Blackwell Powers Good Quarter at Wiley Wiley announced third quarter sales of $429 million, up sharply with the addition of Blackwell Publishing and still up 6 percent compared to a year ago even without Blackwell. They reported adjusted net income of $40 million, and adjusted earnings per share rose 7 percent for the quarter “excluding certain one-time tax benefits and Blackwell” and were well ahead of anaylsts’ expectations. Blackwell itself accounted for $115 million in sales and $16 million in operating income. Based on the strong quarter, the company increased its sales guidance for the fourth quarter by about $20 […]
Lunch for Monday, March 10
Bankrupt Friday Project May Go to Harper UK UK blog-to-book publisher The Friday Project filed for the UK equivalent of bankruptcy on February 25. The company said when filing “the group now has insufficient funds to continue to trade and the directors have a responsibility not to allow the group to incur further liabilities where there is significant uncertainty about the group’s ability to meet their liabilities as they fall due.” The company indicated that “a delay in raising new funds last year led to a disruption in publishing books in the run-up to Christmas, which in turn led to […]
Lunch Weekly for Monday, March 10
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 James Fuerst’s HUGE, debut literary fiction pitched as in the vein […]
Lunch for Friday, March 7
NBCC Award Winners Fiction Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao Autobiography Edwidge Danticat, Brother, I’m Dying Biography Tim Jeal, Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa’s Greatest Explorer General Nonfiction Harriet Washington, Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present Criticism Alex Ross, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century Poetry Mary Jo Bang, Elegy April Book Sense The new Book Sense recommendations have been posted: 1. GIRLS IN TRUCKS, by Katie Crouch UNACCUSTOMED EARTH, by Jhumpa Lahiri THE OUTCAST, by Sadie Jones BELONG TO ME, by […]
Lunch for Thursday, March 6
AAP Rekindled Just to finish up our coverage of the remarks by Steve Kessel of Amazon at yesterday’s AAP meeting, he continued to evade providing much in the way of substantive details to Richard Sarnoff’s questions. One implied message was don’t expect any big physical changes in the Kindle any time soon: “We’re pretty focused on the current iteration of Kindle.” Their focus is on “getting back in stock” with the devices and “increasing the selection beyond the 100,000 or so books that are available today.” He had “no comment specifically” on Sarnoff’s queries about things like a better screen, […]
Lunch for Wednesday, March 5
From the AAP Annual Meeting Borders CEO George Jones led off the APP’s meeting this morning, saying that early indications from their new concept store are encouraging. Though the store carries twenty percent fewer titles than a typical superstore, “the number of titles selling has doubled” according to Jones, who calls the change “dramatic.” The store has only been open two and half weeks, but Jones says “sales have been way better than expectations.” Jones called the current coop system “crazy,” noting they have “16,000 individual co-op agreements” and “a lot of endcaps make so sense” in merchandising to readers. […]