Lezen Acquisition, an investment group led by Michael Lynton and his sister Lily Lynton, has bought Arcadia Publishing in the first of what they indicate will be a series of book publishing acquisitions. Former Perseus Books Group ceo David Steinberger is leading the new company as ceo, and Michael Lynton is nonexecutive chairman. “We intend to make other acquisitions, and that will give us scale,” Steinberger tells the WSJ. “If you can find the right publishers and bring them together, you can create a lot of value, because certain costs don’t rise proportionately with revenue.” Michael Lynton is currently chairman of […]
Apple Services Continues Strong Growth
Apple reported fiscal 2018 second quarter earnings, with revenues of $61.1 billion, an increase of 16 percent for the same quarter last year. Growth in their services segment, which comprises digital content and services, Apple Care, Apple Pay, and licensing, was well ahead of expectations. CFO Luca Maestri reported in the conference call that the segment saw “all time record revenue” of $9.19 billion for the quarter, up 31 percent from $7.041 billion a year ago. Paid subscriptions increased to 270 million, from around 240 million last quarter, and ceo Tim Cook reiterated that the services segment remains a “huge […]
Corporate: Bloomsbury Acquires IBT Tauris, And More
Bloomsbury Publishing has acquired academic publisher IB Tauris for £5.8 million, with £4.8 million paid in cash at completion and up to £1 million to be paid post-completion, subject to adjustments. IBT has a backlist of 4,000 titles, specializing in Middle East studies, history, politics and international relations, and publishes around 200 new titles a year. IBT managing director Jonathan McDonnell “will remain with the company until late summer to ensure an orderly transfer of the business.” Bloomsbury chief executive Nigel Newton said in the release: “The acquisition of IBT consolidates our significant presence in humanities and social science academic publishing. IBT’s complementary lists have good growth […]
June Buzz Books Monthly
June’s edition of Buzz Books Monthly is devoted to fiction, featuring four debuts, along with three novels, all publishing next month. As always, the collection includes exclusive, pre-publication excerpts, and is available now for download on Amazon, iBooks, and NetGalley. Among the debuts are Jane Rosenberg LaForge’s The Hawkman: A Fairy Tale of the Great War; James McLaughlin’s Bearskin; Katie Williams’s Tell The Machine Goodnight; and Spencer Wise’s The Emperor of Shoes. Rounding out the sampler are two novels are by British authors, Allison Pearson’s How Hard Can It Be? and Katy Regan’s Little Big Love, as well as Ann Mah’s The Lost Vintage. Buzz Books […]
Amazon Launches Book Subscription Box for Children
Amazon has entered the burgeoning business of book subscription boxes with their Prime Book Box program. The new initiative provides a collection of “books tailored to your child’s age” — two hardcovers, or four board books for kids 2 and under — sent every 1, 2 or 3 months, priced at $22.99 per box, plus tax. For now the program is offered to Amazon Prime members in the US only. They say that books in the boxes will be selected by a combination of “expert recommendations from our Amazon Books editors and customer ratings and reviews. Subscribers are presented with a […]
Legal: Writers Will Receive Money From Class Action Suit, 17 Years Later; Mockingbird Suits Continue In Two Places
It took only 17 years, but finally, the Literary Works in Electronic Databases Copyright Litigation has culminated this week with the issuance of settlement checks to nearly 2,500 freelance journalists totaling $9.5 million. The class action lawsuit, launched in 2001, claimed copyright infringement when about 600,000 newspaper articles were licensed to databases without the writers’ prior knowledge or permission. “We’ve been at the finish line for this lawsuit for a very long time, and so it is great that it’s finally happening,” Authors Guild president (and one of the named plaintiffs) James Gleick told the NYT. “But it’s also certainly a […]