It’s a quiet day and spring break is almost over. Briefly:   — New Zealand’s Margaret Mahy has won the Hans Christian Andersen Award, awarded biennially for making a major contribution to children’s literature.   — BEA has announced the editors on this year’s Buzz Panel (you know, the one where editors are supposed to shine a light on “important hidden titles of literary merit, or breakout potential, which might otherwise go unnoticed” but instead tell you about their galley giveaways or big fall books). This year features Bill Thomas from Doubleday, Eric Chinski from FSG, Jonathan Burnham from Harper, […]

Ottakar’s Confirms Bad Year, and Worse Start to New Year Bad news continues among UK chain booksellers, as Ottakar’s reported a loss of 4.6 million pounds, on slightly increased sales of 176.5 million pounds for fiscal 2005. The company blamed “unprecedented price competition,” “the slowdown in second half sales,” and “the distraction” of an attempted management buyout that in turn led to the stalled takeover by Waterstone’s. (“Exceptional costs” related to the bids drained 5.5 million pounds from the company.) It doesn’t help that same-store sales fell 2.8 percent. Though the results would indicate that the company’s model of a […]

Tokyopop Snatched by Harper, for Distribution and Co-PublishingA little over a month after being highlighted in the NY Times for renewing their distribution agreement with CDS, Tokyopop has switched gears. Now the company says they will move their North American distribution to HarperCollins — which had been looking for a client of scale ever since Perseus left their distribution services and acquired CDS. The new arrangement also features a co-publishing agreement to “create a progressive new line of co-branded manga titles” developed in conjunction with Harper authors and properties. Aiming for as many as 24 titles a year together, Tokyopop […]

Monday, March 27 Advertisement   Pace University’s Master of Science publishing program gives you the edge you need in today’s competitive publishing industry. This unique program covers all aspects of the publishing business-book, magazine, newspaper and electronic-as well as editing, finance, production, sales, marketing, circulation, acquisitions and subsidiary rights. The program offers well-known professors, cutting-edge technology and on-line courses.   Attend an information session on Wednesday, April 5th online at www.pace.edu. To learn more about the publishing program click here, or to apply for the program click here. Our Usual Reminder If for some reason this has reached you even […]

Loss Increases at Scholastic; Forecasts Are Cut The performance roller-coaster that characterizes Scholastic has rounded the Harry Potter crest and is pointed down again, as the company announced a sharply higher loss for the third quarter of $15.5 million (compared to $0.8 million a year ago), on sales of $481 million, up just 1 percent. Forecasts for the year have been cut following the poor quarter. In the children’s book publishing and distribution division, sales of $271 million were down slightly from $272 million a year ago, though trade revenue by itself rose 6 percent, and continuities were up as […]

Profits Up at Random, On Slightly Improved Sales Bertelsmann announced results for their fiscal year this morning in Germany, and Random House’s performance essentially matched CEO Peter Olson’s description in his end-of-year letter. Similar to last year’s performance, sales nudged up “slightly,” by just over two percent, to 1.83 billion euros, as profitability increased more dramatically, to 166 million euros. Olson cites this as “continuing our steady upward trend of the last few years,” though the unit is still below 2002’s sales of 1.995 billion euros. (Profits, reported then as Ebita rather than Ebit, were 168 million euros.)   Random […]