Bookselling: New Owners for Diesel In Brentwood
Alison Reid and John Evans announced on the Diesel bookstore website that they have sold their store in Brentwood after a lengthy search. Richard and Heather Turner take over ownership on August 1. Reid and Evans “will be on hand for a few more months to smooth the transition.” They add: “We are so excited to work to help them keep the store as good as you’ve come to expect and to take it forward into the future. All of your favorite booksellers will be continuing to work in the store.”
Knopf Lists Barry Diller Book
Metadata for a forthcoming Barry Diller memoir, WHO KNEW, appeared online recently, set for an April 1, 2025 publication date from Knopf. That metadata was subsequently adjusted to an untitled arts and entertainment biography/memoir — though remnants remain online and have not been updated yet. (Just search the ISBN.) The fullest description is on this listing at Coles Books in the UK, promising an “intimate, stunning, and extraordinary memoir. In what is sure to be one of the most fascinating and talked-about memoirs of the year, Barry Diller holds nothing back.” It covers “his struggles with his homosexuality; his relationship […]
Lagardere Publishing Has Strong Second Quarter, Record First-Half Earnings
Lagardere Publishing reported a strong second quarter on Tuesday afternoon, with sales of €733 million, up €56 million from a year ago, or 8.3 percent higher. For the first half of the year, sales were €1.309 billion (up €62 million), with recurring EBIT of €113 million, up a significant €48 million from the same period a year ago, a new high for the first half of the year — though traditionally they record most of their profits in the second half. Earnings were “driven by growth in the United Kingdom and the United States, a favorable sales mix in physical […]
Expanded Matcher Includes Editors, Too
Over the weekend we went live with our newest update of Matcher, our AI-powered feature that searches and analyzes deals, dealmakers and related data. using natural language descriptions of your work. The new Editor Matcher will help you find editors that “match” your submissions, just as Agent Matcher helps find agents that “match” your manuscript. Editor Matcher works the same way as Agent Matcher, producing a list of the most likely editors who have acquired similar projects and follows with a second list of possible matches to investigate. But with his update, we have significantly upgraded the matching itself — […]
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 […]