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 […]
Finance
Courier Acquires FastPencil
Self-publishing platform FastPencil has been acquired by printer and publisher Courier. The news was announced after the close of the market on Tuesday, and just ahead of Courier reporting second quarter earnings on Wednesday morning. The terms were not disclosed for now, but for Courier — with roughly $260 million in annual sales — it’s likely that the price would be considered material and will be disclosed in due time. FastPencil is a self-publishing company and provider of software tools to enable self-publishing–and recently worked in partnership with Nook on their new set of Nook Press content creation, collaboration and […]
Cleared In Canada, Penguin Random House Merger Waits On One More Approval
Late Friday afternoon the Canadian Competition Bureau and the Department of Heritage cleared the Penguin Random House merger “without conditions,” as was the case in earlier approvals by the EU, Australia, New Zealand, and the US Department of Justice. In a joint statement Penguin and Random House said they “welcome the Canadian authorities’ decision as another important step on the way to completing the combination of their respective publishing companies.” China remains the only country left to sign off on the deal, and we understand there is no timetable available for when they might do so. As before, Pearson and […]
Spain’s Alfaguara Is In Play
Spain’s PRISA Group has officially denied recent reports in Spanish media that they have agreed to sell their literary line Alfaguara and its imprints to Random House. But at the same time, the company admits that it “has maintained and is in talks for the transmission of this asset and other Grupo Prisa assets with various partners.” PRISA says it will communicate further if and when a deal is agreed upon. Spain’s leading media company, PRISA has suffered under debt of billions of euros, made worse by the poor Spanish economy, and has already been through multiple restructurings. Book publisher […]
People, Etc.
At Bloomsbury, Rachel Mannheimer has been promoted to editor, and Melanie Sankel has gone from associate director of sales for Fairchild Books to director, adoption sales at Bloomsbury Academic. After Skyhorse and Start Publishing’s intended joint acquisition of Night Shade Books’ assets ignited public controversy over the original terms of sale (and now, after a revision, the sale “is in a holding pattern right now waiting for all the authors’ feedback”, a Skyhorse spokesperson told us) the two publishers have bought a different science fiction & fantasy publisher, Underland Press, for an undisclosed sum. The deal for the six-year-old press, according […]
Corporate: HMH Buys Tribal Nova; Penguin Partners with Mind Candy; Amazon Defends “Heavy Investments”
Two new acquisitions highlight publishers’ increasing interest in game development. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt announced they acquired Montreal-based educational technology company Tribal Nova, which develops digital games, products and services for pre-school children. The Tribal Nova team will continue to operate out of Montreal, though they will be absorbed into HMH’s Content and Product Innovation group, dedicated to the incubation and development of next-generation content for both K-12 and consumer markets. “The combination of Tribal Nova’s game development expertise with HMH’s proven educational content and learning design capabilities will enable HMH to bring a more holistic and personalized gaming experience to market,” […]