Following the striking recitation by poet Amanda Gorman at the presidential inauguration on Wednesday, Penguin Children’s announced that “due to overwhelming demand” it will issue a special hardcover edition of the work, THE HILL WE CLIMB. They plan a spring release, with an announced first printing of 150,000 copies, with the pub date still to be finalized.
South Korea’s Naver to Acquire Wattpad for More Than $600 Million
Further to recent reports that storytelling website Wattpad had put itself up for sale, on Tuesday publicly-held Korean internet conglomerate Naver said it would acquire Wattpad for cash and stock valuing the company at over $600 million. (The mix of cash versus stock is not being disclosed at this time.) Korea’s largest search engine, Naver’s properties also include digital comics publisher Webtoon — said to have 72 million monthly active users — which it sees as pairing well with Wattpad’s community. The deal is expected to close some time in the second quarter. Naver has a market cap of roughly […]
McGuigan Sues Former Partner Gendell, Alleging “Criminal Embezzlement” of Funds
On Thursday, literary agent Peter McGuigan filed suit on behalf of himself and the literary agency Foundry in New York Supreme Court against former business partner Yfat Reiss Gendell, charging breach of contract, conversion of funds, intentional fraud and fraudulent conveyance, negligent misrepresentation, and more. Alleging “criminal embezzlement,” the suit says that Gendell illegally transferred over $800,000 from Foundry accounts to herself and to cover expenses related to her new agency YRG Partners. It also alleges that over $45,000 in unlawful charges were made to company credit cards on Gendell’s behalf; that she hired some former Foundry employees in violation […]
Simon & Schuster Will Still Distribute Hawley Book — Because of Client Publisher Regnery
Simon & Schuster’s “larger public responsibility as citizens” will be tested yet again over the book by Senator Josh Hawley — since Regnery Publishing “is proud to stand in the breach with him” and intends to publish THE TYRANNY OF BIG TECH on May 4. S&S is the distributor for Regnery. Distributors generally have no control over the lists they service, and those contracts usually do not allow the distributor any selectivity over working on particular titles. (Update: We originally reported, incorrectly, that S&S also sells the Regnery list. Regnery handles their own sales in the US, while S&S sells their […]
2020: The Year In Deals
We are working on a broad piece looking at sales trends in 2020 and shifts among various sales channel but before we get to that, we are long overdue for an analysis of Deal trends from the year. (As always, our analysis is based on deal reports at PublishersMarketplace.com. Like all book industry datasets it is not complete; such a thing does not exist. But it’s the only comprehensive dataset on book deals, and is consistent over time.) Overall Stats Broadly speaking, the data aligns with US book sales reports, in that deal volume was up measurably, in all major […]
eBook Player Glose Is Acquired by Medium
In its ever-ambitious search for a business model and clear expression of why it exists at all, website Medium has acquired Paris-based Glose — an ebook platform and store, perhaps best known in the trade as the ebook vendor HarperCollins switched to for selling their ebooks directly to customers, after BookShout went of out of business. Glose and their roughly 20 employees will remain based in Paris, their ceo Nicolas Princen becoming vice president of books at Medium. Glose claims 1 million readers worldwide, and their separate Glose Education “serves as the ebook provider of choice for over a dozen […]