Monthly ebook sales as measured by the AAP from 14 reporting publishers ebbed in March–which we were expecting–more or less on par with the second-biggest ebook sales month on record (January 2011), at $69 million. That puts ebooks behind adult trade hardcover and trade paperbacks for the month, and they comprised less than 17 percent of all trade sales for March. Why was a pullback from February’s $90.3 million expected? For starters, March is when Random House moved to the agency model, which means their ebook receipts should have declined, all things being equal. Just as important, recent quarterly earnings […]
International News
People, Etc.: S&S Opens Division In India
Simon & Schuster has created a New Delhi-based sales, marketing and publishing company, Simon & Schuster India. The company’s exclusive sales agent on the subcontinent Rahul Srivastava will run the new unit locally as director of sales and marketing, reporting to S&S UK executive director Kerr MacRae. HarperCollins India will handle fulfillment and distribution, with “operations expected to commence August 1.” Inventory will come mostly from S&S UK, and they will offer titles from all of S&S’s divisions worldwide and distribution clients. Samantha Dell’Olio has joined book and author publicity firm Nissen Public Relations as publicity manager. She was most […]
Awards
The Quality Paperback Book Club’s New Voices Award went to Paolo Giordano for his novel THE SOLITUDE OF PRIME NUMBERS, and their New Visions Award went to Lisa Miller for HEAVEN. In the UK, The Bookseller Industry Awards were presented last night. The sponsor-laced award names can be a little embarrassing–Quercus is technically the “Bonnier Publishing Publisher of the Year”–so we’ll just present a few shorthanded highlights: Faber & Faber won both Independent Publisher of the Year and the Innovation Prize (for the Touch Press app of The Solar System) Clara Farmer at Chatto & Windus won Imprint and Editor […]
Waterstone’s Sale Nears, In Messy Process
HMV is making the same mess out of a Waterstone’s sale that they have made out of the booksellers’ neverending “turnaround.” The fundamental problem is threefold: They spent a while pretending the bookseller wasn’t for sale when it obviously was; they are selling at the worst time ever to sell an English-language book chain; and they have had unrealistic price expectations for the current market. Making it worse, HMV needs to raise enough cash to satisfy their lenders since they are in violation of their banking convenants, but the Waterstone’s proceeds will not be sufficient by themselves. The latest update […]
Lonely Planet to Move Web Operations to UK, Cut 70 Jobs
Lonely Planet announced to Melbourne staff Thursday that it will shift the bulk of its web operations to the company’s UK offices and slash costs by 18 percent, cutting 70 jobs in the process. The company said the move was due to a strengthening Australian dollar and declining sales. “Despite the fact that we’ve delivered on everything we set out to achieve this past year, the devastating impact of foreign currency exchange shaved over $13 million off our 2010/11 revenues. And at the moment, we have more than 80 per cent of our revenues coming from outside of Australia & New […]
Lagardere Sales Slide As US eBooks Hit 22%, Plus UK Digital Stats and Asian Device Updates
Today’s stories offer digital statistics and hints from all over. Lagardere issued a brief first quarter trading update. Publishing revenues were 390 million euros, down 9.8 percent on an absolute basis, and down 10.4 percent from a year ago on a like-for-like basis. Once again, they attribute the drop to Stephenie Meyer’s declining sales. (The same period a year ago “notably” included Meyer rights sales as well.) eBooks comprised approximately 22 percent of sales in the US in the quarter through the end of March, and grew to 5 percent of sales in the UK. For the full year, they […]