In an unusually long annual letter to employees, Perseus Books Group CEO David Steinberger provided plenty of details on a year he said started August 7, 2014—the date the sale of Perseus to Hachette Book Group was called off. In the actual fiscal year, which ended June 30, 2015, Perseus beat its financial goals and set numerous performance records, Steinberger wrote to employees.
The record year was due to a combination of strong sales for Perseus’ own imprints, as well as double-digit gains in sales for its publisher clients. During fiscal 2015, the Perseus distribution operation processed 462,000 orders, shipped 45 million books from its Jackson, Tenn. warehouse, and distributed “millions” of e-books through Constellation. The company is managing 95,338 titles in the Jackson facility.
Within its own imprints, cookbooks and titles by Web personalities were among the top sellers for the year. The addition of the Mayo Clinic line of titles to Da Capo strengthened backlist sales for that imprint, Steinberger wrote, while Tequila Mockingbird by Tim Federle sold more than 200,000 copies in the year. Basic Books sales have, according to Steinberger, “never been better” with commercial and critical hits like Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms and The Rise of Robots. At Avalon, the Rick Steves travel guides did well and, at Moon Books, sales rose 20% thanks to the introduction of the Moon Road Trip series.
The year also saw the first-ever Editorial Summit, in which editors from all the company’s different divisions gathered in New York to discuss ideas and strategies.
Steinberger closed by thanking all employees for collaborating to deliver a successful year, one which began with uncertainty about the future after the sale to HBG collapsed.
