HarperCollins svp, sales analytics and pricing Dan Lubart has joined Hachette Book Group as svp, strategy and publishing operations, reporting to coo Joe Mangan. Lubart will oversee strategic planning, business development, digital media/distribution, and supply chain management functions of all HBG imprints. His work will include “a focus on business intelligence, enhanced reporting tools that combine sales, marketing, and publicity data, and continued improvement of demand forecasting.” He will “also help to identify new business opportunities, strategic partnerships and potential areas of growth and investment.” Mangan says in the announcement, “Dan is a high impact executive with deep skills in […]
Bookstores
ABA Names New Indies Introduce Titles
The American Booksellers Association announced their summer/fall 2014 list of Indies Introduce Debut Authors, picked “as the brightest debuts of the coming season.” You can start reading the highlighted novels by Malcolm Brooks and Courtney Collins right now in our free ebook, Publishers Lunch Buzz Books 2014 Spring/Summer. (We published our packed sampler a little early this year, because the ABA’s Winter Institute was earlier than usual — but the bulk of the featured 40 excerpts come to market between late April and early July. So we still feature exclusive, and substantial, pre-publication looks at about 25 potential breakouts coming to market […]
Researchers Document How Imposing Sales Tax Reduces Amazon’s Sales
A research paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research prepared by three professors at Ohio State’s Fisher College of Business documents the finding that when states adopt sales on online purchase, “households reduce Amazon exenditures by 9.5 percent.” At least their direct Amazon purchases — since at the same time, purchases from other online sellers, go up 20 percent. Overall physical retailers picked up 2 percent in sales as a result of level playing field on sales tax. As you would also expect, the team found “the effect to be more pronounced for large purchases.” Consumers “decrease their spending […]
Barnes & Noble Stock Falls 12 Percent; Riggio Reflects
Barnes & Noble stock fell almost 12 percent on Thursday following the disclosure of chairman Len Riggio’s big sale of 3.7 million shares, reducing his stake to roughly 20 percent (down from 30 percent at the beginning of December). Trading finished at $16.37 a share on heavy volume of 9.4 million shares, but now investors have a long weekend to cool off. While the recent sales by Riggio and Lberty Media have weighed on the company’s stock price, it had been usually high up until those sales — which made it easier for these big investors to sell. “Several weeks […]
Indies Choice Winners: Atkinson, Marra, Rowell and More
The Indies Choice Award winners (and related ABA-selected E.B. White Read-Aloud Award winners) were named, for formal presentation at BEA. Additionally, indie bookstore benefactor James Patterson will be honored with the Indie Champion Award. The winning books and authors are: Adult Fiction Life After Life, by Kate Atkinson (Reagan Arthur Books) Adult Debut A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, by Anthony Marra (Hogarth) Adult Nonfiction The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, by Daniel James Brown (Viking) Young Adult Eleanor & Park, by Rainbow Rowell (Griffin) Middle Reader Flora and […]
Google Play Continues Growth
Google reported first quarter earnings Wednesday afternoon that were somewhat short of analysts’ expectations on both sales and earnings. Our narrow interest in their earnings reports remains the hints regarding their expanding Play store. The category that includes Play results — “other revenues” — was up 48 percent compared to a year ago, at $1.554 billion. The same revenue line comprised $1.65 for the previous holiday quarter, and just under $5 billion for all of 2013. As we noted earlier, this business category includes the Google Play store; their hardware line (Nexus devices and Chromecasts, but not Chromebooks); and their […]