Bertelsmann Buys FAZ Imprints Random House continues its international expansion plan with yesterday’s announcement that its German unit, Verlagsgruppe Random House, will acquire the book publishing imprints owned by Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ). Terms were not disclosed, though Random House’s Jeorg Pfuhl is reported by AFX as saying the three imprints — DVA (Deutsche Verlagsanstalt), Manesse and Koesel — will add 20 million euros in sales, pending approval of the deal by the government’s monopoly commission. Random CEO Peter Olson was among those present at the announcement in Munich. AFX Bloomsbury Would Like to Buy Imprints, For Less On the […]

Storm Hits BAM Forecasts — And Problems May Run Deep At the end of the day on Friday when traders were long gone Books-A-Million announced it was lowering earnings guidance for the third quarter following poor sales, now projecting a lost of six to nine cents per share instead of one to three cents a share. The announcement attributes the poor performance to after-effects of Hurricane Katrina: approximately 15 BAM stores were closed for anywhere from two ten days following the storm and “significant comparable store sales decreases occurred in stores that were not closed due to the hurricane.” A […]

The Best Thing to Appear in TBR In Weeks, By Far In case you didn’t catch Donald Trump’s letter to the editor. NYT Personnel News Jaci Updike has been promoted to director of Random House adult sales, reporting to Don Weisberg, and taking over from Madeline McIntosh, who became publisher of the Random House Audio and Large Print earlier this month. Updike has been with the company since 1989, most recently as vp, national accounts for Barnes & Noble. Most of the company’s trade sales directors will report to Updike, as George Fisher and the mass merchandising group reports to […]

AMS Adds UK Children’s Distributor AMS announced its acquisition as of September 1 of the assets of UK children’s book distributor Ragged Bears Limited. Distributed lines (which include Chronicle’s Children’s) will be put under the PGW Worldwide banner, with Ragged Bears become the company’s UK children’s division. AMS International president Mike Kidd comments: “It is our intention to make the necessary investment in Ragged Bears to make it the agency of choice for all small and medium sized publishers. Our first priority however will be looking after the interests and growing the sales of the existing client publishers and customers.” […]

Booker Shortlist Julian Barnes’ ARTHUR AND GEORGE, Zadie Smith’s ON BEAUTY, Sebastian Barry’s A LONG LONG WAY, Ali Smith’s THE ACCIDENTAL, John Banville’s THE SEA and Kazuo Ishiguro’s NEVER LET ME GO comprise the Booker Prize shortlist, announced earlier today. London bookmakers have made Julian Barnes (twice nominated, often praised, never crowned) the 5-4 favorite. Unlike in recent years when lesser-known authors were included in the shortlist, Banville’s is the only book that has not yet been announced for publication in the US (though Vintage International has issued a lot of his backlist). We didn’t hear back from Knopf on […]

Profits Rise at Random Bertelsmann reported results for the first half of the year, with Random House registering sales of 799 million euros ($994 million) and “operating EBIT” of 48 million euros. The company says the decline in sales versus 818 million euros a year ago is due to the weak dollar, though dollar softness has effected euro-denominated results for a long time now. The UK division produced “the largest gains” in both sales and profits, extra helpful to the company because they are recorded in stronger pounds; and the German division “posted notable improvements in sales of its adult […]