Ebook subscription service Oyster announced late Monday afternoon in a blog post that the company would wind down operations “over the next several months.” Publishers told us to expect this development earlier in the day, as part of a sale of Oyster. The subscription company then confirmed to Re/code that “a portion” of staff are going to work for Google Play Books, and sources told the site that Oyster ceo Eric Stromberg, co-founders Andrew Brown and Willem Van Lancker are among those who will work for Google. Sources said Google is de facto the buyer, paying Oyster for the right to hire some of its […]
Finance
Pearson’s Fallon Will Wait on Selling Penguin Random House Stake
With Pearson able to ask Bertelsmann to buy out their minority 47 percent share of Penguin Random House as early as this October, the education company’s John Fallon told Bloomberg TV, “It’s most unlikely that we’ll exercise the option at this time.” He noted, “The business is doing well, and we are one year away from achieving peak synergies.” Perhaps more relevantly, Pearson has abundant cash coming in this year from the sale of the Financial Times and their half of the Economist, so it’s reasonable that the company would wait a bit to cash in their PRH holding. Without […]
Bertelsmann Formalizes Education Division
Not surprisingly, following the big $540 million acquisition of Relias Learning last year and a number of substantial investments in the field, Bertelsmann has set up the Bertelsmann Education Group as its own business unit. Kay Krafft, who has managed Bertelsmann’s education enterprises since 2014, is ceo of the new group, and Jarek Gabor is cfo. Headquartered in New York, BEG will be managed by Bertelsmann’s Corporate Investments division. Bertelsmann ceo Thomas Rabe said in the announcement (as he has before), “Education is one of Bertelsmann’s key growth platforms, and we want to expand this segment into our third mainstay of business, alongside media […]
Barnes & Noble Stock Falls Nearly 28 Percent In A Day
Barnes & Noble’s stock started falling from the opening bell on Wednesday morning after the company reported bigger than expected losses (while management acted like everything was wonderful). But the selloff turned into a stampede late in the afternoon, with significant volume in final hour of trading pushing shares down $4.51 for the day, a decline of 27.7 percent, to close at $11.79 a share. The market as a whole turned negative in the afternoon as well, also trading down in the last hour, but the market movement was nothing like the bookseller’s falloff. In total, 9.45 million shares of […]
Perseus Hires Greenhill to Explore Sale
The Perseus Books Group announced Wednesday afternoon that “it has initiated a formal process to explore a potential sale of the business” and has retained Gregory Miller at Greenhill & Co. (Miller represented Scholastic in the recent sale of their education business.) PBG CEO David Steinberger says in the announcement, “We have received multiple inquiries from parties expressing significant interest in the company.” He added, “The Perseus Books board has determined that it is our fiduciary responsibility to explore a potential sale transaction.” As we noted when Centre Lane Partners took control of parent company Perseus LLC early in the year at […]
Briefs: BitLit and Kindle Scout Expand, Scholastic UK Purchase
Amazon’s “reader-powered publishing platform” Kindle Scout is expanding beyond the US, welcoming author submissions from Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Mexico, Brazil, Japan, and India. The company says that so far, 75 titles have been picked up for publication by Kindle Press. Also expanding is BitLit, the company that helps enable print and ebook bundling. The start-up is working with Ingram to let publishers who use CoreSource Plus for digital asset management and distribution integrate with BitLit. In the UK, Scholastic Ltd. has acquired Troubadour, which operates as The Travelling Book Company. With a network of sales agents who work with schools across the UK and Ireland, […]