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Media Play-ed Out The continuously restructuring Musicland has announced that they will close all 61 Media Play stores, operating in 18 states — which carry a variety of media, including books — by the end of January. Overall the privately-owned Musicland does about $1 billion a year in sales, through more than 800 stores. AP Book Standard has more details on how the liquidation will unfold Looking Back The lead of this AP article makes you think it might be about publishers and the Internet, but it’s really more of reporter Hillel Italie’s overview of the year in publishing: “In […]

Layoffs and a New Boss at Time Time Inc. is celebrating the holidays by laying off 105 employees effective December 31, including some longtime executives, such as executive vice president and former CFO Richard Atkinson. As a result, Time Warner Book Group’s new boss David Young has a new boss to report to at Time Inc.: executive vice president Michael Klingensmith, 52, who also adds oversight of information technology and Synapse. Most other components of the group will report higher up to newly appointed co-chief operating officers Nora McAniff and John Squires. Release As Warned, Ottakar’s Warns of Holiday Sales […]

Random Merriment It’s year-end letter time, as Random House CEO Peter Olson announces the company is “well positioned for fiscal year 2005 to exceed both our sales and our operating results for 2004.” Probably the most important news in the dispatch is the celebration of “our lowest-ever overall return percentage rate.” (Spokesman Stuart Applebaum says they aren’t ready to announce the returns number, but says “We’re beyond the Holy Grail of under 30 percent.”) We’ve spoken often about back-end operating efficiencies as the true key to profitability and performance at the big houses, and Olson once again gives the “highest […]

Harper to Build Digital Warehouse HarperCollins issued a press release this morning announcing a plan to create a digital warehouse “for all of its content.” The house says “The plan is the first step in satisfying the demands of the marketplace, which is increasingly requiring that content be made available online and in numerous formats, while allowing the publisher to remain in control of its digital files and intellectual property.” CEO Jane Friedman adds, “We are putting our digital house in order so that we are prepared to offer consumers book content in new ways and with a variety of […]

Monday, December 12 FICTION General/Other Co-author with James Patterson of five books (three billed on the jacket) Andrew Gross’s individual debut THE BLUE ZONE, about a young woman on the hunt for her missing father — a successful businessman forced into the Witness Protection Program who has suddenly disappeared — who comes to question who he really is and whether either of them can come out alive, to David Highfill at William Morrow, in a major deal, rumored to be well into seven figures, for three books, for publication beginning in 2007, by Simon Lipskar at Writers House (world). Italian […]

Bertelsmann Seen As Increasingly Likely to Go Public Minority Bertelsmann shareholder Group Bruxelles Lambert has always held the cards in whether or not the private Germany company gets pushed into public equity markets and a Reuters piece cites a source that says the Belgian financiers are likely to play their hand next year. (This was already part of one of the big items we were preparing for our year-end predictions about 2006 as the year of change in ownership.) Reuters adds, “The listing would be one of the largest media listings in the world and has been the subject of […]