Strong Quarter for S&S; Waterstone’s Down Again Riding a considerable boost from The Secret, sales at Simon & Schuster jumped 27 percent for their first quarter, hitting $229 million, up $48 million from a year ago. Operating income rose even more dramatically to $21.4 million, up from $3.7 million last year, “driven by the revenue increase partially offset by higher expenses, primarily reflecting increased production costs and royalty expenses.” Meanwhile, the UK continues to succeed in progressively destroying their full-line bookstore chains in favor of supermarkets and other discounters. Waterstone’s parent HMV noted in a trading update that same-store sales […]

Better Quarter for Harlequin Both Torstar and subsidiary Harlequin have turned in a badly-needed quarter of improved performance, with both sales and profits rising. At Harlequin, sales of $124.5 million (CA) were up $6.2 million from a year ago, with most of the gain due to currency exchange, and with operating profit of $19.1 million in the first quarter of 2007, up $4.0 million from the same period last year. The biggest improvement came in North American retail sales, while direct mail sales declined and overseas results were flat, “with improved results in the Nordic group and Germany offset by […]

Jackson Goes Studio Shopping for Lovely Bones Director Peter Jackson has gone out to potential studio partners with his co-written screenplay for an adaptation of Alice Sebold’s THE LOVELY BONES. He acquired rights from Film Four in 2004, and has said that the film would be his next project. Variety Amazon Has Hosseini Exclusives Amazon is offering an exclusive two-page excerpt from Khaled Hosseini’s forthcoming A THOUSAND SUNS (publishing on May 22), along with a podcast interview with the author. Of more interest, the site has also posted 15 short pre-publication reviews after querying their top 100 reviewers in early […]

More Tenet There were Tenet stories (and responses) all over this weekend, as this week’s Time carries a serial. Tenet says that Vice President Cheney and his circle of supporters “wanted to be able to limit the Iraqis’ power and handpick those Iraqis who would participate” in the government after the initial phase of the war. “They never understood that, fundamentally, political control depends on the consent of the governed.” Time serial Time interview Among the many articles, Michiko Kakutani launched a pre-publication review on Saturday: “Alternately withholding and aggrieved, earnest and disingenuous, At the Center of the Storm is […]

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 Lisa VanAuken writing as Lisa Dale’s THE LUCKY MOON, exploring the mysterious connectivity […]

Tenet Coverage Begins As often happens, a NYT reporter walks into a store, and comes out with the embargoed George Tenet book (bought without a discount, “at retail price”). Calling it “by turns accusatory, defensive, and modestly self-critical,” the Times quotes Tenet as writing: “There was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat.” Though there was that 2002 National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq’s weapons programs, which Tenet calls “one of the lowest moments of my seven-year tenure,” explaining that “in retrospect, we got it wrong partly because the truth […]