Finance

In another paring at HarperCollins, Susan Katz announced that “to further streamline our publishing operations, we will close The Bowen Press.” Katz says “as the book world becomes increasingly challenging, we must continue to be extremely cost conscious.” The unit will also move offices, to join the rest of Harper at 10 E. 53 street. Spokesperson Eric Crum says there is no firm date for the move yet, since they are upgrading the offices first.

When Amazon announced its deal to acquire AbeBooks in August, observers were all over the map in estimating the undisclosed sale price. TechVibes–where former Abe executive (and still director) Boris Wertz is a director and investor–estimated a sale price of $90 million to $120 million, but other posters there argued for estimates ranging from $40 million to $75 million. TechFlash notes that Amazon’s recently filed 10K report declares they spent $432 million on acquisitions in the past year. With Audible valued at approximately $300 million and the other purchases comprising much smaller units–the balance of Shelfari.com, Fabric.com, and IMDB’s acquisition […]

The Boston Globe has a long piece on Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s financial challenges, though there’s little that is new in the piece. Spokesman Josef Blumenfeld now says that “since Houghton’s reported decision last fall to suspend acquisition of new titles, it is signing new books again.” Former Houghton Mifflin ceo Nader Darehshori’s appraisal is that “the debt is so overwhelming, there’s just no way. They borrowed more than the value of the company. They will be lucky if the value is half of what they owe.”Globe

On Thursday, Disney-ABC Television Group president Anne Sweeney told employees that the division would eliminate 200 jobs spread throughout the group’s units and would leave another 200 open positions unfilled. The division employs almost 7,000 people in all. Hyperion is part of the group–but publisher Ellen Archer tells us there have been no layoffs at the book publishing unit.LAT