Ryan Doherty will be join Celadon Books, Macmillan’s new trade book division, as executive editor starting September 12. He has been vice president of literary development at Sony Pictures Entertainment (after a number of years as an editor at Ballantine). Celadon Books co-publishers Jamie Raab and Deb Futter say: “Ryan’s ability to identify high quality works of fiction and nonfiction that have strong commercial potential and his deep knowledge of the overall literary market are perfectly aligned with the mission of Celadon Books.” At William Morrow, Shelby Meizlik has been promoted to the new role of vp, special events and creative strategies; Kelly […]
Education
Barnes & Noble Education Buys Online Writing Business for $58.5 Million
Barnes & Noble Education acquired Student Brands on Friday for $58.5 million in cash. Student Brands is a subscription-based writing skills services business, with properties in the US, Brazil, France and Mexico. BNED has been trying to buy its way to growth, so far without convincing investors. Earlier this year they paid the Riggios $174 million to buy MBS Textbook Exchange (and in 2016, their more modest acquisitions included LoudCloud, for $17.9 million, and Promoversity). Despite this year’s over $230 million in acquisitions, the company has a market cap of less than $340 million. Release In other acquisitions, Netflix made […]
Briefs: eBook Retailer Suit Rejected Again; Macmillan Learning Offers New Rental Options
Defunct ebook retailers BooksOnBoard and Diesel Books lost again in court, as the Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court ruling dismissing their lawsuit alleging that publishers’ introduction of the agency model for ebook pricing put them out of business. The Appeals Court wrote: “Based on the undisputed facts in the record, the district court determined that BooksOnBoard faced strong competition from large retailers, that it contemporaneously viewed the adoption of agency pricing as a boon, and that its subsequent demise was not attributable to the unlawful conspiracy. We have carefully reviewed the summary judgment record, and we […]
Textbook Author Sues Pearson
Last week professor of engineering at the University of Louisiana – Lafayette and author of multiple engineering textbooks Russell Hibbeler filed suit in a Tennessee Federal Court against Pearson, alleging significant underpaid and/or unpaid royalties and charging the publisher with creating derivative works with permission and payment. (Hibbeler lives in Nashville.) The suit is of potentially broad interest given the extent but also the nature of Professor Hibbeler’s claims. In a 2015 audit from the Royalty Compliance Organization, Hibbeler says they discovered “significant underpayments and non- payments of royalties and other compensation due.” As part of the audit, “Pearson discovered […]
Barnes & Noble Education Gives Up On Yuzu
We’ve been skeptical of Barnes & Noble Education’s digital platform Yuzu since they started it in 2014, ever since we learned that a yuzu “is a hybrid citrus fruit with curiously high ratio of seeds to juice.” In reporting fiscal third quarter results on Tuesday morning, the company finally announced the end of their attempt to turn what didn’t work for Nook into something similar: “In an effort to reduce and manage digital expenditures, while at the same time maintaining high quality digital products,” they said, they are migrating their digital platform to Ingram’s VitalSource. (Not unlike their competitor Chegg, which […]
Open eBooks Initiative Goes Live, with National Geographic Joining In
The Open eBooks project — a private effort inspired by President Obama as part of his larger ConnectEd initiative — has gone live, announced by the White House, with encouragement from Michelle Obama. As previously announced, the program makes available a large collection of ebooks for free to low-income students in need. Operating as a partnership among Digital Public Library of America, The New York Public Library, and First Book, with content support from Baker & Taylor, driven by what is billed as “over $250 million of free reading material.” The Open eBooks app lets participating students borrow up to 10 ebooks at once, […]