The ABA’s Len Vlahos posted a presentation to the ABA board about how “a meaningful digital content solution needs to be our top priority and main focus for the immediate future.” For now, however, the immediate recommendations calls for “further study” through a task force; continuing dialogue with Ingram, Symtio and other technology partners; and increased digital focus in the ABA’s educational programs.Report Bookseller Rich Rennicks had an interesting blog post on the topic of how to deal with ebooks in indie stores recently that was enriched by about 40 comments. Among the laments from booksellers there is that the […]
More Numbers from Lagardere
Yesterday Lagardere release their more detailed annual report, which also includes profits for fiscal 2008 (they released basic sales figures of 2.159 billion euros earlier, as we previously reported). They company says EBIT for 2008 was 236 million euros, up 3.3 percent from a year ago, with operating margins up slightly to 11.4 percent. The US comprised 22 percent of sales in 2008, up from 18 percent a year ago, making it larger than Hachette UK for the first time, which saw its share of sales drop from 24 percent a year ago to 18 percent in 2008. On that […]
Barnett Skeptical that Publishing Alternatives Would Entice His Clients
A number of the approximately 75 registered AAP publishers had left the organization’s annual meeting yesterday due to the Clinton-delayed program before the final event, a lunchtime q&A between Twelve publisher Jon Karp and attorney Bob Barnett (who joked that it was “defamatory” when Pat Schroeder introduced him as an agent.) Asked “what makes for a good political book,” Barnett recommended “the more personal and the less policy, the better.” He agreed with the notion that in political books, “sadly, the far right and the far left are the ones that sell. Particularly in this economy…the center and the sensible […]
Remember this Day, For An Actual eBook Sales Number Was Published
The other interesting fact from Lagardere’s annual report merits this separate item and our congratulations on their disclosure. Reporting that ebook sales in the US rose 5.5 times during 2008, the company declared revenues–yes, actual revenues–of $4.7 million. Based on our rough estimate of Hachette Book Group’s total US sales for the year, that means that even with the exponential growth, ebooks comprised less than 0.75 percent of sales. (The conforms with Penguin USA’s recent declaration to us that, while they too experienced a nearly five-fold increase in ebook sales, it has yet to comprise one percent of revenue.) And […]
HMH Trying to Renegotiate Debt Covenants After All
Having heatedly taken issue with recent ratings downgrades by both Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt parent company Education Media & Publishing is talking to its primary lenders–who hold $4.3 billion in debt–about renegotiating the terms to loosen the multiples in their covenants. As the FT reports, the notes currently require that EMP’s debt be no more than 8.75 times ebidta by March 31. The company seeks to raise that multiple to 9.95 times earnings, and wants to raise the March 2010 target from 6.5 times ebitda to a 7.45 multiple. Lenders are being offered a small fee […]
Wilson Takes New Post at Headline As Neild Prepares to Leave
Kate Wilson, who left her position as managing director of Scholastic UK without noting her next step, is taking on the newly-created post of chief executive of the Headline Publishing Group within Hachette UK. Wilson joins the company on May 5 and will report to managing director of Headline and chief executive of Hodder & Stoughton and John Murray Martin Neild–but only until Neild relinquishes his full-time job in early 2010 to become a consultant to the company. At that point, Wilson will report directly to Hachette UK ceo Tim Hely Hutchinson and Jamie Hodder-Williams will move up from managing […]