Annette Thomas “has decided to leave” Springer Nature, where she is chief scientific officer and a member of the board. Thomas has been with Macmillan companies for 23 years (Springer Nature is the merged Macmillan Science and Education and Springer Science). Managing director, Nature Research Group Steven Inchcoombe will join the board in her place and “assume a broader role within the Springer Nature research organization,” sharing Thomas’s reporting lines with ceo Derk Haank. Thomas says in the announcement: “It has been a tremendous honor to be part of the amazing journey of Nature and Macmillan for over 20 years…. There is so much […]
Archives for March 2016
Profits Flat At Lagardere Publishing
Lagardere reported 2015 profits after the close of the market in France, after having reported sales on their own in February. Lagardere Publishing had flat earnings on higher sales, with recurring EBIT of €198 million (up 1 million), and €16 million of charges for nonrecurring items. As previously reported publishing sales were €2.206 billion — up just 1.7 percent on a like-for-like basis, but €202 million euros overall. (Foreign exchange accounted for a big €140 million of those gains, and acquisitions added €28 million.) With the increase in sales, Lagardere Publishing’s operating margin was 9 percent, down form 9.8 percent a year […]
DBW: Galloway Says Expect Thousands of Amazon Stores; Data Guy Fills In Sales Gaps From Indie Publishing World
NYU Stern School of Business professor and entrepreneur Scott Galloway presented an updated version of his popular talk on the second day of Digital Book World on how the Four Horseman of the digital age — Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google — are each on unstoppable trajectories towards becoming trillion dollar market-cap companies (led by Facebook). Of particular note in our community, Galloway noted “ecommerce is a great business as long as you work for Amazon; for everyone else it’s a s—– business.” By his count “51 percent of all growth online goes to Amazon.” Look forward, he said with confidence, […]
People, Etc.
At Ecco, Ben Tomek has been promoted to associate marketing director and Bridget Read moves up to assistant editor. At Chronicle Books, Madeline Carruthers has been promoted to contracts and permissions associate and Yesenia Herrera moves up to contracts manager. Caryn Berg has joined Berghahn Books as archaeology editor. Previously she was an editor at Left Coast Press. Katie Salisbury is now working as a freelance editor and is available for developmental editing and consultation on nonfiction projects. Previously, she edited books for HarperCollins and Amazon Publishing; most recently, she was a product manager at Bookspan, working on the relaunch […]
Barnes & Noble Education Gives Up On Yuzu
We’ve been skeptical of Barnes & Noble Education’s digital platform Yuzu since they started it in 2014, ever since we learned that a yuzu “is a hybrid citrus fruit with curiously high ratio of seeds to juice.” In reporting fiscal third quarter results on Tuesday morning, the company finally announced the end of their attempt to turn what didn’t work for Nook into something similar: “In an effort to reduce and manage digital expenditures, while at the same time maintaining high quality digital products,” they said, they are migrating their digital platform to Ingram’s VitalSource. (Not unlike their competitor Chegg, which […]
Ingram at DBW: “Transformation Is Not Just A Slogan”
Ingram Content Group ceo John Ingram led the “transformation” keynotes at Digital Book World on Tuesday, just days after the announcement of ICG’s deal to acquire the Perseus Distribution business. On the broader theme, in which new business now generates 44% of ICG’s profit versus 13% in 2005, Ingram said, “Transformation is not just a slogan…. It really is about cultural change within the organization. In our case, it was consciously saying we’re going to give up some control, because we want to be more innovatie, since those things are directly in conflict.” On the Perseus deal, “Maybe the second time’s a […]