The abandoned New York is Book Country has been resuscitated by Nielsen Business Media, as pointed out in this month’s Publishing Trends. To be held September 21 in Central Park (one week after the Brooklyn Book Festival, and one week before the National Book Festival in DC), the new version highlights books and authors but also promises pavilions for electronic gaming, cooking, finance, and hybrid autos, plus a music pavilion, making New York…cornucopia country?NYCB site
How About WOWIO 2.0?
Remember that goofy company that wanted to build a collection of free-access ebooks that wasted all that money a couple of BEA’s ago on an army of people in matching t-shirts chasing attendees on Segway scooters? Now entertainment company Platinum Studios (which says they control thousands of comic book characters) has bought the company and relaunched the site. They say that “prior to the acquisition and relaunch, WOWIO had over 2 million downloads in a year,” with partners including Rosetta Books, Taylor & Francis Group, and Soft Skull.Release
Personnel News and More
Sarah Melnyk has joined St. Martin‘s Minotau as a senior publicist. She was previously at Harcourt. At Yale University Press, Jean Thomson Black has been promoted to executive editor. She works in the areas of science, medicine, and technology. Distributor Consortium will offer free freight terms to trade accounts beginning August 1. With this change, accounts will receive the same discount terms when ordering from Perseus Books, Perseus Distribution Services (PDS), Publishers Group West (PGW), or Consortium.
S&S Falls Short
CBS reported sales at Simon & Schuster for the second quarter of $186 million, down 7 percent from a year ago. It’s the third straight quarterly decline for the publishing unit and once again the statement says that “bestselling titles…did not match contributions from prior year titles.” OIBDA and operating income decreased 15 percent to $17 million and 19 percent to $14.6 million, respectively, with “lower revenues partially offset by lower royalty expenses.” In additional remarks the company indicated they “are also feeling, as we did the last quarter, the effects of higher freight costs,” and are seeing higher paper […]
Harlequin Turns in Better Quarter
Torstar reported second quarter earnings with sales at their Harlequin unit of $119 million (CA) up 3.5 percent from a year ago, and EBITDA of $19.8 million up 44 percent (for a margin of 16.6 percent). The company says Harlequin “is well on track to deliver solid growth for the year, albeit not at the pace of the second quarter…. After a very strong second quarter, we expect Harlequin’s growth to moderate in the second half of the year resulting in solid growth for the year as a whole. The U.S. economy could have a negative impact on Harlequin’s results, […]
Indigo Rises in First Quarter
Sales at dominant Canadian chain Indigo rose 3.1 percent in their first quarter to $191 million (CA), while their net loss was reduced by more than half, to $1.3 million. Same-store sales were up 3.3 percent at the Indigo and Chapters superstores, while the smaller format Coles stores were up 5.4 percent, and online sales rose 7.7 percent, to $21 million. Release