Barnes & Noble’s chief merchandising officer since 2020 Jackie De Leo left the company earlier this week. CEO James Daunt wrote internally: “It is with great regret – and also sincere gratitude – that I announce that Jackie De Leo has decided to leave Barnes & Noble as she continues her stellar career across bookselling and publishing. Jackie joined Barnes & Noble at the start of 2020 and has been instrumental in the evolution of our stores as she led our merchant teams over the last 5 years. Her leadership has been inspiring and the contribution to the success of […]
Shelley and Daunt to Speak (Briefly) at London Book Fair
The London Book Fair announced its seminar programming, with the opening keynote conversation on Tuesday, March 11 featuring CEO of Hachette Book Group USA and Hachette UK David Shelley and CEO of Barnes & Noble and managing director of Waterstones James Daunt together. They will discuss “Leading Businesses on Both Sides of the Atlantic,” moderated by journalist Alex Peake-Tomkinson — albeit in only a 30-minute session. Unfortunately, the program also features this session. We queried the show’s pr representative to…see what they were thinking: How Non-Fiction Publishing Leaders Can Reliably Leverage AI-Assisted Author Content to Optimise Revenue & Production Time […]
Bankrupt Diamond Owes Penguin Random House Over $9 Million
In Diamond Comic Distributors’ bankruptcy filing, Penguin Random House is listed as their largest creditor, owed $9.2 million. Among other publishing companies, Disney Consumer Products is owed $1.7 million; Simon & Schuster $600,000; VIZ Media $421,000; and Titan Publishing $357,000. Restructuring firm Getzler Henrich & Associates is a “financial advisor” in the bankruptcy and managing director Robert Gorin is co-chief restructuring officer of the company now according to the filing. Raymond James & Associates is the investment banker advising on the sale of the business units.
Presenting Searchable Salary Transparency
We have launched the first of our new tools for the year at Publishers Marketplace. Salary Search lets you check posted salary information over time for any job position by searching through many thousands of listings from Publishers Lunch Job Board archive. Since salary transparency laws in major states were implemented over the past couple of years, the richest data is also the most recent data, though the feature will match historical listings for whenever a salary was posted in a PL job listing. Every column is sortable, so you can easily sort by job posting date, salary level, title, […]
Barnes & Noble Plans to Open Another 60 New Stores In 2025
After opening 57 new stores in 2024, Barnes & Noble hopes to add another 60 new locations in 2025, ceo James Daunt told a friendly reporter at FT. (Some people in the trade believe the quick sale of Sterling Publishing to Hachette Book Group in November was designed to help pay for that store expansion.) The FT doesn’t ask about store totals after incorporating the usual closures. The chain had 610 outlets at the end of 2023, and a representative writes to PL that the company ended 2024 with 653 stores overall, after balancing new locations with closed stores. That […]
2024: The Year In Deals
A soft fourth quarter for overall deals (-3.2 percent overall) had only modest effect on what was a record-setting year for PM reports overall in 2024–even with continued weakness in the children’s market. Overall deals were higher than ever, as adult deals set new records by a large margin. And publisher investment, in terms of reported six-figure deals as well as in major and significant deals in particular, well exceeded previous records. In particular: – US deals overall were up 3.5 percent, just beating the previous record set in 2021 when pandemic retail sales also set new records. – Adult Fiction continued […]