In Norway, the Schibsted Group is selling Schibsted Forlag, one of the country’s leading trade publishers, to Vigmostad & Bjørke. They are also selling them their ebookstoore EBOK.No, for undisclosed terms. The two units had combined 2014 sales of approximately $24 million, with an EBITDA loss of about $1.8 million. Schibsted will book an “immaterial gain” on the sale. The publishing house was founded in 1839. Chair of the board of Schibsted Forlag Bernt Olufsen says in the announcement: “Vigmostad & Bjørke has a solid history, and has over the last 25 years developed very well in the Norwegian book publishing industry. Today, it […]
Finance
Next, Barnes & Noble Buys Out Half Their Preferred Shares
On Friday we reported on the revised Barnes & Noble College prospectus that confirmed the dissolution of Nook Media, and later that day Barnes & Noble filed a second disclosure with the SEC. The company is converting a little over half of the special preferred shares that were created when Liberty Media invested $204 million in the bookseller in 2011. (Liberty sold all but 10 percent of those preferred shares in April 2014 for a nice profit.) In the new transaction, five owners of preferred stock are exchanging 104,000 preferred shares for a little over 6.1 million shares of Barnes […]
Barnes & Noble Confirms End of Nook Media, LLC
Barnes & Noble filed a second amended version of the prospectus for the spinoff of BN Education with the SEC yesterday. (Some reports notwithstanding, there is little indication that this is much different from the original prospectus that we first reported on in February.) The company did confirm the dissolution of the Nook Media, LLC holding partnership as of May 1, with parent company Barnes & Noble once again owning the Nook digital business in its entirety. They do note that the new, freestanding BN Education stock shares will trade under the ticker symbol BNED, and the filing package adds […]
Books-A-Million Starts the Fiscal Year on a Downward Note; HMH Completes Scholastic Edtech Acquisition
Sales dropped $2 million (or 1.9 percent) at Books-A-Million in their fiscal first quarter, ending May 2, reaching $101.8 million for the period. Same-store sales also declined 0.9 percent down 2.5 percent, and the net loss of $5.3 million was marginally improved over the $5.6 million net loss for the same time period last year. Even ceo Terrance Finley couldn’t quite issue an upbeat statement, commenting: “Our comparable store sales decline versus last year was largely due to a strong prior year title lineup in our teen category. This decline was moderated by improvements in our fiction and kids categories […]
Briefs: HarperCollins Adds Titles to Shazam; Sierra Club Closes Book Imprints; and More
HarperCollins will be the exclusive global book partner for the launch of music recognition app Shazam‘s new visual recognition functionality. (Other newspaper and magazine partners include Condé Nast, Esquire, Time and the Wall Street Journal.) Starting immediately whenever Shazam users wave their mobile phone over any HarperCollins book or promotional content with the Shazam camera logo on it, they will instantly get taken to custom mobile experiences from HarperCollins, including exclusive content, author interviews, special offers, videos, playlists and more. Available and forthcoming titles in the program include Harper Lee’s Go Set A Watchman; Welcome to Night Vale by Joseph […]
Corporate: Bertelsmann Sets Up Penguin Verlag in Germany; Frankfurt Book Fair Takes Minority Stake in IPR License
Germany’s Verlagsgruppe Random House will launch a new imprint, Penguin Verlag, sometime in 2016, the Bookseller reports. The imprint, to be run by Random House Germany publisher and managing director Thomas Rathnow, will publish both fiction and non-fiction, original trade and mass-market paperback editions as well as paperback reprints of books that have previously been published in hardback by various German Random House imprints (including Jonas Jonasson’s bestseller The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden.) The idea is that Penguin Verlag will “publish brands” and that Penguin, according to Rathnow, represents “the convergence of high quality and popular commercial […]