Pearson offered a first quarter interim statement, reaffirming their expectations from early March when they reported full-year results. “For 2009 as a whole, we expect tough market conditions for US School publishing, financial advertising and the consumer books industry…. At Penguin, we continue to see challenging trading conditions for book publishers and booksellers. Demand for new fiction and non-fiction is generally good and growth in digital formats is very strong, but illustrated reference and travel categories are weak.” Release Informa is selling extra shares to raise 242 million pounds in order to cut its debt. The stock rose sharply, interpreted […]
People and Awards
At Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s trade and reference division, Josh Harwood has been promoted to national accounts director, based in New York, and Beth Ineson moves up to director of field sales & distribution clients (still based in Boston.) As has been expected, Carol Ann Duffy was named the UK’s poet laureate, the first woman to hold the position in 341 years. Along with a small stiped, the honor comes with a “butt of sack” — 600 bottles of sherry to stoke the muse — which the Guardian says she asked for upfront after hearing the previous laureate Andrew Motion never […]
Edwards Admitted Affair Right After Running Again
The NY Daily News “obtained” a copy of Elizabeth Edwards’ book RESILIENCE, set for May 12 publication. She says John Edwards admitted his affair to her right after entering the presidential race in 2006 (almost a year before it hit the media.) “She had actually wanted him to quit the race to protect the family,” the paper says. And the she says now, “He should not have run.” Edwards’ writes “I cried and screamed, I went to the bathroom and threw up” after her husband’s admission. The Daily News says that in the book she “speaks in far more detail […]
People and More
At Borders, longtime executive (most recently vp, Paperchase operations) Michael Oprins has been named to the new position of vp, merchandising for non-book products. He will lead buying teams in non-book categories including: music, DVD, bargain, digital, newsstand, calendars, games, trend gifts and candy. At Scholastic, David Levithan has been promoted to, vp, editorial director for Scholastic Trade Publishing. He had been executive editorial director for Scholastic Press Fiction, multimedia publishing, and PUSH (which he founded). In further adjustments at Harper UK, the Perennial imprint (launched there in 2003) will be phased out. Paperbacks will keep the same colophon as […]
More Things to Read
It’s a light news day, but a number of interesting publishing folks have been rolled out blogs in recent days, so if you’re looking for more things to read, consider: Oxford University Press digital publishing and business development guru Evan Schnittman has his own blog now (he used to contribute more occasionally to the OUP group blog), Black Plastic Glasses. Brian O’Leary at Magellan Media Partners (and sometime consulting partner with Mike Shatzkin at the Idea Logical Company) is posting on issues related to both books and magazines. Charlotte Abbott and Kat Meyer are blogging “for those who read & […]
Some Kindle User Data
Further to our London Book Fair report on Bowker PubTrack’s consumer survey data about demographic preferences for different e-readers, and the larger theme of understanding that different people prefer different e-reading platforms, Richard Curtis’s blog tipped us to a popular Amazon forum asking “Kindle Owner’s Age.” Though there are a lot of posts to page through, the forum is highly recommended for anyone wanting to better understand the Kindle consumer. We extracted about 75 percent of the responses on age (representing about 700 responses, taking equally from the earliest and most recent postings, which show very similar age distributions). Per […]