Edinburgh’s Canongate filed its earnings statement for the year ended December 2017, on the usual delayed UK timetable. While overall sales increased, to £9.59 million from £8.54 million in 2016, the company had an unprofitable year, logging a pre-tax loss of £440,000. The publisher had slim profits in 2016 (£128,000) and 2015 (£119,000) after a big loss in 2014 (-£1.3 million). The bump in sales is due in part to the September 2017 acquisition of Severn House , which now comprises a meaningful portion of Canongate’s overall sales. (Severn House had sales in 2016 of £3.26 million.) “We took additional […]
Archives for September 2018
People, Etc.
Lili Feinberg has joined Simon & Schuster Children’s as associate publicist. She was most recently publicity assistant at Tor/Forge. Rebecca Strobel has been promoted to assistant editor at Touchstone. There’s another change in the executive ranks at CBS: longtime head of corporate communications Gil Schwartz (aka author Stanley Bing) will retire on November 1 after more than 20 years with the company. He wrote in a memo: “As fans of arcane SEC filings have noted, I had the option of stepping away early this past summer, but given the exigencies of corporate life at that juncture, I elected to stay in place […]
People, Etc.
Juliana Kiyan has been promoted to associate publicity director at the Penguin Press. Lara Blackman has joined Audible Originals as an associate editor. She was most recently an assistant editor at Touchstone. Robbie Egan will take over as ceo of the Australian Booksellers Association in early December. Liz Hohenadel‘s colleagues at Riverhead have set up a GoFundMe campaign for her son Owen’s education. Hohenadel, senior publicity manager for Riverhead, died on Monday at age 34. Awards Library and information association CILIP, the organization responsible for the UK’s Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Medals, is making changes to the prize after an independent diversity […]
Scholastic Q1 Gains On Strong Trade Sales
Scholastic reported results for its fiscal 2019 first quarter ending August 31, 2018 — their lightest quarter since school is not in session — showing gains in both book publishing and distribution and education. Revenues totaled $218.4 million, up 15 percent compared to $189.2 million in the first quarter of 2018. The net loss improved slightly—$61.3 million, compared to $63.7 million in the prior year period. Adjusted EBITDA for the first fiscal quarter of 2019 was a loss of $64.5 million, compared to a loss of $78.1 million in the first quarter of 2018. Scholastic’s shares, up 6.9% so far […]
Things Will Move Around Again At Frankfurt, Starting Next Year
The Frankfurt Book Fair announced some changes to expect starting with next year’s show, in 2019, due to construction at the fairgrounds. Floor 6.3, which has served as the agents’ center for a number of years — and finally had the agents next to (or actually above) North American publishers as of 2015 — is being turned into “a technical control center.” So the agents will be moved away from everyone else again, moving into the historic Festhalle near the fair’s main City entrance. (The Festhalle is the attractive older, roundish building that traditionally has not been utilized for the […]
Amazon’s New Soho Store Sells…Stuff
The new Amazon Store space at 72 Spring Street in NYC’s Soho — once thought to be a bookstore — introduces a new concept in the company’s physical store portfolio. Opening Thursday, the awkwardly named “Amazon 4-star” is a general merchandise store that sells a bunch of stuff with high Amazon customer reviews, along with the usual selection of Amazon devices. Like their Books stores, Prime members get better prices in store — though now, “digital price tags alongside every product show the Prime price and list price.” Also like the Books stores, this is part of the broader retail […]