At the Deutsche Bank Media, Internet, and Telecom Conference yesterday, News Corp CFO Susan Panuccio addressed Harper Collins’ disappointing results last year, partnering with Spotify, and the use of AI technology. Panuccio attributed Harper’s 2023 sales, which fell 10 percent, to “the Amazon reset with their logistics” and inflationary pressures on manufacturing. Additionally, she said, “quite frankly, we didn’t have as good of frontlist as what we have had in other years.” Still, Harper has succeeded in cutting costs and is in good shape for the rest of the year, she said, with the 5 percent reduction in headcount, as […]
People 3/12
Laura Essex has been promoted to audio editor at Hachette Audio.
People 3/11
Vanessa Haughton is promoted to editor at Knopf.
Tattered Cover Hopes to Come Out of Bankruptcy This Year, Considers Moving Stores
After filing for bankruptcy in October, closing three of their seven stores, and laying off approximately 25 employees, Tattered Cover Book Store has updated its reorganization plan. The company hopes to emerge from bankruptcy by June 2024, and return to profitability in 2025 “by reducing costs and improving operations,” the Denver Gazette reports. That work is ongoing, however, since an earlier filing indicated the company lost approximately $340,000 in January due to costs from the holiday season and it was expecting to record additional losses in February. “Without a doubt we still have complicated negotiations to complete, challenging local economic […]
Distribution: Storytel and OverDrive
Storytel will make over 25,000 audiobook titles produced by company-owned publishers available to OverDrive’s library clients around the world. The companies note, “This agreement will offer access to an unparalleled and culturally diverse selection of tens of thousands of premium audiobooks in 20 languages.” Storytel head of catalog management expansion markets Stefanie Lamprinidi says in the announcement: “We are excited to be entering into this partnership with OverDrive to offer our vast and diverse language catalogs of high-quality audio stories, spanning the wide range of local and international titles to libraries, schools and their users around the world,” “We share […]
People 3/8
Kara Thornton has been promoted to director of publicity at Running Press.