Sales fell 10 percent in Wiley’s professional/trade segment in their fiscal first quarter, at $90 million (with a third of that decline due to currency exchange). But the company says “retail market conditions appear to be stabilizing, and major accounts are replenishing inventory. The second quarter began positively, as reflected in strong August sales.” Contribution to profit also declined 10 percent, at $16 million. Companywide, sales of $388 million were down three percent, while income before taxes of $37.1 million was up three percent. Higher education was the only segment with sales growth in the period, rising 12 percent to […]
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Bookselling: Village Books to Add Espresso and Symtio Cards
Washington’s Village Books told customers recently that next month the store will have an Espresso book machine and will start selling Symtio cards for downloadable ebooks and audio books. Co-owner Chuck Robinson says, “There are obviously changes rapidly taking place in our industry, and instead of standing on the sidelines and waiting to see what will happen, we’ve decided to jump right in.” Wisely, he recognizes that much of the demand for the Espresso will come from customers wanting help with self-publishing. And “he personally wants to print books on local history that he’s enjoyed but have been out of […]
Final Google Settlement Objections Include Microsoft, France and Connecticut, As Plaintiffs Agree to Foreign BRR Board Members
The final deadline for filing objections to the Google Books Settlement has now passed, and the District Court’s web site shows a wave of new filings, mostly objections. The Computer & Communications Industry Associates filed a brief in support of the agreement, while new objectors include Microsoft and Yahoo, the state of Connecticut, a group of authors led by Harold Bloom, the Internet Archive, the Open Book Alliance (accusing the parties of “a trail of what can only be called misdirection”), Consumer Watchdog, 22 Japanese authors who are key members of the Japan P.E.N. Club, a coalition of authors and […]
People: Blake to Holt, and More
Gillian Blake will join Holt’s adult unit as executive editor on September 21, focusing on “high profile nonfiction acquisitions.” Most recently she had been executive editor at Collins until that unit was reorganized earlier this year. Stacia Decker has joined the Donald Maass Literary Agency as an agent. A former editor at Harcourt and Otto Penzler Books, she is representing mystery, suspense, noir, and crimefiction. Former longtime editor for Word Publishing and Thomas Nelson Laura Kendall died of pneumonia last week in Nashville, Tennessee. Kendall, who was still freelancing, had retired from Nelson in 2005, after two decades of editing […]
Booker Shortlist Announced
The six finalists for the prize–with the winner to be named October 6–are: A S Byatt, The Children’s Book (Chatto and Windus)J M Coetzee, Summertime (Harvill Secker)Adam Foulds, The Quickening Maze (Jonathan Cape)Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall (Fourth Estate)Simon Mawer, The Glass Room (Little Brown UK)Sarah Waters, The Little Stranger (Virago) Release
More Objections from Europe, and Amazon Of Course
Yesterday a variety of Dutch publishers filed objections to the Google Books settlement agreement with the Federal District Court, in similar letters from Leopold/Ploegsma; Querido; SWP; Athenaeum – Polak & Van Gennep; and Nijgh & Van Ditmar, citing many of the same objections as other European publishers that we reported on yesterday. Holland’s Unieboek and Spectrum departed from that form letter and sent a different list of objections, including an assertion that “the division of any income between publishers, authors and translators is currently still unclear to us.” New objections were also filed by Czernin Verlag, Sweden’s Liber, and the […]