story was in circulation this time a year ago — when Nielsen Bookscan 2014 year-end numbers showed total print sales across […]
Briefs: Foer’s Next Novel, Now From FSG; and More
Jonathan Safran Foer‘s first novel in 11 years, HERE I AM, will be published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in September (Hamish Hamilton will publish the UK edition on September 29.) The NYT reports the novel, which FSG acquired as part of a three-book deal (which also includes another novel and a work of nonfiction), “unfolds over a single month in present-day Washington, as a Jewish family with three sons falls apart after the parents’ marriage falters. While the family implodes, relatives from Israel are visiting for the bar mitzvah of one of the sons. The drama unfolds as a […]