A small, heavily overflowing room greeted AMERICAN DIRT author Jeanine Cummins at Winter Institute 15 in Baltimore on Wednesday for a charged, emotional and timely session originally envisioned as Creating Conversations Around American Dirt. Booksellers in the audience brought both palpable support but also raw and candid questions to the session, and Cummins responded in kind with thoughtful and emotional responses. As bookseller Javier Ramirez from Madison Street Books in Chicago noted in introducing Cummins, long before the Oprah pick and other attention — and controversy — AMERICAN DIRT had received “more Indie Next recommendations than any book in recent […]
Briefs: Waiting On Audible Captions Settlement Details, Book Culture Store Closed for Good, and More
For those watching the dates, the parties in the publishers’ lawsuit against Audible seeking to block their Captions feature had been expected to report back to the court on the execution of their settlement agreement as of Tuesday, January 21. But in the meantime, based on the previous report that an agreement had been reached, Judge Valeri Caproni went ahead and dismissed the case with prejudice. She left it up to the parties to decide if they “wish for the Court to retain jurisdiction to enforce their settlement agreement.” In that event the settlement agreement would still be submitted to […]
Next Week’s Bestsellers
We are beginning some experimental work with BookStat, the service that tracks and estimates online book sales across all formats, to provide some market insights not previously available. One feature of the system we particularly like (and helped to inspire) is that it tracks pre-orders on a daily basis, right alongside sales of books already on the market, providing a broader view of titles attracting interest from readers. That feature becomes particularly interesting for tracking new release titles (and over time helping to distinguish between actual opening week sales of books, versus their accrued pre-orders). It also means we can […]
Penguin Random House Pulls Titles from Unlimited Subscription Services Around the World
Earlier this month, as of January 15 by most indications, Penguin Random House removed its audiobook titles from a variety of “unlimited” listening subscription platforms around the world. The news was first reported out of Scandinavia, where the disappearance was notable on leading platform Storytel and its acquired subsidiaries (like Mofibo in Denmark), as well as on their leading competitors such as Bonnier’s Bookbeat and Russia’s Nextory. Missed in that reporting is that PRH’s titles have also been removed from Scribd, where their audiobooks were also a notable part of the offering. (When PRH audio first participated with Scribd in […]
Springer Nature Hires Bankers For Another Try at An IPO
After pulling their IPO on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange at the last minute in 2018 on weak demand, Springer Nature’s owners are determined to try again, hoping that capital markets remain strong long enough for them to get to the finish line this time. Co-owners BC Partners and Holtzbrinck are reported to be working with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley as lead bookrunners (Morgan Stanley led the previous effort as well), “which could take place as early as May or June” according to Reuters’ sources. One of those sources insists that “leverage has come down significantly, making it a much […]
Quarto Needs More Money: Lau Will Take Control In $18.2 Million Equity Raise with Help from Italy’s Giuntis
With $54 million in bank debt and another $13 million short-term loan from major shareholders that’s due in August, Quarto Group needs far more money than it can generate or access. In order to extend their loan for another year, to mid-2021, they need to raise money now or face severe consequences. The latest solution to this long-running intractable problem is that the company plans to recapitalize (and dilute) itself by doubling its share base and offering current shareholders new shares if they kick in 68 pence per share. The offer is designed to raise £13.9 million (of $18.2 million) […]