Bertelsmann CEO Thomas Rabe will move on from his job when his contract expires in 2026. He told FAZ, “My contract runs until the end of 2026. My plan is to then move on to other tasks.” It will be “the right time for new impulses,” Rabe said. Thereafter, “I would like to be free.” He noted, “I can only imagine taking on one or two entrepreneurial roles, but more as a supporter and advisor.” Members of the company’s controlling owner the Mohn family have been rising quickly in Bertelsmann’s management ranks. Carsten Coesfeld joined the company’s supervisory board in […]
Simon & Schuster’s Last Public Result
There is a small addition to Simon & Schuster’s known results before going private late last year, following Paramount Global’s full-year earnings filing on Wednesday. For 30 days of October, Paramount indicates, S&S had sales of $101 million, and operating income of $18 million. That puts their publicly-released results for 10 months at sales of $958 million and operating income of $227 million. For the first three full quarters of the year, sales had been running just $6 million below their record year in 2022. For all of 2022, sales had reached $1.177 billion, up 18.5 percent, and operating income hit […]
Lakeside to Close Menasha Plant, Lay Off All 339 Employees, Will Close Two More Plants By Year-End
Lakeside Book Company indicated in a WARN notice to the state of Wisconsin that it will “permanently close its print production facility” in Menasha, WI, “due to changing market conditions.” As a result they will terminate all 339 employees at the plant, starting June 7 and ending June 21, when it will close. “Each employee impacted will receive a written 60-day notice of position elimination and will be paid all earned wages and agreed upon benefits at the time of their termination.” That work force was already reduced in 2023 through both voluntary and mandatory layoffs. General counsel and chief […]
Inkitt Raises $37 Million In Series C
Self-publishing website Inkitt raised another $37 million in Series C financing, led by Khosla Ventures, valuing the company at about $400 million post-money. (That’s only slightly above where they stood after raising $57 million in 2021.) Unfortunately, the capital will help fund “AI to write stories based on your original ideas, and to produce versions of its fiction personalized for specific readers” among other purposes. The facile tech media repeats CEO and founder Ali Albazaz’s claim that “Inkitt, in aggregate, ranks as the number 11 best-selling publisher globally” — to which TechCrunch amusingly adds “above household names like Penguin Random […]
Penguin Random House US to Open Export Distribution Center in the UK
Penguin Random House US will open a new distribution center in the UK to supply export sales to continental Europe, which ceo Nihar Malaviya says they “currently expect to be operational next year, likely summer 2025.” Those sales have been serviced from the company’s US warehouse. The company will also develop local UK-based printing of at least some of those US titles. The new facility is actually a current PRH UK distribution center — in Grantham, England, where the UK division is exiting their third-party distribution business Grantham Book Services and was due to close down the plant and lay […]
Balzer & Bray Moving to Macmillan from Harper
Alessandra Balzer and Donna Bray will move to Macmillan Children’s as of April 15. They will set up a new incarnation of their Balzer + Bray imprint there, with both having the title of SVP and co-publisher. Balzer + Bray was launched in 2008 at Harper Children’s. Existing B+B titles, as well as titles already under contract, will remain at HarperCollins, a spokesperson told us. Beginning in fall 2024, Harper’s B+B books will be published under the imprint of the editorial team to which they have been reassigned. MCPG president and publisher Jen Besser says in the announcement, “The only word […]