After less than a year as CEO, Polly Powell has resigned. Controlling shareholder CK Lau will once again serve as interim group CEO. Despite the abrupt departure, Powell provides a cheery statement: “I came to Quarto to make a difference, and I think I have achieved that, so my job is done. Quarto is a fabulous company with outstanding people and it is now firing on all cylinders. The publishing program is super-strong and the numbers are looking good.”
International News
Egmont to Buy Bonnier’s Half of Cappelen Damm
Denmark-based Egmont has agreed to buy Bonnier’s half of their jointly-owned publishing house in Norway, Cappelen Damm, for NOK 1 billion ($120 million). The company was formed in 2007 by the merger of Egmont’s Damm and Bonnier’s Cappelen. Cappelen Damm had sales in 2020 of NOK 1.3 billion ($156 million), with pre-tax profit of NOK 91 million. Egmont Books had sales from its other primary unit, Lindhardt & Ringhof in Denmark, of 63 million euros in 2020 ($72 million), so full ownership of Cappelen Damm will add significantly to their size. Egmont sold Egmont Books UK along with their book […]
Initiatives
Wattpad has paired with AST in Russia for a co-branded AST Wattpad line publishing some of the site’s top Russian-language stories. AST will also publish Wattpad Books titles in Russian, and will translate some popular Wattpad stories into Russian.
Post-Brexit, UK Considers Change to Copyright Laws
Now that the UK has left the European Union, the UK government must decide on its own rules for copyright exhaustion on physical books and other intellectual property. On Monday, the government opened a consultation on whether to institute parallel trade—common in pharmaceuticals and other consumer goods—which would allow for the resale of printed books across borders without publisher permission. Until the end of 2020, once a book was placed on the market in the UK and European Economic Area, the copyright was “exhausted” and authors and publishers had no control over the resale of their book in those countries. […]
Waterstones Sales Fell to New Low
Waterstones filed a belated report for their fiscal year ending April 25, 2020, including only the earliest days of the pandemic, with sales falling £17 million to £376 million — the lowest level yet following a long period of general decline — down 4.3 percent from £393 million in the prior fiscal year. Operating profit was up modestly at £32.6 million (compared to £29.7 million), but pre-tax profit fell by £4 million to £22.5 million, down 15 percent. The company notes that Covid-19 “has had, and continues to have, a significant adverse impact on Waterstones.” They add that, “Footfall and sales […]
International: UK Publishes PRH-S&S Merger Review, PRH-Waterstones Terms Dispute, Bonnier Modifies Strawberry Stake
The UK’s Competition & Markets Authority has now published the full text of their decision in not challenging Penguin Random House‘s pending acquisition of Simon & Schuster. The answer is as we indicated from the start: S&S UK, with sales of only about £40 million, is just too small to make a meaningful difference. There is some nuance in how the CMA approached the decision that could interest people trying to anticipate how the Department of Justice will view the deal. The CMA writes that market share “estimates included in the parties’ internal documents for the United States” show PRH […]