Barnes & Noble’s Q3 Report Sends Bad Tidings to Publishers Same-store sales inched up 0.9 percent in the third quarter at Barnes & Noble’s superstores, for a total of $895 million, as B. Dalton continues to fade away, down to $35.9 million for the quarter (with comparable store sales sliding 3.3 percent). And at BN.com, pro-forma sales dropped 8 percent, to $91.8 million. The headline on most third-party accounts, however, is that profits dropped to $7.6 million, down from $10.2 million a year ago. At the BN superstores alone, operating profit fell to $12 million, from $15 million a year […]

Penguin UK Postpones Date for Full Warehouse Operations; “Reps are Acknowledging that Christmas will be Terrible” Publishing News is starting to add some teeth to their coverage of the ongoing Penguin UK warehouse story. One “senior figure” says “Reps are acknowledging that Christmas will be terrible, but they are fearful of admitting it.” Another remarks: “They’ll have the new Jamie Oliver on the van, but not core fiction.” Penguin itself is now officially admitting that the new fully automated warehouse will not be, um, fully automated, until next March “at the earliest” (i.e. later than that). Out of one side […]

Latest Earnings: Houghton Houghton Mifflin’s trade and reference division reported net sales of $41.1 million for their third quarter, up 8.2 percent from last year. “The increase was due primarily to the higher sales of adult, children’s and cookbook titles, offset by the decline in sales of Tolkien titles.” Educational sales at the company were up slightly, though operating income declined for the quarter. Following Pearson’s news from yesterday, some analysts are grumpy that the company did not provide a specific range of forecast earnings. Numis Securities told The Scotsman they are reducing their own forecast by $9.2 million to […]

The Other Shoe: Harper to Create True Collins Division A number of our questions about what yesterday’s newly announced HarperMorrow division meant for the rest of the US Harper imprints got answered quickly with today’s announcement: The company will launch a true Collins division for the first time in the U.S. Former PW publisher (and before that president of Grolier) Joe Tessitore has been named president of the new division, reporting to Brian Murray. Collins will now comprise what was the HarperInformation group, including HarperResource, HarperBusiness, and HarperSanFrancisco. It also absorbs Harper Design, and will coordinate more closely with the […]

Today It’s HarperMorrow HarperCollins has merged a number of the Harper imprints with the Morrow/Avon lines in a new division to be called HarperMorrow — all of which will be under the direction of newly named president and group publisher Michael Morrison. Imprints under his direction comprise: HarperCollins, William Morrow, HarperEntertainment, Morrow Cookbooks, HarperPerennial, Avon, Eos, Dark Alley, Amistad, HarperAudio, HarperLarge Print and PerfectBound. Morrison reports to Brian Murray, Group President of HarperCollins Publishers. One impetus for the move mentioned is to work towards creating clear and separate brand identities for both Harper and Morrow. Harper publisher Susan Weinberg, Amistad […]

Two Counts of Lawsuit Against Patterson Move Forward A Southern District court judge allowed allegations of breach of contract and copyright infringement to proceed against novelist James Patterson, while dismissing seven other charges, including misappropriation and unjust enrichment, according to a short piece in NY Lawyer. Patterson is being sued by Christina Sharp, which whom he was involved romantically for a period between June 1996 and April 1997. Sharp alleges that CAT AND MOUSE includes some of her work, and asserts that SUZANNE’S DIARY FOR NICHOLAS was based on her idea. Judge Gerard E. Lynch wrote: “In tandem with their […]