Quarto released full-year results for the year ended December 31, 2018, with revenue of $149 million, down from $153 million in 2017, or 2 percent, “in a time of continued softness in the marketplace and of considerable transition for the group,” according to ceo C.K. Lau, alluding to last year’s dramatic boardroom coup and ensuing reorganizations. The company still isn’t making money, with a pre-tax loss of $100,000, but that’s a lot better than the heavy losses in 2017. Exceptional items were more modest, but still cost $5.2 million for the year — with $2.9 million in reorganization costs, $0.8 […]
Archives for March 2019
People: New Hire, New Contracts at Barnes & Noble
Barnes & Noble has hired Carlo Pochintesta as chief information officer, reporting to cfo Allen Lindstrom, starting today. He was CIO at Rag & Bone Holdings. More intriguingly, with no sign that the bookseller has any intention of looking for a full-time ceo before completing their “strategic review” of a potential sale (now more than five months old), they signed new employment agreements with ranking executives Timothy Mantel, William Wood and Mary Ellen Keating, and a revised agreement with Lindstrom, filed with the SEC last Friday. Everyone has a base salary of around $600,000, plus target bonuses of about 50 […]
People, Etc.
At Flatiron Books, Bryn Clark has been promoted to senior associate editor. In the publicity department, Amelia Possanza moves up to assistant director of publicity; and Patricia Cave and Kimberly Escobar have both been promoted to senior publicist. Erin Gordon has been promoted to senior designer, and Kelly Gatesman has been promoted to associate designer. Sarah Melnyk has been promoted to assistant director of publicity, St. Martin’s/Minotaur. Jessica Preeg and Jessica Zimmerman both become assistant director of publicity, St. Martin’s Press. At Chronicle Books, Samantha Steele has been promoted to national accounts manager; Morgan Amer becomes sales manager; and Kathleen Miller moves […]
People, Etc.
At Avalon Travel, Nikki Ioakimedes is promoted to acquisitions manager for Moon Travel Guides; Kristi Mitsuda becomes editor; Lisi Baldwin moves up to digital production manager; and Ravina Schneider is promoted to production designer. Susan Fissell has joined the Simon & Schuster special markets team as national accounts sales manager. She was previously director of special markets at Hachette Book Group. Former payroll clerk at New Jersey wholesaler Bookazine John M. Cribbin was arrested in February and charged with stealing $34,000 of vacation pay due to other employees over a two-year period, allegedly deposited to his own account with forged […]
Deal Counts Are Modest Heading Into LBF, With Only Moderate Investment In Debut Fiction
With dealmakers converging on the London Book Fair next week, it’s time for us to bring our traditional dose of statistically-based reality to the frenzy of pre-Fair deals coverage. As always, this is preliminary, with two more business days of deal reports to log before we provide you fuller analysis next Tuesday. So far, the deals market is looking modest, and in line with recent trends: – Overall pre-LBF dealmaking in the US (measured over the five weeks ahead of the fair, starting Monday, February 4) is on trajectory to be even with or slightly below last year’s level. – […]
PEN Panel on Call-Outs, Correctness, and Culture Wars
PEN America hosted a timely panel on March 5, “Writing Wrongs: Call-Outs, Correctness, and Culture Wars,” falling just days after queer black author Kosoko Jackson responded to Twitter criticism of his YA novel by canceling its publication. Readers faulted the book for using genocide as the backdrop to a love story, among other sensitivity issues—and Jackson, who has himself served as a sensitivity reader for other titles, agreed. On the PEN panel: authors Ayad Akhtar, Francine Prose, and Meredith Talusan; former NY Review of Books editor Ian Buruma; Slate writer Inkoo Kang; and New York Times critic-at-large Wesley Morris. Suzanne […]