Subscription service Scribd announced raising $58 million in equity financing from Spectrum Equity. They say the funds will be used “to continue to operate sustainably and efficiently while accelerating our growth, product innovations, content acquisition and continued investment in our employees.” Despite the raise, Scribd has said that it has been profitable since 2016 —…
Financing/Start-Ups
Inkitt Raises $16 Million in New Funding
Berlin-based Inkitt announced a $16 million Series A funding round, led by Kleiner Perkins but including participation from HV Holtzbrinck Ventures. (The company previously raised $5 million.) The new capital will help fund their expansion, which includes plans to add 10 languages in addition to English. With more funding comes ever-greater hype: Founder and ceo…
Briefs: Bloomsbury In Line with Expectations, Atavist Was Sold
Bloomsbury issued a brief trading update on the first four months of their fiscal year, through June 30, still “in line with its expectations” for the year. Sales were up 3.7 percent with the recently-acquired IB Tauris — and 2.1 percent without two months of Tauris’s sales. The company said they had “a particularly strong…
Fall Announcements: Illustrated Hosseini Book for September, Albom for October, Sanders for November, and More
It’s the day to announce forthcoming fall books. Khaled Hosseini’s SEA PRAYER, a short, illustrated book written “in response to the current refugee crisis and the haunting image of young Alan Kurdi, the three-year-old Syrian boy whose body washed up on the beach in Turkey,” will be published September 18 by Riverhead (and August 30…
Ingram Acquires OptiQly
The assets of start-up Optiqly, which launched in public beta recently, have been acquired by Ingram Content Group. Ingram’s ventures unit had been the primary seed investor in Optiqly, and Ingram’s CoreSource had signed on this summer to provide a version of the company’s tools as a subscription service to their large roster of distribution…
The Final Pivot: Pronoun to Close, Luebbe Writes Down oolipo
Macmillan announced online that their digital self-publishing service Pronoun is “winding down” and expected to close by mid-January. The “epilogue” post says, “While many challenges in indie publishing remain unsolved, Macmillan is unable to continue Pronoun’s operation in its current form. Every option was considered before making the very difficult decision to end the business.”…