Sales Down At: Harlequin, Waterstone’s Sales at Harlequin continue to slide, down $7.9 million for the first quarter to $129 million (Canadian), with most of the weakness in North American revenues. Same-store sales at UK bookseller Waterstone’s fell 2.8 percent in the first quarter. The slide comes after what had been a strong pre-Christmas period for the chain. Torstar/Harlequin release Guardian on Waterstone’s/HMV Agency Moves On the heels of Steve Wasserman’s departure from the LA Times comes the announcement that he will move back to New York, to run the city’s office of Boston-based agency Kneerim & Williams, alongside agents […]

Server Limbo The good news is that our fast new dedicated server is working wonderfully. The less good news is that, of this morning’s serving, the “DNS records” that tell computers all over the world how to find our new server have not been updated yet. That process is supposed to start imminently — unless it doesn’t. In the meantime, we’ve had to disable the interactive/posting features at the old version of the site, which is also working wonderfully. Otherwise, changes to member pages, account records, posted pages, and so on would look like they were going through, but they […]

Please Note Some time in the next day or two, we expect to be moving to a new, bigger, dedicated server for PublishersMarketplace. The move will present a variety of improvements for members — once we get there. It’s a bit of an open question exactly when we’ll officially jump from one computer to the other (and because of the way DNS updates work, different user computers may get directed to the new version of the site at different times.) As a result, it’s possible that you’ll encounter some minor site oddities (e.g. a change you made to a member […]

Scholastic Buys Cunningham’s Chicken Scholastic has purchased the UK’s Chicken House, run by Barry Cunningham. The companies had been partners in the US, Canada and Australia, on such books as Cornelia Funke’s DRAGON RIDER (with 900,000 copies in print in North America) and recent Jonah’s Pick Stuart Hill’s THE CRY OF THE ICEMARK. Cunningham says in a statement, “Now with the resources and depth of experience that Scholastic offers, we will be able to offer our authors and artists even greater distribution and exposure worldwide.” Cunningham will continue to work out of the UK, but reports to US-based Scholastic Trade […]

Fresh Book Sales The NYT reports on the growing presence of books in supermarkets. The Kroger chain, called “among the most aggressive in expanding its book sections,” is carrying up to 2,800 titles per store. Lance Parsons, who manages Kroger’s book line, comments: “When you look at our business versus a bookstore, we have the opportunity to capture the same customers three times a week.… Now publishers are beating down our doors.” Harper president of sales Josh Marwell concurs: “Supermarkets are definitely taking a bigger share of our business.” And chains like Wegmans are hosting author signings: a recent event […]

Herz Launches Small Imprint Doubleday Broadway’s Suzanne Herz will become publisher of a new imprint for the house, Flying Point Press, focusing on popular culture and fiction and aiming to publish up to six books a year. Herz will “work closely with senior editor Phyllis Grann” and other members of the Doubleday Broadway team. The first announced acquisition is a book by CNN anchor Soledad O’Brien about the importance of family, co-written with Sally Jenkins and to be edited by Grann. Herz has been with the house for 11 years. She relinquishes her position as executive director of publicity for […]