Unable to find a buyer interested in acquiring all of Simon & Schuster Interactive, the publisher has closed down the unit. S&S had put SSI, publisher of CD-ROMs and video games, up for sale in early September. The closure of the unit has resulted in the departure of Giles Dana, who had been president and publisher of Simon & Schuster's new media division. S&S's exit from the interactive business reduced Dana's area of responsibility solely to its audio operation.
In a company memo, S&S president Jack Romanos said that with the interactive unit shutting down, Dana "felt that the time was right to strike out on his own." Romanos noted while S&S's interactive division had produced a number of bestselling titles, the company determined "that as a non-core business it was ultimately too difficult for us to compete with the giants of this industry."
Dana will be succeeded as head of the audio division by Chris Lynch, who has been named executive v-p and publisher of S&S Audio. Lynch, who joined S&S in 1989, had been associate publisher. He will report directly to Romanos.
New Teen Imprint
Pointing to the success of its Simon Spotlight imprint with children's media tie-ins, Simon & Schuster is now launching Simon Spotlight Entertainment, a separate imprint that will focus on media tie-ins and a broader range of pop culture material for teens and older readers.
The new imprint will be directed by Robin Corey, executive v-p, novelty, media and teen, and Jen Bergstrom, v-p, associate publisher of Simon Spotlight. Corey also directs Simon Spotlight, which has published about 600 titles since it was launched in 1997.
Rick Richter, president of S&S children's publishing, told PW that the move acknowledges the power of the entertainment media on teen consumers and teen spending power. Asked whether the new imprint represents a cradle-to-grave publishing philosophy, Richter laughed. "That's what we hope. We want to focus on the bridge age range between younger teens and adults. We want to be able to hand off readers of Harry Potter or our Spotlight teen readers to our adult list."
The imprint will take over certain media-branded titles published under the children's Simon Spotlight, such as the Buffy and Angel brands, and develop those titles further under the Spotlight Entertainment unit. And the imprint will also look to teenage lifestyle books. "We want to send a message to the studios and to agents that we're interested in an older demographic," said Richter. "But we think that in the future something like The Preppy Handbook would be published at Spotlight Entertainment."
Richter said the new imprint will publish "as many titles as we can sell; it's open-ended right now." He said SSE will initially release titles based on Comedy Central programming and other humor titles. He also noted that S&S's entire sales force will sell the books.
Third-Quarter Sales Up
According to S&S parent company Viacom, third quarter sales at the publishing house rose, although no figures were provided.
An S&S spokesperson said the company had a particularly strong September led by sales of The Ultimate Weight Solution by Dr. Phil McGraw (which now has 2.5 million copies in print); Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton; and Walter Isaacson's Benjamin Franklin. In mass market paperback, Angels and Demons, the first book by Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown, has sold very well, and has 1.3 million copies in print.
