Knopf publisher Reagan Arthur formally acknowledges the retirement of Jonathan Segal in December as part of parent company Penguin Random House's voluntary separation offer, and confirms that "he’s agreed to continue to work with us on a limited freelance basis" thereafter.
Archives for July 2023
Higher Ed Sales Continue To Decline at Pearson
Pearson announced interim results for the first half of 2023 ended June 30, with sales of £1.879 billion, up 5 percent from 2022. Operating profit was £219 million, compared to £148 million last year. As far as publishing goes, which is less and less a focus of the company, the Higher Education segment grew 2 percent to £379 million — based on foreign exchange. But it declined 2 percent on an underlying basis as expected due to “a decline in enrollments and loss of adoptions to non-mainstream publishers.” Pearson restructured the sales team last year, which “helped to increase adoption […]
Lenders Keep Barnes & Noble Education Alive For Now, Require Board to Examine Sale or New Capital
After Barnes & Noble Education warned earlier in the month that it risked being unable “to continue as a going concern” if it could not refinance its loans, the company has now reached an agreement and extended their lifeline. But the refinancing is still relatively short term — until the end of 2024 — and the lenders have imposed conditions that seem designed to force the company into a sale or recapitalization. BNED must appoint a Chief Restructuring Officer and they will need to add two independent directors to the board — which has stood by without doing much as […]
People 7/28
Solid State Books Reaches Union Contract
Solid State Books in Washington D.C., which unionized in April with UFCW Local 400, has ratified their contract with the store after 17 days of negotiations. Solid State is the second bookstore in D.C. to unionize, after Politics & Prose. The three-year contract includes cost of living raises tied to the D.C. minimum wage, Juneteenth as a holiday (with overtime pay), provisions for additional vacation time, better hours, and more. The contract was modeled on the one ratified by Politics & Prose last September. Bookseller Kiara Martinez, who served on the negotiated committee said in a release, “We got here […]
Partners Endorse BISG’s Campaign Against Metadata Pollution
The Book Industry Study Group has been working to combat metadata pollution, in which simple fields like “subtitle” are turned into marketing crud such as, “A Thrilling Suspense Novel from the Bestselling Author of X.” The problem resides on both sides of the Onix feed: “BISG understands that some metadata senders claim they are placing promotional copy in title and subtitle fields explicitly because some retailers do not display the data provided in fields such as ‘Promotional Headline.’ Retailers could be more transparent about how they categorize and display metadata. Without transparency, publishers have chosen ‘known-to-be-indexed’ data elements like subtitle […]