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Currency Issues, U.S. Economy Result in Down Quarter at Wiley
The “unprecedented” impact of foreign exchange had a dramatic negative impact of John Wiley’s results for the third quarter ended January 31. Revenue for the company fell 13% on a reported basis, and declined 2% without the affect from currency translations. Operating income fell 7%, to $63.3 million, on a reported based.
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Merkh Joining Simon and Schuster's Howard Books
The former Nelson senior v-p Jonathan Merkh has been named to head Simon and Schuster's Howard Books imprint.
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The Kindle for iPhone: Good App with Flaws
A few days after Amazon released its Kindle for iPhone app, it became the top book-related download, nudging out the Stanza and Fictionwise eReader applications.
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Amazon.com Stock Gets Upgrade
Piper Jaffray upgraded Amazon's stock from neutral to buy.
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Crown Publishing's Good Causes
The book industry may be struggling, but Crown and Three Rivers recently concluded four deals with charitable or human rights agendas. Three Rivers editor Brett Valley has acquired two books by John Prendergast, coauthor (with actor Don Cheadle) of Not On Our Watch. The first, Making Good: How to End Genocide, Femicide and Child Slavery, is a call to arms to stop atrocities in Africa and beyond...
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Amazon's Kindle 2: Still Cool, Even Easier
Since I also reviewed the original Kindle, I'm afraid this review may sound like I copied my old one (Nov. 29, 2007). The Kindle 2, Amazon's upgrade of its original wireless handheld reading device, is an improvement in pretty much every way over the first one—which actually worked quite well. The Kindle 2 has all of the features that made Kindle 1 such a hot device for digital reading...
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All Units Contribute To Record 2008 At Penguin USA
As part of its record year in 2008, Penguin USA reported that 13 of its imprints had #1 New York Times bestsellers last year, and CEO David Shanks noted that the gains posted by the company were throughout the company's various divisions, including mass market paperback and trade paperback. As it is currently organized, Penguin is divided into three large groups—adult, Penguin Young Reade...
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B&N Buys Fictionwise; Will Start e-Bookstore
Barnes & Noble has acquired the independent e-book retailer Fictionwise for $15.7 million and said it plans to open its own e-bookstore later this year.
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A Million Kindles by Thanksgiving?
Morgan Stanley predicts that Amazon will sell a million Kindles by Thanksgiving, but the company remained tightlipped on any numbers regarding the e-book reader.
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Amazon Joins the iPhone App Market
Amazon has become the latest company to create an application that will let consumers download books to their iPhone and iPod devices. Its new Kindle for iPhone and iPod touch software will provide access to all 240,000 e-books available for the Kindle.
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Fiona McCrae
The last few years have been particularly good ones for Graywolf Press, the Minneapolis independent now in its 35th year, headed up by Fiona McCrae. McCrae, who was born in Nairobi, Kenya, and grew up in Hertfordshire, just north of London, began her publishing career at Faber & Faber in London, where she started as an editorial assistant and ended up a senior editor.
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Against All Odds, Small Presses Prosper
Despite brutal economic conditions, several independent publishers managed to find ways to grow both their sales and profits in 2008. How did they do it? They are not afraid to be frugal—forgoing advances in favor of offering higher royalties, for example; and they practice innovation—“mining data” for new audio prospects, in the case of Tantor, or teaching authors how t...
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Not Your Father's Books on Tape
Although a survey conducted at last year's ALA found librarians giving Random House's Books on Tape audiobooks division good grades for quality and reliability, it also revealed that the company, founded in 1974 and acquired by RH in 2001, needed to update its image. So beginning this month, Books on Tape is rolling out a new logo that emphasizes the company's initials and is redesigning its pa...
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B&N Warehouse Staffers Fired After Immigration Audit
Late last week 50 Hispanic staffers at a Barnes & Noble distribution center in Revo, Nev., were fired after a federal immigration audit. According to the Reno Gazette Journal, the staffers were told their firings came as a result of problems with their immigration documents.
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Geoffrey Jennings
I'm 40, right in the middle of Gen X; I can look forward at all the people younger than me, how they read, how they use technology, and I can look back at older readers, and how they're using it,” declares Geoffrey Jennings, a bookseller at Rainy Day Books, the independent bookstore his mother, Vivien Jennings, owns in Fairway, Kans.
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Managing Inventory: Booksellers as Curators
Last month at Winter Institute when Steve Bercu, president of BookPeople in Austin, Tex., said at a panel on “Surviving Hard Times” that he had cut his store's inventory by 55%, there was a gasp—even though he'd made the cuts gradually over the past nine years. While Bercu's radical pruning may make some booksellers uncomfortable, inventory is one of a few controllable costs.
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Q & A with Lisa Yee
Author Lisa Yee, a “mostly cured workaholic,” talked to Children’s Bookshelf about Absolutely Maybe, her first novel for young adults.
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New Imprints Stake a Claim
Lately, the word of the day in publishing has been “reduction,” be it in head counts or acquisitions. And while several children's imprints have been lost in recent months due to restructuring, retirements, etc., 2009 will see the arrival of a new children's publisher, Egmont USA (see “New Kid on the Block,” June 16, 2008), as well as a number of new imprints.
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Scholastic Media Has Big Plans for Clifford
“It only takes a little…to BE BIG!” The motto for Scholastic Media’s new Clifford The Big Red Dog BE BIG! campaign delivers the message at the heart of this initiative: small actions based on Clifford’s Big Ideas—among them sharing, helping others, being responsible, playing fair and working together—can make the world a better place.
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HarperCollins Closes Bowen Press
On Tuesday, in response to rapidly declining sales and earnings, HarperCollins closed its Collins imprint and cut a rumored 60 positions. As part of the cutbacks, The Bowen Press, a children’s imprint that was set to launch this month, is closing, and publisher Brenda Bowen has left the company
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