Simon & Schuster’s remarkable streak of 19 consecutive quarters of earnings growth came to an end in the fourth quarter of 2019, reported this morning by new parent company ViacomCBS. Sales for the quarter were $215 million (down from $218 million in 2018, and $235 million in 2017), with adjusted operating income before depreciation and amortization [OIBDA] of $34 million, a sharper decline from $48 million at the end of 2018. For the full year, sales fell $9 million to $814 million, and adjusted OIBDA of $143 million was $10 million lower. (Note that this is a revised way of […]
Schwartz and Wade to Establish Separate Imprints at Random House Children’s
Random House Children’s is discontinuing Schwartz & Wade Books, with the imprint’s final list publishing in Spring 2021. Anne Schwartz and Lee Wade, will each become vice president and publisher of their own imprint, Anne Schwartz Books and Random House Studio, respectively. Anne Schwartz Books will focus on “publishing critically acclaimed titles by renowned authors and illustrators, and introducing innovative talent.” It will publish picture books as well as select middle-grade and young adult fiction and nonfiction titles. Random House Studio will publish “picture books with a strong and recognizable aesthetic” and also “other formats, especially books with an illustrative […]
Authors and Colleagues Remember Sonny Mehta
Knopf held a celebration of the life of Sonny Mehta at the New York Public Library’s Celeste Bartos Fourm — “a room Sonny loved” — on Wednesday afternoon, featuring remarks from 11 authors and colleagues. “We are assembled in a vast Cathedral of books,” James Ellroy said. “The great Sonny Mehta, the great publisher of the world, English language, worshipped the printed word on paper and we are here to celebrate this brilliant, reckless, dedicated man’s temporal journey, and to pray and wish him onward to his soul’s repose.” He noted later, “We hitched our star to Sonny Mehta. We […]
Apple Tries to Block Just-Released German Book About Their App Store
Apple is inadvertently promoting a book just released in Germany by the former head of their German app store business: APP STORE CONFIDENTIAL, by Tom Sadowski, from Murmann Verlag. (They are a small business publisher, founded in 2004, and seem to do custom publishing as well.) The company’s lawyers reportedly wrote to Sadowski and his publisher to demand that they not “deliver the book” and “recall all copies of the book already in circulation and…destroy all book manuscripts.” Apple says Sadowski “violated his employment” agreement in writing the book and alleges that the book contains “business secrets” that are “of […]
Bolton Teases More Book Details
John Bolton is on a little tease tour this week, appearing for an interview at Duke University on Monday (and moving on to Vanderbilt). He avoided answering controversial questions while suggesting the answers were in his forthcoming book, THE ROOM WHERE IT HAPPENED: “You’ll love Chapter 14.” The manuscript has yet to receive government approval and therefore unlikely to make a print release date of March 17. “I really hope it is not suppressed,” Bolton said of his book. “I say things in the manuscript about what he (Trump) said to me,” he added. “I hope they become public someday.” […]
A New Vendor for Harper’s eBooks
Harper Collins had used Bookshout.com since 2016 as the platform for ebooks sold directly to customers from their websites, but recently the Harlequin site told customers that “BookShout closed their business in early 2020, ceasing all operations.” (In an earlier email, Harlequin had told customers, “On December 30th, 2019, Bookshout unexpectedly informed us of their intention to close their business on January 31st, 2020.”) Harlequin recently switched to Glose as their new ebook provider. Direct ebook sales have been disabled on the main Harper Collins online store, but the company tells us they are switching to Glose as well and […]