Reidy Gets the Nod The possibility of Simon & Schuster CEO Jack Romanos’s retirement has been the subject of casual conversations for much of this year, with the two main questions being a) when and b) would CBS management promote current president of the adult publishing division Carolyn Reidy to the post. Today we have the answers: Romanos will retire at the end of the year, and Reidy will indeed take over as president and ceo. As Romanos says in a letter to employees, “with S&S in such robust health, I believe the time is right for me to retire.” […]

Bertelsmann Still Looking for Education Buy In conversations following their earnings release yesterday, Bertelsmann cfo Thomas Rabe reiterated the company’s interest in buying its way into the education publishing business. They were outbid in the competition for Thomson Learning, and Rabe says their joint offer was 25 percent less than what Apax and its partners paid. He indicated that the company expects to have between 1 billion and 1.5 billion euros for new acquisitions annually. Reuters More from Borders Management, Too SeekingAlpha has just posted the transcript from the conference call following Borders’ earnings release last week. CEO George Jones […]

Sales and Profits Slide at RH (and Bertelsmann) Bertelsmann reported sales for the first half of their fiscal year of 8.96 billion euros, down 180 million euros from a year ago, and they swung to a net loss of 51 million euros, against a net profit of 258 million euros a year ago. The company says it was “considerably impacted by the Napster settlement agreements and other special items.” Sales at Random House were 832 million euros ($1.130 billion), down from 859 million euros a year ago, with operating EBIT (the company’s current preferred measure of profitability) of 44 million […]

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 Mystery/Crime Linda Richards’s THE CONSPIRACY OF THE PRODUCTION CODE, the second in […]

More Ruminations on Royalties Richard Charkin’s post on the possibility of moving to simplified royalties based on a publisher’s receipts has drawn a variety of comments from US agents, including Jeff Gerecke (reporting on an AAR committee investigation of the topic, and questioning the “transparency and auditability”); Andrew Zack (writing on the abuse of high-discount clauses, the complexity of discount schedules, and the possibility of a flat per-book royalties among other things); and Scott Hoffman (who “strongly supports a fully open and transparent move to a system that was based on actual amounts received by publishers” — while arguing for […]

“Running with Scissors” Suit Settled — Everybody Wins Augusten Burroughs and St. Martin’s have agreed to change a characterization of Running with Scissors in the front matter as “memoir” to call it just a “book” instead, as part of the settlement of a lawsuit filed by the Turcotte family. Burroughs will also alter the author’s note in the book to indicate: “I recognize that their memories of the events described in this book are different than my own. They are each fine, decent, and hard-working people. The book was not intended to hurt the family. Both my publisher and I […]