Years of financial woes and the death last April of founder David Poindexter culminated in San Francisco-based publisher MacAdam/Cage filing voluntarily for Chapter 7 bankruptcy earlier this month, after failing to find a buyer since fall 2012. The 140-page filing, agreed upon by the Poindexter estate trustee Emeigh Poindexter on December 20 and filed in Northern California bankruptcy court on January 17, lists nearly $1.4 million in liabilities from unsecured creditors (along with an additional $64,000 from secured creditors) against approximately $130,000 in assets, the vast majority of which is book inventory stored at a space operated by Publishers Storage […]
Finance
Context: Looking Across Amazon, Google Play, iTunes and More
Most publishing-focused media is looking solely at Amazon’s fourth quarter earnings report from yesterday, but Google also reported earnings Thursday evening. The search giant’s sales and profits both rose 17 percent. Their sales are smaller than Amazon’s (about $17 billion, versus $25.5 billion) — but they had profits of over $4 billion (which is more than Amazon’s lifetime earnings). More importantly, with Google pushing their consolidated Play store and Apple continuing to grow iTunes sales, it’s time (long past time, actually) for us all to be looking across the digital media competitors. Amazon‘s total “media” sales for the year were […]
Bienstock Sold to UTA; Paradigm In Music Joint Venture
Consolidation of Hollywood agencies is continuing, with UTA announcing on Wednesday it is acquiring N.S. Bienstock, which specializes in representing hundreds of TV news personalities and producers. Co-presidents of Bienstock Richard Liebner and his wife Carol Cooper will remain in charge of the unit. Terms of the acquisition were not announced, but the LAT reports that UTA financed the deal itself rather than turning to an outside partner (in contract to WME and CAA, both of which have partnered with major private equity firms to finance their expansions). Separately, the LAT notes that another talent agency, Paradigm, announced Monday it […]
Following Big Loss, Quercus Starts Sale Process
After the disclosure last week of a large and unexpected holiday loss and “discussions” with its bank about the company’s revolving credit line, Quercus has announced it will “seek potential offerors by means of a formal sale process,” which the board decided “would be in the best interests of the company’s shareholders.” Livingstone Partners is running the sale, and the publisher has received permission under the UK’s takeover rules to allow bidders to keep their identity confidential. The company “continues to have constructive dialogue with its bankers, Barclays” and notes the “sale process is at an early stage and…there can be […]
F+W Acquires Crafts Specialist New Track Media
F+W Media has taken another step forwards as an art and crafts powerhouse with the acquisition announced on Friday of New Track Media, which has 30 consumer enthusiast brands in select craft categories, woodworking, and astronomy. New Track’s assets include “three robust direct-to-consumer catalog businesses with more than 12 million members and revenues in the tens of millions.” As F+W ceo David Nussbaum said at the Digital Book World conference recently, the company already has “more than 20 million individual consumer ecommerce orders annually.” With their previous acquisitions of Interweave, Martha Pullen Company, and Love Sewing, over 60 percent of […]
Corporate: Bloomsbury Finishes Well; Russian Publishers Merge
Bloomsbury issued a brief trading update on sales for the last four months of 2013. “In line with expectations,” sales rose 20 percent compared to a year ago, with “most of the growth generated from print sales.” Their sales had been up 13 percent for the first half of the year, helped by both trade hits and their continuing string of academic and professional publishing acquisitions. Separately, Russia’s two biggest trade publishers have completed the merger they began some time ago, with Eksmo finalizing their purchase of AST. The purchase price was not disclosed. Publishing Perspectives reports that Eksmo owner Oleg Novikov […]