Scholastic reported fourth quarter and full-year results for the period ending May 31 on Thursday afternoon. As expected, school closures due to coronavirus weighed heavily on their performance for the quarter, with overall sales of $284 million, down 40 percent compared to $471 million last year. Trade sales, however, surged to $80.4 million from $55.4 million last year — led by the big release of Suzanne Collins’ The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, plus continuing sales for Dav Pilkey’s Dog Man books, and Raina Telgemeier’s Guts, but also boosted in general by the early lockdown surge in educational books for […]
Publishers May Have to Scramble If Buyers of LSC’s Assets “Wind-Down” Contracts
The auction for the assets of bankrupt LSC Communications has been postponed to August 25, from August 5, as book publishers recently lost a court battle to give them more time if the buyers elect not to assume their existing contracts. Because bankruptcy abrogates many existing obligations, the ultimate buyers of LSC’s assets would have the right to reject publishers’ contracts — perhaps wanting to renegotiate terms. If such buyers do reject any of the current publisher contracts, the recent judge’s order establishes a three-month “wind-down” period, during which any publishers whose contracts would be rejected would need to move […]
Title Mix Helps Bloomsbury to Sales Gain
Bloomsbury reported earnings for the four month period ending June 30, with trade sales of £31.5 million, up from £24.6 million — an unexpected increase of 28 percent over the prior year period, despite the disruption caused by COVID. Print revenues were 9 percent above last year’s sales, and digital revenues grew by 63 percent year-on-year, with ebook revenue up 53 percent. Performance was strongest in the US, where sales grew by 38 percent, led by Crescent City: House of Earth and Blood by Sarah J. Maas, Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge, […]
Barnes & Noble Education Reports Continuing Decline, Sharpened by COVID
Barnes & Noble Education announced fourth quarter earnings, with sales of $256.9 million, down from $334.4 last period, a decline of 23.2 percent. Retail, by far BNED’s largest segment, was heavily hit as COVID shut down campuses nationwide, while sales in the much smaller wholesale and digital student solutions increased. Net loss was $(40.3) million, compared to a net loss of $(46.2) million in the prior year period. Both the quarter and year were a week longer than the comp year. For the fiscal year, sales were $1.85 billion, down from $2.04 billion, or 9 percent. Net loss was $(38.3) […]
Judge Freezes Ebook Pirates’ Assets
Washington district court Judge Marsha J. Pechman granted a temporary restraining order against the ebook piracy site KISS Library, as requested in the suit by Authors Guild members, Amazon Publishing, and PRH. The order freezes the assets and websites. Though the enterprise is based in Ukraine, the order applies to “any funds with their payment processors” attorney John Goldmark told PL. Their main payment processor, FastSpring, is based in California, and some of the domain registrars are also US based, he said. As of at least yesterday, all the domains had already been taken down, though KISS could migrate its […]
Authors Guild Members, Amazon and PRH Join to Fight Ukrainian Ebook Pirates
A group of Authors Guild members, Amazon Publishing, and Penguin Random House jointly filed a lawsuit in a Washington state federal court against Ukraine-based Kiss Library, alleging that the site flagrantly trades in cheap pirated ebooks. Kiss “is able to offer ‘unbeatable prices’ for a simple reason: its catalogs are replete with pirated ebooks, including titles for which Plaintiffs individually own and/or control exclusive copyrights in theUnited States,” says the complaint. Kiss Library does business under Kissly.net, Libly.net, Cheap-Library.com and other domain names. (Currently, the three named URLs are down.) Author plaintiffs include Lee Child, Sylvia Day, John Grisham, C.J. […]