Following similar moves from Holtzbrinck, Bonnier Germany, dtv, Hoffman & Campe, Luebbe and others, Random House Germany has joined the trend and announced it will drop hard DRM in favor of digital watermarking (or “soft DRM”) as of October 1. In the announcement, ceo Frank Sambeth explained: “Abandoning harsh DRM facilitates readers and distributors dealing with e-book files, increases customer satisfaction and reduces complexity. At the same time traders and platforms can be supplied, which offer no hard DRM. With the conversion to soft DRM we join also an ever-widening industry consensus.” Germany is the first major ebook market to drop DRM on […]
International News
People, Awards, Etc.
The Wylie Agency is launching a new venture, The Wylie Agency España, with Cristóbal Pera overseeing the new unit, starting in September. Pera previously spent more than a decade at Penguin Random House Mexico, where he was most recently editorial director. Quarto will launch a new children’s book imprint, Seagrass Press, in fall 2016, publishing 12-16 titles annually. Overseeing the imprint is Josalyn Moran, who most recently was vp, publishing at Albert Whitman and children’s publishing director at Chronicle Books. Margaret Harrison has joined Ingram Content Group as director of product metadata (she was the ebook global supply chain manager at Oxford University Press) and Ed Spade has […]
Indigo Improvement Continues
Canada’s Indigo reported first quarter results on Tuesday, with sales rising $4.1 million (CA) to $184.9 million, and a reduced net loss of $9 million, compared to a loss of $14 million a year ago. As in the previous year, “revenue growth was driven by the continued double digit growth of the general merchandise business” with “growth in both paper and electronics.” There was some growth in “the print business” on a same-store basis, too. The superstores had 5.3 percent same-store growth, while the smaller format store comps declined 1 percent, and online grew 18.2 percent, up to $24 million (also with double […]
International: PRH Australia Sells Bookworld to Booktopia; Harper Brasil, With Ediouro; Harlequin UK Layoffs From Harper Consolidation
Penguin Random House Australia has sold Bookworld, the online bookseller that operates two sites based on the former Borders Australia and Angus & Robertson assets, to their larger rival Booktopia. The sale is expected to increase Booktopia’s sales from $54 million (AU) in 2014 to an estimated $90 million by the end of 2015. Amazon is thought to sell $250 million to $300 million of books to Australia annually. Terms were not disclosed but PRH Australia had “paid less than $5 million for the assets of Borders and A&R after the collapse of their parent, REDgroup Retail,” rebranding as Bookworld the following year. […]
Merger Negotiations, Italian Style
After a 10-hour meeting, the board of Italy’s RCS Media Group provided a polite, positive but inconclusive step forward on Mondadori’s bid to purchase RCS’s book publishing division — a process which began in February. The board “unanimously agreed to mandate the chief executive officer to proceed with the negotiations and the definition of the contractual terms,” at the same time “reserving its final decision regarding the disposal of the asset.” With Italian August vacation looming, that decision is not expected at least until September. For the first six months of 2015, in reporting preliminary results, RCS said “publishing revenue remained stable, […]
For Now, Profits Rise On Lower Sales for Mondadori’s Publishing
As Italy’s Mondadori waits on today’s board review of their offer to buy the book publishing operations of rival RCS, the company reported results for the first half of 2015. Book division sales of 123 million euros were down 4.3 percent compared to 128.5 million euros a year ago, but EBITDA increased significantly, to 8.5 million euros (up 3.4 million euros), attributed to their “radical restructuring process” as they continued their “actions aimed at reducing fixed costs and cost of personnel.” They took 3.2 million euros in restructuring costs during the period. eBook sales rose 18.6 percent in the first […]