More Potter Stats Nielsen Bookscan has tabulated first-day UK sales for Harry Potter of 2,652,656 copies. (Bookscan has near-total coverage of the UK market, unlike in the US, and added figures from BCA, Wilkinsons and Bloomsbury’s own site to their usual accounts.) For the previous Potter, Bookscan had tracked sales of 2,009,574 copies the first day. Tesco alone says they sold over 500,000 copies over the weekend, and Waterstone’s reports sales of 350,000 copies in the first day. Bloomsbury notes that they also sold 398,271 copies of the UK edition in Germany in the first 24 hours. Back in the […]

Little, Brown UK Buys Piatkus Little, Brown UK signed an agreement on Friday to acquire Piatkus Books, which will continue as an “independent imprint” within the group. Judy Piatkus will remain with the unit until the end of the year, and then will retire. Founded in 1979, Piatkus has annual sales of over $20 million (while Little, Brown has sales of over $100 million.) Piatkus will remain in its current offices until the end of October, when they will move into LB’s new offices by the Thames. With 28 employees at Piatkus, “Little, Brown will be asking the majority of […]

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 Justin Peacock’s A CURE FOR NIGHT, in which a fallen lawyer […]

My Howler Yesterday I made one of my biggest errors in judgement ever in how the assorted Harry Potter news was handled/linked, and I apologize deeply to all who were surprised or upset and not warned away in time. There was no malicious intent and I didn’t think I was revealing anything since it was only an inference. (Others linked more prudently to the stories and didn’t think they were spoilers; the newspaper’s editor and reviewer say they revealed nothing. Every possibility and nuance is still on the table, and I didn’t read any of the true online spoilers, so […]

Scholastic Finishes with Slightly Better Quarter Scholastic reported slight improvement in fourth quarter income to $40.4 million, up $2 million from a year ago, on revenue of $612 million, up almost $11 million. In the release, CEO Dick Robinson explains that results would have been even better except that they weren’t: “We achieved our goals of improving operating efficiencies in school book clubs and other core businesses, driving growth in educational technology and reducing costs across the Company. As a result of this strong performance, earnings and free cash flow would have significantly exceeded prior year results, except for the […]

Merger Ripples Pearson is getting them from both sides. If the Dow Jones sale to Rupert Murdoch goes through, they will be under tremendous pressure to do something about Financial Times — either sell it, or partner up with someone to grow dramatically and compete. And with the Riverdeep Houghton/Harcourt merger pending, assuming its passes regulatory approval, Pearson will see its position as the dominant player in the US schools publishing threatened and will certainly move to defend, invest and grow there. Marketwatch More Potter Breaches Scholastic reports that they “recently learned that some individuals have received copies of Harry […]