For the sales week ending December 16, Circana Bookscan reports weekly sales of 28.6 million units, falling behind last year’s sales of 29.5 million units in the same week. But with Christmas on Monday, booksellers should see another very full week of sales leading into the holiday. As Circana Bookscan analyst Kristen McLean wrote a week ago, “Overall we expect the close of 2023 to look very much like 2022 — two shallower ‘Super Saturdays’ rather than a single high peak.” Unit sales are expected to run about 3 percent below last year’s totals. For the eight weeks of sales […]
The Very Best of the Best Books of 2023
The votes are all in and we’re ready to celebrate the consensus very best books of 2023, based on a broad collection of lists. James McBride’s The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store was both novel of the year and overall book of the year, followed in the voting by Safiya Sinclair’s How to Say Babylon and David Grann’s The Wager, which tied for nonfiction book of the year. Farrar, Straus outperformed this year with five titles among the top 20. Independent publishers were represented by newcomers Red Tower and Yale University Press, as well as Grove/Atlantic. Sinclair’s memoir was first […]
Our Schedule
This will be the last daily newsletter this week. We will be back at least once next week, probably towards the end of the week, to stay on top of whatever develops. Deals newsletters will maintain their regular schedule through to Monday’s weekly round-up, and from there will also be more occasional — depending upon the flow of deal reports. As always, PublishersMarketplace.com works for you 24/7 no matter what, and we will be reporting and clipping news to the website, adding new deals as they flow in, posting job openings and more. We wish all of our readers happy, […]
Giving A Holiday Discount on PM
With the holidays upon us, we have one of those very occasional discount offers available. If someone in your life would like access to PublishersMarketplace.com, they can enjoy all that our site has to offer at 40 percent off the usual price for the first month! To qualify, enter this code — Happy23 — in the Promo Code: box that appears in the payment plan section of the Registration page. Feel free to share this offer with friends, and enjoy the holidays with some extra data. The code is valid for just a short time, through December 27.
The Year in Mergers
2023 was the year of “finally” in mergers and acquisitions, as two long-in-the-making deals involving some of the largest trade publishers finally closed. Simon & Schuster was sold to KKR three-and-a-half years after their parent company started the sale process. And Lagardere (parent of Hachette Book Group and the rest of Lagardere Publishing) is finally controlled by Vivendi, two years after the latter launched their tender offer to acquire Lagardere, and three-and-a-half years after first buying a stake in Lagardere. In order to take control of Lagardere, Vivendi finally had to divest of Editis — after trying other options — […]
Top Pearson Shareholder Wants Stock Relisted in US
Activist investor Cevian Capital, which owns more than 12 percent of Pearson’s shares, has a magical solution to increase the company’s stock: Move the listing from London to New York. Cevian managing partner Christer Gardell tells Bloomberg, “To change the listing is an easy and effortless way to increase the value of a company.” He reasons, “As most of the competition is based in the US, we see an upside to the share of 30-40 percents from a relisting.” Pearson does trade on the New York Stock Exchange through an American depositary receipt listing. A Pearson spokesperson said they are […]