Lisa Richards has joined Macmillan as National Account Manager, representing all of the Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group’s imprints to retail accounts serviced by Levy, including Wal-Mart, Sam’s Club and Target. She has previously worked for TOKYOPOP, Viz Media, and Prima Publishing, and reports to Director of Children’s Sales Mark von Bargen. After 18 years with Hodder and Headline, James Horobin will join Simon & Schuster UK in the newly created role of Group Sales, Marketing and Brand Development Director. He reports to Executive Director Kerr MacRae. At Headline, Aslan Byrne becomes UK and International Sales Director with immediate effect, reporting […]
Bookstores
Borders Will Sell Paperchase for $31 Million in Debt-Reduction Measure
Borders has agreed to sell its Paperchase stationery unit for $31 million to Primary Capital, a UK-based private equity firm. Under the agreement, set to close next week, Borders will continue to purchase and sell Paperchase products in its stores, and use $25 million of the proceeds to reduce the amount outstanding under its $90 million term loan credit facility, as specified under the terms of the loan agreement reached this past April. The deal comes just a month after Borders laid off an unspecified number of Paperchase staff, its third round of job cuts in 2010, and six years […]
Waterstone’s to Freeze All Staff Pay
On the heels of another dismal quarterly report, Waterstone’s has confirmed that staff pay will be frozen this year. “No pay awards are being made across HMV Group this year as we continue to contain our costs,” a spokesperson to The Bookseller, revealing little more about the reasons for the across-the-board cost cuts. The move comes just a day after the bookstore chain announced it would open a movie theater in its flagship (and very large) Piccadilly branch after it signed an agreement with Curzon Artificial Eye.The Bookseller
Briefs: Gloomy UK Publishing Stats for 2010 Thus Far; Amazon Shares Upgraded; Half Price Books Posts Gains; and More
HarperCollins UK CEO Victoria Barnsley has warned the industry is not likely to return to pre-recession glory after figures released by Nielsen BookScan for the first 24 weeks of the year, revealed a fall in the total value of book sales of 5.7% and eight of the top 10 publishers saw a drop in sales in 2010: “Our business needs to change, regardless of whether there is a recession or not. The economic situation has merely hurried the process along . . . To be honest, I don’t anticipate the market ever returning to pre-recession levels in its current form.” […]
Lively Testimony at BN Trial
Coverage of the first day of testimony in Ron Burkle’s lawsuit against Barnes & Noble in Delaware makes for fascinating, if not crystal clear, reading. Burkle indicated that he considered–but then rejected–a buyout bid for BN last year at $25 a share. (The stock now trades for under $13, its lowest point in years.) He accumulated stock last fall because he thought the company was historically cheap–“This was one of those things you would look back on and say ‘this could never happen again'”–but on that point he’s already been proven wrong by the market. Burkle is considering nominating his […]
Borders Shareholders “Asked” to Give LeBow Control Over Management
As expected, Borders announced a September 29 shareholders meeting to rubber-stamp the company’s deal with Bennet LeBow. He will either be granted a whopping stock warrant for 35.1 million shares exercisable at $2.25 or he will get “stock appreciation rights” that pay him anyway if the stock moves above that price. The surprise is the second motion on the agenda, which gives LeBow’s company control over the hiring and firing of the ceo, cfo, and any other executive officer. That should clear things up for anyone who still had doubts about whether LeBow bought complete control of the company.Release