Bertelsmann Income Drops on Napster Charges, Strong Euro In a brief first quarter overview, Bertelsmann reported sales of 4.38 billion euros, down from 4.46 billion euros a year ago, reflecting the absence this year of BMG Music Publishing revenue and the continued pounding of the dollar. The company says that “if-only” growth (our general term for their “adjusted for portfolio and foreign exchange effects”) was 1.7 percent. They reported a net loss of 70 million euros for the quarter, due to a 114 million euro special item for out-of-court settlement costs and provisions for lawsuits related to Napster. The company […]

This Week’s Releases: Pope and Bugliosi Newsweek covers (and excerpts) the Pope’s new book, releasing this week: “It is an orthodox biography — one that acknowledges the role of analytical scholarship while in fact leaving little room for a critical interpretation of Scripture. This approach is not surprising, given Benedict’s job description, but in a world where Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and other proponents of secularism credit belief in Jesus as one of the sources of the world’s ills, Benedict offers an unvarnished opposing view: belief in Jesus, he says, is the only thing that will save the world.” Story […]

Deal Reports Just e-mail to deals@PublishersMarketplace if you aren’t using the online form linked below. Report a deal using the online form The Key As usual, the handy key to our Lunch deal categories. While all reports are always welcome, those that include a category will generally receive a higher listing when it comes time to put them all together. “nice deal” $1 – $49,000 “very nice deal” $50,000 – $99,000 “good deal” $100,000 – $250,000 “significant deal” $251,000 – $499,000 “major deal” $500,000 and up FICTION Debut One-time muse to fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, Sara Stockbridge’s HAMMER, set in […]

Thomson Sale Blows Past Estimates Thomson Learning, comprising higher-education, careers and library reference assets, is being sold to Apax Partners and OMERS Capital Partners (which oversees the Ontario municipal employees’ pension plan) for $7.75 billion — well above the roughly $5 billion bids that analysts were expecting. The CBC says that “as part of the transaction, OMERS will get majority ownership of Nelson Canada.” Perseus Ax Falls Quickly on Avalon Perseus Books Group CEO David Steinberger announced the next reorganization wave at the company in an internal letter yesterday. The Carroll & Graf and Thunder’s Mouth imprints will be eliminated, […]

Whose Your DAD? At today’s Book Industry Study Group (BISG) Making Information Pay Conference, consultant Mike Shatzkin of the Idea Logical Company officially previewed his lexicon of new acronyms to describe the growing herd of intermediaries who want to manage digital content for publishers (including large publishers themselves). In Shatzkin’s vision, just as nearly every publisher works with a physical distributor to bring their work to retail (and collect payment), the growing world of promotional and paid electronic content will require nearly everyone to have a companion digital distributor. Hence DADs — digital asset distributors. As part of a research […]

Quarterly Report Cards: Harper Shows Improvement HarperCollins ended their streak of four straight quarterly profit declines in the fiscal third quarter, with operating income up $3 million to $29 million, on sales of $291 million, up six percent from a year ago. CEO Jane Friedman already foresees a strong finish to her fiscal year: “All my life I have wanted Christmas in the spring; at this moment, HarperCollins is having a second Christmas.” She cites the UK import THE DANGEROUS BOOK FOR BOYS, which went out with 100,000 copies last week in the US and has already seen three reprints […]