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 […]
Book Fairs
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 […]
London: So Many Debuts, So Few Big Deals
We’ve run out of polite synonyms for modest and soft, so we’ll start our final look at the dealmaking patterns leading into the London Book Fair with what jumped out as most distinctive. Debut fiction is always a closely-watched market bellwether, particularly as the mainstream fiction market appears to languish. The good news is that this year’s five weeks of sales and announcements ahead of the fair has recorded the most debuts in the past four years. At the same time, however, reported deals for substantial amounts (major and significant deals) are far lower than at any other point: 2019 […]