Publishing financial results were a mixed bag in 2023, with some publishers “flying high” (Simon & Schuster, Bloomsbury) and some falling (Hachette, Scholastic), while others saw a bit of both (Harper Collins). According to the AAP, trade book sales faltered slightly in the first three quarters, and while some publishers have reported lower overall book sales and continued supply chain pressures, others are reaping the benefits of increased interest in commercial and genre fiction. Penguin Random House Bertelsmann expects full-year sales to be “moderately” over last year, with a flat operating profit and a slight decline in EBITDA. As yet, […]
Year End
The Year In Legal News: Part 1
This year, publishing’s biggest legal battles centered on a few topics: AI, book banning, and the long-running suit filed by major publishers against the Internet Archive. Copyright was at the center of many of our stories–and will continue to be as lawsuits stretch into the new year. Due to the complexity of several ongoing cases, we’ve split our annual roundup into two parts, with the first focused on the Internet Archive suit and the many class action suits brought by authors and publishers against OpenAI and Meta for copyright infringement. Internet Archive In March, a suit brought by the AAP […]
Malaviya Acknowledges “Changes” in Year-End Letter
In a year-end letter to staff, Penguin Random House CEO Nihar Malaviya notes the challenges and successes the company had in 2023. “We have made significant changes, all to better position ourselves for the future,” he writes. “Many of these were exciting, but I also want to acknowledge that several others have been very difficult and challenging.” Though the memo is light on details, he notes the blockbuster publication of SPARE and expanding the company’s audio list as highlights. He continues, “We have sold more books this year than last year, our overall revenues are higher, and we have gained […]
Barnes & Noble Book of the Year Finalists
Barnes & Noble announced 12 finalists for their 2023 Book of the Year, as nominated by booksellers.
Best Of: Indigo’s Top 10 Books, PW’s Picks
The New Bestsellers of 2022
As noted on Friday, backlist comprised 70 percent of all print book sales in 2022 as measured by NPD Bookscan, and in line with that roughly three quarters of Bookscan’s top 200 books of the year were also published before 2022. They range from the works of Colleen Hoover — who claimed four of the top five slots, and sold over 14.3 million copies across multiple titles — plus social media discoveries (The Body Keeps the Score), books adapted to film (Where the Crawdads Sing), perennial bestsellers (The Alchemist, Dr. Seuss), and reissues of popular titles (the illustrated edition of Harry […]