Wah-Ming Chang has been promoted to vice president of company culture and senior managing editor, books at Catapult/Counterpoint/Soft Skull.
In the UK, Lucy Hale has been hired for the new role of publisher for Pan, reporting to Jeremy Trevathan. She had been deputy ceo of Hodder & Stoughton, Headline, Quercus and John Murray until last October, when her position was eliminated. Before working for Hachette UK, Hale had been at Pan Macmillan as UK sales director and international sales director.
Audio
New publisher Levine Querido has an exclusive audio and video agreement with Dreamscape Media.
Awards
Twenty eight authors will receive the 2020 Silvers Grants for Work in Progress.
Bankruptcies
Former UK wholesaler Bertrams reported that it has about £600,000 to pay almost £27 million in unsecured debts owed to creditors.
Forthcoming
Leon Wieseltier has resuscitated his plans for a “decidedly analog quarterly” journal: Liberties – A Journal of Culture and Politics debuts with the October 2020 edition. Air Mail reports it comprises “420 pages of text with zero images (and zero ads),” that is “sized like a paperback book.” The journal describes itself as “a book for the coat pocket” with “diverse voices [that] celebrate one commonality: freedom of inquiry and thought.” Wieseltier says, “There is a need, I think, for people who don’t belong either to the Sharks or the Jets, as it were, to have a place to publish.” The sponsoring Liberties Journal Foundation was funded with “a substantial sum of money” from Wieseltier’s “synagogue pal” Alfred Moses as “the initial endowment.” Arts entrepreneur and former dean of Bennington College — as well as Moses’s son-in-law — Bill Reichblum is publisher, and Celeste Marcus is managing editor.
Wieseltier’s previous journal, Idea: A Journal of Politics and Culture, was cancelled just before its planned launch in October 2017 when Emerson Collective “ended its business relationship…upon receiving information related to past inappropriate workplace conduct.” At the time, Wieseltier said, “For my offenses against some of my colleagues in the past I offer a shaken apology and ask for their forgiveness. The women with whom I worked are smart and good people. I am ashamed to know that I made any of them feel demeaned and disrespected. I assure them that I will not waste this reckoning.”
Corporate
Cengage reported earnings for their 2021 fical first quarter ending June 30, with adjusted sales of $191 million, down from $232 million in the prior period, or 17 percent, due to the impact of coronavirus. To mitigate sales losses, the company cut costs by $35 million. The company’s adjusted EBITDA less prepublication was $(17) million, an improvement from a loss of $(27) million last year. The company did not provide full year 2021 guidance, but is predicting a 10 to 15 percent decline in US fall enrollment.
https://cengage.widen.net/content/xpb1bfvlor/pdf/Q1-FY21-Investor-Financials-FINAL-20200812-vF.pdf?u=fn2gt2