Sarah Harrison Smith has been named children’s editor at the New York Times Book Review. She was most recently on the paper’s metropolitan desk. Scholastic unveiled the new cover designed by Kazu Kubuishi for HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS, which will be published on August 27 (along with the other redesigned books in the series) at BEA Thursday morning. At the Audiobook Publishers Association’s Audie Awards ceremony last night at the New-York Historical Society, Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair (read by Colin Firth, Audible) was named named Audiobook of the Year and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (multi-voiced […]
Finance
People, Etc.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg officially has declared Tuesday as “G.P. Putnam’s Sons Day,” in recognition of the publisher’s 175th anniversary. Bloomberg said: “The story of G.P. Putnam’s Sons has it all – entrepreneurship, determination, romance, big dreams. It is a classic New York City story, and on this wonderful occasion, today, we join Putnam’s extended family and many readers across the world in looking ahead to the next exciting chapter.” Michael Foster, who bought control of the UK agency PFD and merged it with his MF Management in 2010 to form The Rights House, has sold his shares back […]
News Corp. Approves Separation; Aims for June 28
The board of News Corporation formally approved the division of the company’s assets into two publicly-traded companies. They expect the spinoff to occur in a month, on June 28. As previously described, HarperCollins will join the company’s newspapers, education unit and other division in the New News Corp. which will — upon completion of the deal — be named simply News Corporation. The other assets, focused on film, television and cable/broadcasting, will name itself 21st Century Fox. The New News Corp. has already been authorized to buyback up to $500 million worth of its own shares once it starts trading, […]
Anonymous Microsoft Insider Denies Nook Story; Barnes & Noble Stock Suffers
The grain of salt we advised on the flawed TechCrunch report of potential interest in Microsoft buying out the digital assets of Nook Media has turned into a veritable salt flat. Another site, Insider Monkey, posted an item early Monday afternoon said to come from “a highly placed source inside Microsoft” denying the likelihood of a deal. Barnes & Noble stock fell 13 percent in about 30 minutes Monday afternoon on very heavy volume. It hit a trough and by 3 PM started to recover some of the losses, off about $2.20 a share or 9.5 percent for the day, […]
After Layoffs and A Big Writedown, Cengage Talks Openly About Chapter 11
Cengage continues its slow march to the inevitable restructuring that has loomed for a while, and for the first time management has openly (and casually) talked about bankruptcy reorganization. The main questions now are who will lead that bankruptcy plan, can they organize a pre-packaged plan, and which private equity company will control what’s left? The latest step is driven by Cengage’s third quarter earnings report. In a modest “operational restructuring” they took a $12.7 million charge related to firing an unspecified number of employees. More significantly, the preliminary results of a new strategic plan and revised more realistic expectations […]
Bertelsmann Gets $1.8 Billion for RTL Shares
Bertelsmann raised 1.4 billion euros ($1.8 billion) in cash proceeds by selling a 17 percent stake and creating a public listing for their television and broadcasting company, RTL. Bertelsmann retains 75 percent of RTL’s shares. Why should publishing people pay any attention? Because that cash will be put to work buying other companies, as Bertelsmann expects to spend up to 3 billion euros on acquisitions over the next 3 years. CEO Thomas Rabe reiterated in a statement, “Our goal is to make Bertelsmann a faster growing, more digital and more international company in the years ahead.” They sold the stock at […]