Two-and-a-half months after Liberty Media’s initial offer to purchase Barnes & Noble for $17 a share (or just over $1 billion), the NY Post claims the deal now “looks shaky.” Or it may simply be a delay in the initial timetable, as “a deal failed to materialize last week, which was a preliminary target for a final deal since talks began in May, according to sources.” Drawing on a single, unnamed source, the paper says “at least one private-equity giant this week hired a consulting firm to take a fresh look at B&N’s books in case their deal falls apart.” […]
Finance
New York State Says Standard eBooks Are Exempt from Sales Tax
It’s a little technical, but Forbes calls attention to a recent advisory opinion from New York state’s department of taxation and finance that will be of great interest to agency-model publishers and ebook retailers. It is “the tax department’s current position” standard trade ebooks as we know them are exempt from New York state sales tax, and do not qualify as taxable “information services.” The opinion was provided in response to a query from California company that “stores a digitized catalog of electronic books available for sale to customers inside and outside New York through its on-line bookstore.” (But the […]
Facebook Buys Push Pop Press, Kills Their Product
Facebook acquired epublishing technology start-up Push Pop Press for undisclosed terms, but the appeal was clearly not their publishing platform that promised to provide “digital storytelling” tools that would enable anyone to turn text, images and multimedia into an enhanced book app with drag-and-drop ease. “There are no plans” for “building out” that platform or continuing to publish more titles like the Al Gore book-based app Our Choice that the company was created to build, Push Pop’s Mike Matas and Kimon Tsinteris write on their site. Instead they say “we’re taking our publishing technology and everything we’ve learned and are […]
Investors Want McGraw-Hill to Consider Spinning Off Education Group
“Activist” hedge fund Jana Partners has built a modest stake in McGraw-Hill stock over the past two months and is working alongside the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan to push the company to consider breaking apart its disparate units, disclosed in an SEC filing yesterday. But their declared position is just 5.2 percent–just enough to generate press and tempt other investors to join their cause. Their filing alone accomplished at least part of that mission–shares opened up over 4 percent in morning trading. In their registration, Jana said it “has had discussions with management relating to, among other things, the business, […]
Controversy About Coal Lesson Packet Causes Scholastic To Cut Back Corporate-Sponsored Projects
After receiving a barrage of criticism back in May for sponsoring a fourth-grade lesson packet on coal-based energy that was paid for by the American Coal Foundation, Scholastic announced Sunday evening that it will cut back its InSchool marketing division’s corporate-sponsored projects and create a new review board to vet its materials. “We have to improve our standards, and make sure there’s not a scintilla of anything that could be suggested to be biased,” Scholastic president and ceo Richard Robinson told the NYT. “The vast majority of our programs are not controversial, but once in a while there was a […]
Bookselling: Half Price Hires Borders’ Staff; NAIBA Writes to Save Reps;WH Smith Investors Look for Split
A Dallas/Ft. Worth web site notes that locally-based (and expanding) Half Price Books posted on the Help Ex-Borders Employees site looking to hire–and has already filled at least a few jobs in Texas as a result. Half Price vp of training Steve Leach says, “The thing to remember about Borders is that they trained an army [of] damned good booksellers. Say what you will about their corporate decisions, but at the ground level, these are some of the best and brightest that the book industry has to offer. It would be a shame to lose so much book industry knowledge […]