Macmillan ceo John Sargent told the publishers’ community Friday morning they company is settling the lawsuit brought by the Department of Justice: “We settled because the potential penalties became too high to risk even the possibility of an unfavorable outcome.” As Sargent explains, each time another company settled with DOJ, that increased Macmillan’s potential liability, to the point where the risk became untenable. As a result of the settlement, “retailers will now be able to discount Macmillan e-books for a limited time,” even beyond the limited 10 percent discounting on ebooks priced at $13.99 and above that they introduced last […]
Uncategorized
James and Collins Drive 2012 Print Sales
Further to Friday’s headline stats on 2012 print book sales, we have fuller information on data from Nielsen BookScan, along with our annual look at the top sellers in multiple categories. (As a reminder, Nielsen tracks print book sales only, at the point of sale.) Total print book sales for 2012 as recorded by BookScan were 591 million units, down 9.3 percent compared to 2011 (and those sales were down 9.25 percent from 2010). The 2012 data reflects both the absence of Borders from the marketplace, as well as the harder-to-quantify increase in ebook sales. Year-over-year comparisons are tricky, however, since […]
August AAP Sales Rise, As eBooks Continue to Moderate
The AAP reported sales for August from the nearly 1,200 publishers they track, with overall trade sales of $562.1 million up 10.4 percent versus $509.1 million. This time both adult and children’s sales rose, and both sectors had higher shipments as well. In adult books, the growth came from trade paperbacks (e.g. 50 Shades) and ebooks. Consistent with Barnes & Noble’s recent report and the trend we have been underscoring all year, however, ebook sales continue to grow at a far slower rate: Adult ebook sales of $118.6 million were up 34 percent from a year ago, and children’s ebooks […]
Amazon Publishing to Open European Branch Under Griffith
While Amazon did not respond directly to our request for information for Kindle sales information for THE FOUR-HOUR CHEF, company publishing vp Jeff Belle claims in a letter (posted in full by PaidContent) that their total sale is over 60,000 units so far (or roughly 30,000 of those $4.99 ebooks in addition to the print sales we reported on Wednesday morning; the December 9 NYT bestseller lists show FOUR-HOUR CHEF at No. 4 on the advice, how-to and misc. list). Belle says the Ferriss book was the bestselling nonfiction title for the week, though their own list for all of […]
McGraw-Hill Education Sale to Apollo Finally Confirmed, for $2.5 Billion
McGraw-Hill is finally unloading their shrinking education publishing division–which is what their shareholders preferred all along–selling it to private equity firm Apollo Global Management for $2.5 billion. The deal is expected to close quickly, either before the end of the year or in early 2013. (Apollo co-founder Leon Black’s family recently purchased Phaidon.) Apollo has been considered the leading prospect since July. McGraw Hill’s stock rose this morning on relief that fixing the education division will become someone else’s problem. Even though the company will take a non-cash impairment charge in the fourth quarter of $450 to $550 million related […]
Apple Sells 14 Million iPads In the Quarter
Apple also announced quarterly earnings after the close of the market on Thursday, registering sales of $36 billion and net profit of $8.2 billion. (Sales were slightly ahead of expectations; earnings were slightly below the predictions.) For the full year, the company had sales of $156.5 billion and net income of almost $42 billion. For the next quarter, they expect sales of “about $52 billion,” but lower profits than the same time a year ago. As indicated earlier in the week, they sold 14 million iPads during the quarter, for a total of 101 million sold to date. On a […]