Archives for September 2023
Scribd Will Move eBooks and Audiobooks To New App
Scribd announced that it will now separate its content across three products, with ebooks and audiobooks moving to a new app called Everand. Everand will also host magazines, podcasts, news articles, and sheet music. Meanwhile, Scribd.com and a new Scribd app will continue to host documents and other community-uploaded content, while they continue to operate SlideShare as a separate entity. Trip Adler, co-founder and CEO of Scribd, said in a release, “Over the last 16 years, we’ve offered a wide variety of content to everyone, but we recognized that readers either gravitated toward ebooks and audiobooks, or documents and research. […]
Oprah’s Book Club
Oprah Winfrey chose Wellness by Nathan Hill as her next book club pick.
Trade Sales Down 6 Percent in July, While eBooks and Digital Audio Grow
The AAP released Statshot data from participating publishers for July, reporting trade sales of $557 million, down 6.4 percent from $595 million last year. Sales for adult books were $399 million, down 4.6 percent from $418 million. Hardcovers sold $96.4 million, down 2.3 percent, while paperbacks fell 10.1 percent to $149.6 million. The biggest gain in the category was in digital audio, which grew 14.6 percent to $61.5 million. Consistent with the year’s trend, children’s and YA sales declined more, at $158 million, a 10.7 percent drop from $177 million in July 2022. Hardcovers were up 3.4 percent to $49.3 […]
KKR’s Purchase of S&S “Doesn’t Have to be a Blowout Deal”; Attracting Talent and Having Employees Act As Owners Can Drive Success
Journalist Megan Greenwell — who is writing a book on private equity for Dey Street Books titled VAMPIRE COUNTRY — interviews KKR’s co-head of global private equity Pete Stavros on the firm’s pending acquisition of Simon & Schuster. In contrast to facile clickbait like the Atlantic’s recent piece, Greenwell gets details from Stavros about KKR’s expectations, and the workings of their employee ownership plan. Broadly, Stavros says, “We would not invest in a company where the strategy is to get profit dollars up by firing people. We just wouldn’t do that…. we’re not buying into an investment thesis where we’re […]
Texas Judge Explains Order Blocking Book Ban Law
On Monday, Judge Alan D. Albright of the US District Court for the Western District of Texas, Austin Division filed his full order blocking “READER,” a state book banning law that would require retailers to review and rate millions of books according to vague state standards for obscene content (ratings that the state could change anyway). The court ruled that the state could not delegate the rating of books to third parties, holding that it violates the First Amendment as “compelled speech.” In the preliminary injunction, the judge all but calls the Texas law dumb: “For whatever reason, Texas chose […]