How are publishing-related entities faring relative the overall market as stock prices continue to fall? Fair warning: this story is not for the faint of heart, so skip down if you need to. Below are some comparative results, looking over the past month, and in particular at the six days of trading ending with yesterday’s market close. In this corner of the world, debt-free Barnes & Noble has been the most resilient so far, and among publishers and their parent companies, Pearson appears to have held up the best (though among somewhat smaller companies Bloomsbury is the star performer). As […]
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More Cracks in Reed Sale; Children's Book Purchase Cancelled
As the hoped-for sale of Reed Business Information’s magazines limps to its third round, Reuters reports that one bank participating in the staple financing package of $1.26 billion has “backed off tentatively,” leaving a potential reduction of $200 in the loans on offer. With “only a few bidders remaining,” they are “re-examining offers amid increasing uncertainty” in credit markets.Reuters In other credit market victims, last week Learning Curve parent company RC2 announced it was canceling their planned acquisition of the children’s publishing division of Publications International. CEO Curt Stoelting said “recent shifts in the capital markets have impacted the availability […]
Beacon Street Girls Books Promote Weight Loss
A study of 81 overweight girls presented over the weekend by Duke Children’s Hospital at the annual meeting of the Obesity Society “indicates the Beacon Street Girls book series helps tween girls improve their eating and exercise habits, and significantly improve their Body Mass Index percentiles,” the company reports. The book line “was specifically designed to entertain while providing healthy role models and positive messages and ceo of B*tween Productions Addie Swartz says, “This study confirms what we had previously heard from parents – that girls take life lessons from the Beacon Street Girls and actually change their behaviors.” Study […]
Beaufort Advances MEDINA Release
Beaufort Books is moving forward the publication date of Sherry Jones’s THE JEWEL OF MEDINA to Monday. President Eric Kampmann says, “By speeding up the publication, we wanted to reduce or eliminate the chance of violence.” He adds, “We wanted people to have a chance to read the book. Once they read the book, we thought the violence part of this story would disappear and people would be focusing on the story, and the book and Sherry.” Jones tells the AP, “I have spoken to a member of the FBI and have been assured I have not been targeted, so […]
Medina "Suspended" In UK
Managing director of Compass (the sales company for the UK’s Gibson Square) Alan Jessop tells the Bookseller that Martin Rynja “has put publication [of THE JEWEL OF MEDINA] in suspended animation while he reflects and takes advice on what the best foot forward is.” The book was supposed to be published in the UK on October 15. Jessop added, “Everyone is going to have to be patient. This requires some careful thinking.” That report follows author Sherry Jones’s agent Natasha Kern telling the NYT that Gibson Square “is planning to go ahead with the book, as are other publishers worldwide, […]
Karp on McCain
Twelve publisher and longtime editor of John McCain the author Jonathan Karp writes in Newsweek on “what he’s learned from poring over a decade’s worth of the senator’s manuscripts.” Critics of McCain dismiss these works as an exercise in self-mythology and career advancement; they see in them certain ideals–about rabble-rousing and honor, for example–that they say McCain the candidate has abandoned. But I see them differently–as books in which McCain, as narrator and an occasional character, shows us the way to a nobler purpose. I know from personal experience that John McCain is honorable, kind and wise. (He’s the only […]