iBooks has listed its April recommendations. The titles include American War, by Omar El Akkad, an excerpt of which is featured in our Buzz Books 2017: Spring/Summer and available for download. The other fiction picks include: Anything Is Possible, by Elizabeth Strout Borne, by Jeff VanderMeer My Last Lament, by James William Brown Beartown, by Fredrik Backman For nonfiction: Letterman, by Jason Zinoman The Gatekeepers, by Chris Whipple Killers of the Flower Moon, by David Grann Janesville, by Amy Goldstein Anatomy of Innocence, by Laura Caldwell and Leslie S. Klinger The YA list features Sara Zarr’s Gem & Dixie, also excerpted in Spring/Summer Buzz Books, […]
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Houghton Announces Plans for Cost Cutting
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt formally announced plans to cut costs over the next 21 months last Thursday, telling employees and then investors about “certain proposed operational efficiency and cost-reduction actions.” The company said in February after another dismal quarter that included a $139 million impairment charge to expect “strategic cost cutting to simplify the business and help enable the company to reinvest for future growth,” noting they had engaged Boston Consulting Group on “steps to improve its operational efficiency and right-size its cost structure.” Similar language is repeated in the recent SEC filing. Top executives are safe but otherwise they said to expect layoffs, office […]
Milo’s DANGEROUS Is Officially Delayed to June 13
On Monday afternoon, controversial author Milo Yiannopoulos announced on Facebook that his book DANGEROUS, originally scheduled for publication on March 14, has been postponed to June 13. He writes, “I asked my publisher for more time to submit the manuscript for DANGEROUS so I could include material about the craziness and rioting at UC Berkeley, UC Davis and UW Seattle. It would be absurd for me to publish a book without some discussion of the insanity of the last few weeks.” The tell here is that a month before publication, when the book should be in (or finished with) production, […]
Acquisitions: Sourcebooks Takes Over Little Pickle Press; Firebrand Acquires Enthrill
Sourcebooks has acquired the publishing rights to the list of nonfiction children’s publisher Little Pickle Press from parent company March 4, expanding the nonfiction program of Sourcebooks’ Jabberwocky imprint. Little Pickle Press will live as an imprint under Jabberwocky, which will make the approximately 25 frontlist and backlist titles available as of February 1, and publish new titles as of 2018. Founder of Little Pickle Rana DiOrio will stay at parent company March 4th, working with Sourcebooks to generate new book projects while also creating and acquiring content and developing video, film, and merchandise strategies “in support of Sourcebooks and […]
The Good and Bad of Half-Year Sales
We have known the basic contours of trade publishing results for the first half of 2016 since the end of August, following public reporting by publishing companies — trade sales were down modestly in total dollars, with still-rising print unit sales unable to fully make up for still-declining ebook sales. Now the AAP has finally released their statistics for the first half of the year, compiled from approximately 1,200 publishers, giving some additional color to the sales trends behind the numbers. Total net trade sales of $2.803 billion for the first half of the year were down $55.8 million (or -2 […]
Amazon Bull: Stock Hits New High
On Thursday, Amazon’s stock hit a new all-time high, closing above $800 a share for the first time. In the broader market sell-off early this year Amazon had traded as low as about $500 a share. For the year-to-date the stock is up about 19 percent, though the biggest movement was in 2015, when shares more than doubled as the fast-growing AWS cloud services division produced significant earnings. A number of analysts have upgraded Amazon’s stock again recently, expecting it to keep rising to between $950 and $1000 a share. With this year’s again, Amazon currently has the fourth-largest market capitalization […]