The Book Industry Charity Foundation has raised $1 million for a new bookstore grant program that will quickly provide grants to independent bookstores and comic shops facing financial challenges due to COVID-19. Binc’s Survive to Thrive initiative was funded with a leading gift of $500,000, jointly from Ingram Charities and Ingram Content Group; $250,000 from Bookshop.org; and an additional $250,000 total from Hachette, Harper Collins, Macmillan Publishers, and Penguin Random House, and seeks to raise an addition $1 million. Meeting that $2 million funding goal would support grants of up to $10,000 to 200 independent bookstores and comic shops. (Link […]
Archives for March 2021
PRH Gains in 2020 On “Growing US Business” and Digital Increases
Bertelsmann reported financial results for 2020, with Penguin Random House showing substantial gains in profit and a strong sales performance with meaningful “organic” sales growth for the first time since Penguin and Random House merger (see table below), helped by a string of acquisitions in 2019. Sales were €3.802 billion, up €166 billion from 2019, or 4.6 percent higher. Operating EBITDA was €691 million, rising €130 over 2019, up 23 percent. In the past Bertelsmann reported actual profit for the PRH joint venture with Pearson, which was €321 million in 2019 — but that measure has been retired now that […]
People, Etc.
Aliya King Neil will join Gallery Books as a senior editor on April 5. She was previously editor-at-large at Medium. At Hachette Book Group, Megan Fitzpatrick has been promoted to executive director of marketing & publicity for Hachette Audio; Barbara Slavin to senior director of digital sales and business development; and Mary Urban to associate director of digital sales. Terri Lancaster has been promoted to senior production coordinator, reprints at Chronicle Books. Rick Garcia has joined Harper Collins as director of digital advertising for the general books group. He was previously head of programmatic advertising at Penguin Random House. Connor […]
New Books Publishing March 30
Sharon Stone’s memoir is grabbing headlines, but this week’s nonfiction is a spectacular of extraordinary women: Eleanor Roosevelt; Queen Elizabeth II and her sister Margaret (in Andrew Morton’s latest); the abolitionist agitators Harriet Tubman, Martha Wright, and Frances Seward; and the record-breaking mountain climber Vanessa O’Brien. In fiction, Libertie, by Kaitlyn Greenidge, and Of Women and Salt, by Gabriela Garcia — both excerpted in our free Buzz Books sampler and both featured in our Winter Buzz Books Editors’ Panel — are among this week’s rich new works. 7 new works of fiction https://bookshop.org/lists/new-fiction-publishing-march-30 https://shop.aer.io/publishers_lunch/cl/New_Fiction_Publishing_March_/219203 13 new nonfiction titles https://bookshop.org/lists/new-nonfiction-publishing-march-30 https://shop.aer.io/publishers_lunch/cl/New_Nonfiction_Publishing_March_/219204 […]
Nourry Exits As CEO of Lagardere Publishing
Just days after hiring a new pr consultant and embarking on a broad press campaign to reiterate his opposition to seeing parts of Lagardere Publishing sold to aggressive shareholder Vivendi, longtime ceo of the publishing division Arnaud Nourry “has decided to part ways with the Group on an amicable basis,” the company announced. As France’s Le Figaro put it, “One interview too many. By speaking in Le Monde to oppose any dismantling of Hachette Livre, Arnaud Nourry signed his end.” Co-managing partner of Lagardère (and therefore loyal supporter of company chief executive Arnaud Lagardere) Pierre Leroy was named chairman and ceo […]
People, Etc.
Christina Loff is leaving her role at Chronicle Books as senior marketing and publicity director to launch her own digital marketing and publicity agency where she will work with creative companies, artists, authors and publishers. George R.R. Martin has a new deal with HBO to develop additional programming for them over the next 5 years, THR reports, “worth mid-eight figures.” Obituaries Beverly Clearly, 104, author of the Ramona Quimby books, died on Thursday in Carmel, CA. Larry McMurtry, 84, author of more than 30 books including Lonesome Dove and The Last Picture show, died on Thursday in Archer, Texas. Unions […]