Archives for July 2024
Second Quarter Deals: Strong Investment In Adult Books, As Picture Books and Middle Grade Sink Children’s Sales
First quarter deal reports were up modestly after a bad start to 2023, helped by an early London Book Fair and marked by record six-figure deals — particularly at the higher end — continuing a trend of increased publisher investment in bigger deals. The second quarter of 2024 failed to keep up with a stronger comp from a year ago in total deals though for a very particular reason: Adult deals were actually up slightly versus last year, but children’s experienced a dramatic drop. They fell 17 percent, to their lowest second-quarter level since 2016 (even with an April Bologna […]
Orbit Launches Horror Imprint
Orbit has launched a new horror imprint called Run For It, which will publish current Orbit horror authors as well as new ones. First titles debut in summer 2025. Tim Holman, svp, publisher of Orbit, says in a release, “We’ve been steadily increasing the number of horror titles we publish each year, and with so many exciting things happening in the horror genre over recent years it seemed the perfect time to launch a dedicated imprint. Our goal is to make Run for It a destination imprint for the most exciting writers in the field—and we can’t wait to take […]
People 7/19
Scholastic’s Slow Sales in Final Quarter Lead to Declines for the Year
Scholastic reported fourth quarter and full year results for the period ended May 31. For the quarter, sales were down 10 percent to $475 million, owing to lower book club sales, “as a result of the resizing efforts to create a smaller, more profitable core business,” the company said in a release. Adjusted EBITDA was down 21 percent to $90.7 million and operating income decreased 49 percent to $47.2 million, due to lower sales per book fair, as well as decreased sales in the Education Solutions segment. “That’s in contrast to our expectations for modest growth,” CEO Peter Warwick said […]