In a mixed second quarter report, Harlequin parent Torstar said book sales rose 8.7 percent to $249 million (CA), though the increase was due almost entirely to the weaker Canadian dollar. Currency exchange comprised most of the profit gains as well, up $2.4 million at $19.7 million for the period. “Underlying results were up in the overseas and North America direct-to-consumer divisions and down in North America retail.” And the company expects weaker results in the second half of their year. They expect to grow “but not at the rate realized in the first half.” The company notes: “Harlequin continues […]
Google Settlement at the NYPL and In the NYT
If you were so inclined you could probably spend the better part of the next month on daily seminars and webinars related to the proposed Google Books legal settlement. Yesterday’s venue was the NY Public Library, moderated by David Ferriero (moments before he was reported as President Obama’s pick to be Archivist of the United States). A number of librarians expressed concerns about managing the single all-access terminal to be provided for each public library branch. Bertelsmann’s Richard Sarnoff suggested that on this and other matters, the settlement should be viewed as a starting point rather than a definitive rule-set. […]
LibreDigital Gets More Funding, and People News
LibreDigital has closed a $15 million Series B funding round, led by new investor Triangle Peak Partners and existing investor Adams Capital Management. (Existing investors include HarperCollins and the New York Times Comany.) They say the new capital will be used by “to expand marketing and development of the company’s digital platform, designed to help publishers go direct to consumers as they access, buy, read and share content across online and mobile platforms.” Rachel Dicker has joined Baker & Taylor as director, publisher digital services, reporting to Linda Gagnon, svp, publisher digital services and business development. She was formerly Director […]
Bookselling Bits
Atlanta’s A Cappella Books is planning a midnight opening event for the release of Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice. In London, independent bookseller Crockatt and Powell is closing their South London store, after shuttering their Fulham Road branch in June. Stretching to try that second branch is what weakened the operation, co-owner Matthew Crockatt tells the Bookseller: “We made a commercial decision that didn’t turn out to be a good one.” And in electronic bookselling, Sony has announced that they now have over 1 million public domain titles available on their Reader.
Judge Rules Will of Jack Kerouac's Mother, Controlling His Estate, Was Forged
A Florida judge has ruled that the will of Gabrielle Kerouac, the mother of the late author who inherited his estate in 1969, was a forgery, citing testimony from handwriting experts and doctors. Gabrielle had passed the literary estate to Kerouac’s third wife, Stella, now also deceased, who gave everything to her siblings in 1990. The suit was brought by the author’s reportedly impoverished nephew Paul Blake Jr., who took over the original action filed by Kerouac’s estranged (and now also deceased) daughter Jan in 1994. It’s not clear whether the new court ruling will bring Blake a share of […]
The Most Marketplace: Pages, Links and More
Perhaps one of the biggest “problems” with PublishersMarketplace is that there is too much good stuff crammed in there and people often don’t know how to make the most of it. So we’re going to try a running series of short features/suggestions in case it’s helpful. Long before social networks took off, PM has always provided members the option of an easy-to-post web page (or blog) on our site, forming a community of publishing-focused pages that attracts over 200,000 page views a month. With little or no prompting from us, over 1,500 members have posted pages so far. (The page-posting […]