How are publishing-related entities faring relative the overall market as stock prices continue to fall? Fair warning: this story is not for the faint of heart, so skip down if you need to. Below are some comparative results, looking over the past month, and in particular at the six days of trading ending with yesterday’s market close. In this corner of the world, debt-free Barnes & Noble has been the most resilient so far, and among publishers and their parent companies, Pearson appears to have held up the best (though among somewhat smaller companies Bloomsbury is the star performer). As […]
Company News: Lulu Layoffs; Harper Studio UK; and More
Lulu.com is laying off 24 employees, almost a quarter of their workforce of 100. The reductions include recently-hired president Bryce Boothby Jr. and European vp Cristel Lee Leed. The company plans to relocate its headquarters from Morrisville, NC to Raleigh within the next few months. CEO Bob Young tells NewMediaAge “with the credit and capital markets frozen solid Lulu couldn’t continue burning through money at its previous pace. We’re very disappointed…. we were forced into a position of having to cut costs.” Bob Miller’s Harper Studio has made an agreement with Harper UK to provide for direct publication in the […]
Challenges to Germany's Print Titans
Ever since Gutenberg German industry has led the way in big printing presses but now ” Germany’s dominance in spreading the written word is in danger of fading,” the WSJ reports. Heidelberger still leads the world in sheet-fed offset presses, a market in which German companies control 70 percent. But the world is moving to digital presses, and the German business faces additional challenges from less expensive Japanese machines, further helped by a weak yen. Illinois’ Goss International is a competitor as well. They bought a majority stake in Heidelberger’s web offset unit in 2004 and are now developing offset […]
Concerns Remain Over UK Suppliers
Despite boisterous remarks made by the managing director of UK wholesaler Bertram’s in The Bookseller, concerns remain about both Bertram’s and corporate sibling EUK, due to the financial troubles of parent company Woolworth’s. The founder of Amstrad computers Alan Sugar is reported by the Telegraph to have acquired a four percent stake in the company’s shares, which have fallen 80 percent in a year. Datamonitor says: “Retailers across the entertainment industry are thought to be increasingly concerned with the financial health of the market’s dominant wholesaler, EUK. The worries surrounding EUK’s parent, Woolworths Group, based on the deterioration of its […]
eNews: More Downloads; A New Widget; and Rowman Digitizes
Are Kindle and Sony Reader lifting all e-reading boats? Ingram Digital says that third quarter downloads were “more than double the same quarter last year.” The company says they currently offer over 130,000 ebook titles from more than 1,100 publishers. They cover a wide variety of formats and devices: “PCs, PDAs, dedicated e-book readers, Smartphones, and with the eReader format, directly to iPhones.” They support five major formats: Adobe e-books as PDF and EPUB files, MS Reader, eReadr, and Vitalbooks. Value Chain International‘s book preview widget has been adopted by Taylor an Francis (which will deploy the facility for over […]
Quirkiest Nobel Story Yet: Suspicious Betting Indicates Leak
“A surprising number of bettors correctly chose French writer Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio to win the 2008 Nobel Prize for literature — leading the Nobel prize jury to suspect a leak,” the AP reports. Swedish Academy permanent secretary (and anti-American) Horace Engdahl has a “strong suspicion that there has been a leak in the system.” British bookmaker Ladbrooke’s saw the odds on Le Clezio fall from 14-to-1 down to a 1-to-2 favorite right before the announcement. But Engdahl does not fault himself, though he admits reading a book by Le Clezio while flying back to Sweden last week, saying he […]