Emily Williams has joined Barnes & Noble as international content manager for digital products, reporting to Patricia Arancibia, who was recently promoted to director, editorial & publisher relations for international content. She was most recently digital content producer for Publishers Marketplace, and we wish her the very best of luck in her new endeavors. At Triumph Books, Adam Motin has been promoted to managing editor, Noah Amstadter moves up to senior acquisitions editor, Jess Jordan has been promoted to associate editor, and current editorial director Don Gulbrandsen will move into an at-large role focusing on strategic initiatives, acquisitions and management […]
Finance
Corporate: Apple Sold 15.4 million iPads in First Quarter; Meredith Buys AllRecipes.com
Apple reported record earnings for the first quarter of its fiscal year, ending December 31, and beat Wall Street expectations so handily the stock was halted after hours Tuesday, rising more than $30 a share. The company sold 15.4 million iPads and 37 million iPhones during the quarter on net income of $13.1 billion, and $43.4 billion in revenue. Profits more than doubled compared to the first quarter of 2011. Apple sold over 40 million iPads in 2011, and has moved more than 55 million units since launching in early 2010. Release Though Random House was among the four reported […]
RCS Entertaining Offers For Flammarion Sale
Italian publishing giant RCS, which owns Rizzoli and Corriere della Serra, has confirmed what a number of stories out of Europe had been reporting for the past few days: they are exploring the possibility of selling off Flammarion in France, which it has owned since 2000. RCS said Friday in a statement obtained by Bloomberg that there will be a preliminary review of any expression of interest “in relation to assets not straightly included in the core business, comprising Flammarion, and non-core assets.” Earlier this week EconomiaWeb reported that Gallimard expressed an interest in buying Flammarion, with RCS seeking at […]
Briefs: Penguin’s “Strong Holiday As Pearson Ups Earnings Guidance; Grand Central’s New Digital Romance Imprint; and More
Pearson won’t report its preliminary annual earnings until February 27 but Thursday the company provided a short trading update indicating that for the year as a whole, Pearson generated approximately £2 billion in digital revenues and approximately £600m in revenues in emerging markets. They also expect to exceed their full year earnings guidance by 10 percent (with the original forecast being 83p per share), attributing the good news to “rapid growth in digital services, our expanding position in developing economies and the continuing transformation of our business portfolio.” Penguin’s results are said to be “strong” during the holidays, with expectations […]
Corporate News: Bloomsbury Holds Steady; Bertelsmann Invests In Higher Ed
Bloomsbury released a non-specific “interim management update” for the final four months of the year on Monday that, true to the form, highlights everything good that happened and declares it a “strong” period. Others have hailed the declaration that “ebook sales grew significantly with the quarter ended December 31 being up 38 percent year on year,” but we thought that sounded weak next to most other year-over-year comps, particularly given that the UK market is supposed to have been growing at a faster rate than the US as it catches up. (Note that for the 6 months ending August 2011, […]
Like Thalia’s Germany, France’s Fnac Announces Restructuring As Sales Fall
Just after Germany’s biggest bookselling chain announced losses and an unspecified restructuring, French bookselling chain Fnac is in a similar position. The group says sales at their stores fell 5.4 percent in 2011 and they “expect annual current operating income to decrease by half,” citing “a severe decrease in popularity” of publications. They say “the worsening of the economic crisis over the last six months has led to a significant decrease in household spending in Europe, which is affecting Fnac’s markets in all of the countries in which it is present.” Fnac says they are working on an 80-million-euro cost […]