On Friday, Indigo announced results for the first quarter of fiscal year 2022 ended July 3, with sales of CA$172 million, up from $135 million last year, an increase of 27.4 percent. Print sales for the quarter were $104.6 million, up from $84.1 last year, driven by BookTok’s influence on backlist sales, particularly for teens, bringing a younger audience to their online business. Retail revenue increased 114.8 percent to $90.2 million, driven by store pick-up, which was up almost five times over last year. Online sales were more than three times that of pre-COVID levels. During the quarter, Indigo reopened […]
Archives for August 2021
Last Day For Our Summer Sale
We’ve already had a great reception for our experimental Summer Sale — and today is the last day for this offer. Use the promo code summer21 in the provided box when you enroll and get $10 off the first month’s membership fee (a 40 percent reduction). The code expires at the end of the day today. Feel free to alert anyone who might be interested.
Judge Allows Most of Gendell’s Counterclaims to Proceed
New York State Supreme Court Judge Joel Cohen ruled on Wednesday that all but one of agent Yfat Reiss Gendell’s counterclaims against agent Peter McGuigan can move forward, rejecting McGuigan’s motion to dismiss. Most significantly, the judge ordered what is left of Foundry to “advance attorneys’ fees and expenses to Gendell.” The original counterclaim suggested that amount was already at least $150,000, which will be yet another strain on the resources of Foundry. Judge Cohen found sufficient grounds to let stand the counterclaims of defamation, tortious interference and breach of contract, dismissing only the claim of prima facie tort (which “courts […]
FTC Makes Second Request In Review of ProQuest Sale to Clarivate
On July 28 the Federal Trade Commission made a second request for information in their review of Clarivate’s pending $5.3 billion acquisition of ProQuest. Clarivate announced that as a result, the parties extended the outside date for completion of the deal to December 31. Both Clarivate and ProQuest “each have the option to extend the new outside date to April 29, 2022.” As we noted previously, second requests are generally issued for only 2 to 4 percent of Hart-Scott-Rodino transactions — and as law firm Winston & Strawn advised, “most Second Requests result in a settlement, litigation to block the transaction, or […]
People 8/12
At Viking Penguin, Rebecca Marsh is promoted to director of publicity and Sara Leonard is promoted to publicist.
Controversies: NYT Says Cuomo’s Book Gave PRH “Ethical and Financial Headaches”
Following the announcement of Andrew Cuomo’s resignation as governor of New York, the NYT revisits the “ethical and financial” headaches of American Crisis: Leadership Lessons From the Covid-19 Pandemic — even though the book has been functionally dead for months (selling approximately 350 hardcovers since the beginning of April). As they note, the book significantly underperformed the $5.1 million advance and first printing of over 450,000 copies from the very start. (Last summer’s auction is now characterized, without sourcing, as “frenzied.”) The paper claims “questions remained about whether Crown will pay the remainder of his advance,” presumably referring to the […]