Jack Covert, 77, founder of Porchlight Book Company (previously known as 800-CEO-READ), died on Friday, August 13. He started the business inside Milwaukee’s Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops, and retired from the company in 2014. The company writes: “We believe in books, but our business is centered around the services we provide to customers—because that is how Jack oriented the company. It was an ethos he extended to the employees of the company, as well. He told us when he retired that the thing he was most proud of was how the company he built provided a foundation for the lives […]
Archives for August 2021
People 8/18
Deena Fleming has joined Abrams as associate art director, Amulet Books. Previously, she was an associate art director at Scholastic Book Fairs with Canopy Books and Tangerine Press.
Bookselling: Long Island’s Book Revue to Be Evicted
After 44 years in business, Book Revue in Huntington, NY will be evicted on September 30 for nonpayment of rent, Newsday reports. According to landlord Emerson Dobbs III, the store didn’t pay rent for over a year. Store owner Richard Klein said that the store was closed for three months due to COVID, and that sales were slow after that. The store received $267,378 in PPP loans, which Klein says was used mostly for payroll and for one month of rent. “I thought we had an understanding that when the virus abated we would work out some kind of a […]
Finance: Quarto Owner Keeps Buying; Springer’s PE Co-Owner Solved Their Problem
In a series of purchases this month, Quarto’s controlling shareholder CK Lau and his company 1010 Printing Limited have increased their holdings in the publisher. 1010 Printing acquired another 125,000 shares — giving them just over 37 percent of shares outstanding — and Lau personally acquired another 60,000 shares, holding a little over 4 percent of the company. At the higher end of the financial landscape, repeated efforts by the Springer Nature joint venture to launch an IPO are off the table following a refinancing earlier this summer. Private equity firm BC Partners, which owned a 47 percent share (alongside […]
People 8/17
Madison Furr has joined Random House Children's as publicist. She was previously at Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group.
After Lengthy Investigation, Mystery Book Thief Remains At Large
Since at least early 2017, an unknown person with knowledge of the book business and dealmaking has persistently impersonated a number of people in attempts to steal unpublished manuscripts for no discernible reason. The suspect is strangely persistent. Reeves Wiedeman and Lila Shapiro at NY Magazine spent a long time trying to crack the case — without success, though they compile a detailed and entertaining account of their efforts: “The thief wasn’t the only one who wanted me to stop. Two of this magazine’s editors sat me down and said that I couldn’t spend all year investigating a crime with […]