French author-illustrator Laurent de Brunhoff, 98, died on March 22 from complications of a stroke. De Brunhoff wrote and illustrated the Babar picture books after the death of his father, Jean, who created the character. Science fiction author Vernor Vinge, 79, died on March 20 from Parkinson’s Disease. Vinge won Hugo Awards for his novels A FIRE UPON THE DEEP, A DEEPNESS IN THE SKY, and RAINBOWS END.
People 3/25
At IPG, Kristen Noon has been promoted from to director, credit & collections.
Redesigned Search, Better Matches
Today we are live with the last major piece of the Publishers Marketplace redesign we began rolling out 10 months ago: A new look for our sitewide search engine, and therefore the search results from all of our different databases. The development team has worked hard on improving the results for mobile devices in particular. (We have updated the guidance/tips on how to use site search as well.) Separately, we have pushed an update to our AI-powered Agent Matcher, too. Filters let you adjust matches to agents that we know are open (or closed) to queries; and agents by experience […]
People 3/22
Strong Backlist Sales Can’t Offset Scholastic’s Seasonal Losses
Scholastic announced results for the fiscal third quarter ended February 29, with sales of $323.7 million, nearly even with $324.9 million a year ago. “Lower U.S. Book Clubs revenues of approximately $14.4 million related to the strategic repositioning of the business, were offset by strong trade publishing revenues in the U.S., Canada and the UK, which benefited from the sales of popular book series titles,” the company said in a release. Operating loss increased 26 percent to $(34.9) million, while adjusted EBITDA decreased 33 percent to (7.2) million. In Children’s Book Publishing and Distribution, the good news was that consolidated […]