The long, messy restructuring of the Perseus LLC private equity investments in the wake of Perseus chairman Frank Pearl’s death almost 3 years ago has come to an end. A new private equity firm, Centre Lane Partners, prevailed as the winning bidder in the auction run by advisory firm Cogent Partners, acquiring controlling interest in funds said to own or control approximately 11 different companies — including the Perseus Books Group — and now acting as manager partner for those interests. That makes Centre Lane the new entity in control of PBG, which confirmed the investment on Tuesday evening with an […]
November AAP Sales Down Again On Weak Hardcover Shipments
After a surprisingly positive October 2014 sales report, the AAP’s statistics for November returned to the pattern that they have followed for most of the year: Adult sales declined almost 8 percent, down $37 million to $442 million, as children’s rose, up $23.6 million to $190.6 million. The real weakness was in those market-leading new hardcovers that we have been talking about in past reports, with net sales in November of $155.5 million — versus $206.2 million in 2013. eBook sales also declined for the second consecutive month, at $116 million overall, with adult ebook numbers roughly flat and children’s/YA […]
True: Harper Lee to Publish Second Novel with Harper
The AP reported on Tuesday that HarperCollins will issue Harper Lee’s second novel, GO SET A WATCHMAN, on July 14, with a planned North American first printing of 2 million copies. The book is “essentially a sequel” to TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, though it was written first. The 304-page book was “rediscovered last fall.” The 88-year-old Lee says in a statement: “In the mid-1950s, I completed a novel called ‘Go Set a Watchman.’ It features the character known as Scout as an adult woman, and I thought it a pretty decent effort. My editor, who was taken by the flashbacks to […]
For the Groundhogs: A New Subscriber PM Discount
As you may have read, there was disagreement on the prospects for spring among some of the Northeast’s most prominent groundhogs yesterday. In our early days at Publishers Lunch and PublishersMarketplace.com we used to honor Groundhog Day with an annual subscription drive — and we have decided it is time to resurrect that tradition. For a limited time only, we invite new subscribers to check out a full month’s worth of all of the resources at PublishersMarketplace.com for just $15, a “rollback” to our original price. On the second of our two registration pages, when you are asked to “choose […]
New At PM: Tracking Stock Availability
Since we started PublishersMarketplace.com over 13 years ago, one of our core features has been the Book Tracker. Originally designed follow Amazon and BN sales rank for lists of individual ISBNs (with stored histories), the Tracker has expanded over the years to contain all kinds of ISBN-related information, along with automatic tracking to check sales rank twice a day. User suggestions have helped drive some of the expansion, with Amazon price change tracking added when ebook prices were in regular flux. Now, at the prompt of literary agent Ted Weinstein, we have added another twist, automatically monitoring Amazon in-stock availability […]
Daily Amazon: Flame Out On Tablet Sales, Interest In Radio Shack, and More
Suspicions about broad weakness in the market for new tablets were confirmed by the latest fourth quarter Tablet Tracker report from International Data Corporation. Apple already reported that iPad sales declined to 21.4 million units in the holiday quarter, still the dominant player in the market. More surprisingly, IDC says that Amazon shipped only 1.7 million Fire tablets across the line, despite refreshing their offerings last September. By IDC’s count, Amazon’s tablet shipments were down almost 70 percent from 5.8 million units in Q4 2013. Similarly, the company estimates Amazon shipped only 3.3 million tablets all year last year, down […]