VP and chief accounting officer Glen Tomaszewski was terminated from his position on September 2, according to an SEC filing last week. The legal battle between Borders and marketing firm Next Jump is not over yet, despite last week’s agreement that Next Jump would take down a website that redirected Borders Rewards customers to its own rewards site, OO.com. Next Jump countered with a suit of its own, Reuters reports, saying Borders allowed Next Jump to transfer customer accounts to OO.com, but then accused the marketing firm of stealing the accounts as a pretext for recovering damages, in essence “duping” […]
Finance
McGraw-Hill Will Spin Education Business Off As Separate Company
The activist investors have won, as McGraw-Hill’s board unanimously approved a plan to split the conglomerate into two companies, McGraw-Hill Markets and McGraw-Hill Education. What that really means is the slower-growing education business will be isolated from the more profitable financial and market-focused business. The actual division will not take place until the end of 2012, when MH Education will get a “tax-free spinoff” to shareholders. The independent McGraw-Hill Education will comprise their current education division, including the K-12, higher education and professional education business lines. A ceo will be hired for this new business, with current education president Robert […]
People, Etc.
Ami Greko from Kobo, Liz Scheier from Barnes & Noble, and Christina Biamonte Faubert from Sony eBooks, will join the advisory board of the Publishing Innovation Awards–the expanded program of honors presented at Digital Book World. This year the initiative is also adding the QED Seal, “a reader-focused standard for ebook quality.” Kobo, BN and Sony have all joined the program as “supporting partners” as well. Further to yesterday’s news of Richard Nash‘s new job at start-up Small Demons, he notes on blog that his RedLemona.de venture is becoming “a fully volunteer-operated enterprise.” He tells us it will “continue as […]
Corporate Briefs: BN, BAMM, and Pearson
In their quarterly SEC filing, Barnes & Noble addressed the would-be class action suit filed in New York last month that includes the bookseller and Amazon along with Apple and the six largest trade publishers, alleging price fixing and conspiracy with respect to the agency model for ebooks. “The company denies liability and intends to vigorously defend its interests.” Books-a-Million filed their quarterly report as well, which confirms the continuing merchandise shift underway at physical stores. Books and magazines now comprise 75.6 percent of sales, down from over 80 percent a year ago. The largest growth area, no surprise, is […]
Google Acquires Zagat
Zagat, which first was put up for sale in early 2008 and failed to close a deal, has been acquired by Google. Terms were not disclosed (for now; they will probably be disclosed when Google files their quarterly report). The company’s Marissa Mayer blogs, “Their surveys may be one of the earliest forms of UGC (user-generated content)—gathering restaurant recommendations from friends, computing and distributing ratings before the Internet as we know it today even existed…. I’m incredibly excited to collaborate with Zagat to bring the power of Google search and Google Maps to their products and users, and to bring […]
Amazon Wins Tentative CA Sales Tax Reprieve, and Free Romney eBook; French Publishers Drop Suit Against Google
On Wednesday night Amazon and California state legislative leaders reached a tentative deal with respect to the state’s new online sales tax law. Under their agreement Amazon would not have to collect sales tax until September 2012, and in return the retailer would drop its referendum campaign to overturn the law, on which they have spent $5 million so far. “It’s a safe harbor for up to a year,” State Assemblyman Charles Calderon told the LAT of the agreement he helped strike. “If they can’t get Congress to act by next July, then they will start to collect the tax […]