On Friday a federal bankruptcy court approved Readers Digest’s reorganization plan for exiting bankruptcy. The plan reduces over $2.2 billion in debt down to about $555 million, wiping out private equity owners Ripplewood Holdings in the process. Senior lenders will hold all of the equity in the publishing company, while bondholders owed over $600 million will just get warrants, “an offer that practically wipes them out” according to the WSJ. A group of company retirees had challenged the plan unsuccessfully in court. While many retiree benefits remain protected, the dissenters “constitute a subset of retirees that receive supplemental pension benefits” […]
Stead Takes Newbery, Pinkney Wins Caldecott
Rebecca Stead’s WHEN YOU REACH ME (Wendy Lamb Books) was awarded the ALA’s Newbery Medal this morning, as Jerry Pinkney’s THE LION & THE MOUSE (Little, Brown Children’s), a “near-wordless adaptation of Aesop’s classic fable of kindness repaid between an unlikely pair of creatures,” won the ALA’s Randolph Caldecott Medal for best picture book. The Newbery Honor books were: Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice, by Phillip HooseThe Evolution of Calpurnia Tate, by Jacqueline KellyWhere the Mountain Meets the Moon, by Grace LinThe Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg, by Rodman Philbrick The Caldecott Honor titles were: All the World, […]
Bookselling: Bhodi Tree Owners Still Hope to Sell Name and Inventory
In a follow-up piece on the plans of Bhodi Tree Bookstore owners Stan Madson and Phil Thompson once they complete the sale of the building that houses the store, the LA Times says that “they are searching for someone to buy the Bodhi Tree inventory and name and continue the store in a different location.” Madson says sales are about $2 million a year (down from a high of $5 million a year in the 90s), declining about 15 percent a year in each of the last two years.LAT
10 Great Forthcoming Books for 2010
The Boston Herald assembles this list from “publishing experts,” with lots of quotes fom Amazon senior books editor Brad Parsons and a few from Jon Strymish, buyer/manager at New England Mobile Book Fair: 1. War, by Sebastian Junger2. Union Atlantic, by Adam Haslett3. Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War, by Karl Marlantes4. The Postmistress, by Sarah Blake5. The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, by Michael Lewis6. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, by Seth Grahame-Smith7. The Girl Who Fell from the Sky, by Heidi W. Durrow8. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, by Stieg Larsson9. Walking to Gatlinburg: A […]
More From Barry "Don't Blame Me" O'Callaghan
Education Media and Publishing Group ceo Barry O’Callaghan continues to provide an astonishing mix of remarks and revisionist history to the Irish media. It “bemuses” him that he’s “being positioned as the bad guy” in the evaporation of billions of dollars of equity. It’s not his fault, “It’s just bad luck for me and my fellow shareholders. It’s nothing different from the people who bought houses [in the boom].” Plus, “people are perfectly entitled to take a swing at me because I’ve lost them money and I’m disappointed, too. But don’t blame me for what I don’t control. This downturn […]
Awards: Borders Original Voices
The bookseller announced the winners of their annual awards yesterday, which include a cash prize and chainwide promotion: FictionThe Calligrapher’s Daughter, Eugenia Kim NonfictionShop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work, Matthew Crawford Children’s/YAAfter, by Amy EfawRelease