Following last week’s preview, we’re back with the final stats and trends on the selling season leading into the Frankfurt Book Fair (measured as five weeks plus a day through Tuesday, for consistency across the years). In line with the early view, total domestic US deal volume was flat for the fifth year in a row. As we reported last week, the FBF selling season is about 7.5 percent busier than the springtime selling season ahead of the London Book Fair. That means the FBF stretch averages 140 deals a week and the London season averages 130 deals a week […]
Book Fairs
Continued Trade Momentum Boosts Sales at Scholastic
Scholastic reported earnings for their fiscal Q1 2020, ending August 31, with sales of $232.6 million, up from to $218.4 million in the first quarter of 2019. “The big story in the quarter was our strong trade frontlist worldwide,” said cfo Ken Cleary on the analyst call. Trade publishing sales were $74.1 million, up from $61.4 million last year. In overall Children’s Book Publishing and Distribution, which includes book clubs and fairs as well as trade, first quarter revenues rose to $109.6 million, from $95.7 million. “Most impressive was our strength in series publishing — Dog Man, Captain Underpants, Harry […]
Frankfurt Reminds You That Layout Changes Mean You’ll Need Time to Get to Your Next Meeting
It was almost a year ago that the Frankfurt Book Fair announced that continued construction at the fairgrounds would change the layout of the show starting this year, so some people may have forgotten to plan accordingly when making this year’s appointments. But a fresh announcement this week serves as a timely reminder, while providing information on further changes planned for next year’s fair and beyond. Mostly importantly, the agents’ center has moved from its standing location at the top of Hall 6 (floor 6.3) over to the historic Festhalle near the fair’s main City entrance. (The Festhalle is the […]
Preliminary BookCon and BookExpo Attendance Info
Preliminary (unaudited) data shows BookCon attendance nudging up to 21,500 people from 20,000 at past shows. The early number for Book Expo attendees — including media, but excluding exhibitors — was 8,260 (which usually includes about 1,200 press). But regular readers know we’ve been having a lot of trouble making sense of their numbers. We were finally provided a breakdown on the 2018 Book Expo attendees by sub-category — but that data does not line up with Book Expo’s own official attendance “infographic” and there’s still no clarity on preliminary versus audited data. It should be in Reed Exhibition’s interest […]
AAP: Nadler Talks Tough On Tech Antitrust, and Judiciary Opens Investigation
Chair of the House Judiciary Committee Representative Jerry Nadler appeared at the Association of American Publishers’ annual meeting on Wednesday to accept their annual distinguished public service award. Nadler’s brief remarks came ahead of the announcement at the end of the day of the committee’s broad “bipartisan investigation into competition in digital markets.” The committee says it will focus on “documenting competition problems in digital markets,” “examining whether dominant firms are engaging in anti-competitive conduct,” and “assessing whether existing antitrust laws, competition policies, and current enforcement levels are adequate to address these issues.” They promise “a top-to-bottom review of the […]
The Book Expo Schedule, Simplified
Book Expo’s schedule software remains as difficult as ever, so we are back with our handy single schedule spreadsheet. Listed day-by-day, hour-by-hour, it puts all of the various common convention events, educational sessions and stage events in one place. Just visit publun.ch/2019bxsched. (It does not include specialized tracks of limited interest, like the new slate of Unbound events focused on sideline merch, or the self-published showcases, previously known as BEA Selects, now called Indie Insights.) As previously announced, you can already tour our virtual convention presenting nearly 60 excerpts from notable forthcoming fall titles, just by downloading the new ebook […]