Lagardere Publishing reported results for the first quarter of 2017, with sales of €440 million, up €25 million from a year ago — though €18 million of that gain came from the addition of the Perseus imprints, leaving a 1.7 percent rise in the traditionally modest quarter. A “significant restocking of J.K. Rowling titles” in the UK accounted a portion of the increase as well. The good news is that both HBG USA and Hachette UK improved in the quarter, up 4.1 percent and 8.1 percent respectively; though that is muted when you remember that both divisions declined significantly in the […]
Archives for May 2017
People, Etc.: Clinton to Appear at Book Expo
Hillary Clinton is the “American Icon” appearing onstage at Book Expo that fair organizers have been teasing recently. “An Evening with Hillary Rodham Clinton,” or rather an hour with her, is scheduled for convention’s Main Stage on Thursday, June 1, from 6 to 7 PM (right when everyone’s parties start). Attendance requires a separate ticket, and is open to registered Book Expo badgeholders only. Vice president audio sales for Simon & Schuster Ken Oxenreider will retire on June 30. He has worked at Simon & Schuster for 40 years, and exclusively on audio for 20. Jeramie Orton has been promoted to assistant editor for Pamela Dorman Books and Viking. […]
Amazon “Dedicated to Removing Bad Actors”
Further to our first story on Tuesday about efforts to ensure that third-party booksellers winning the buy box under Amazon’s new initiative are offering truly new, legitimate inventory, an Amazon spokesperson told us that the company “remain[s] dedicated as always to removing bad actors.” Reinforcing that “Amazon’s policy is that only new books are eligible to win the Buy Box,” the spokesperson said, “we move quickly to address any violations” and maintained that they “continuously verify and monitor all seller accounts.” Separately, Penguin Random House spokesperson Claire von Schilling confirmed the authenticity of the company’s email to Amazon third-party booksellers we cited […]
Harper’s Sales Rebound A Little
Sales rebounded somewhat at HarperCollins in the parent company News Corp.’s fiscal third quarter, ending March 31, with revenues of $374 million. That’s a $16 million gain from the same quarter a year ago, though that was a poor period for Harper; in the same quarter in fiscal 2015 sales were $402 million. And $7 million of the quarter’s gain came from the impact of international acquisitions. In the conference call with investors, executives admitted that sales of Veronica Roth’s Carve the Mark, while a contributor to the quarter, “were off to a slower start than anticipated.” In the coming quarter, though […]
Can Publishing Do Anything About Book Buy Boxes?
Following the surfacing of Brooke Warner’s HuffPo piece explaining Amazon’s recent initiative to let third parties win the buy box on books to those who were unaware, both the IPBA and the Authors Guild have posted on why this is bad. But the bigger and more important question for the industry is whether anything can be done about the situation. To review, the change is part of revised third-party seller rules Amazon first announced last November, for implementation as of March 1, 2017. They did say at that time, “Sellers will be able to compete for the Buy Box for Books […]
People, Etc.
The Center for Fiction will present their annual Maxwell E. Perkins Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Field of Fiction to Grove Atlantic ceo and publisher Morgan Entrekin at their annual benefit in December 5. Christopher Carduff will join the WSJ as books editor, responsible for the daily book reviews and the weekend Review section, relocating to New York. Since 2006 he has been an editor and publishing consultant at the Library of America, and he has served as the estate-appointed editor of posthumous works by Penelope Fitzgerald, William Maxwell, and John Updike, among others. Leila Siddiqui has been promoted to marketing coordinator […]