Tessitore Leaving HC
Joe Tessitore, president of Collins, HC's reference division, will retire from the company by November 1. Tessitore joined HC in late 2004 and shortly after his arrival was put in charge of combining a number of separate HC divisions to form a new unified reference group. In a memo to employees, HC president Brian Murray said Tessitore "will continue to work with Collins to facilitate a smooth transition while we begin searching for a successor." Before joining HC, Tessitore was publisher of PW and had served as president of Grolier/ Scholastic.
CBA Canada Dissolves
Citing declines in both membership and attendance at its annual trade show, CBA Canada, an independent nonprofit association of Christian booksellers and suppliers, will shut down April 30. In an open letter to Christian booksellers in Canada on the www.cbacanada.com site, chairman of the board Lando Klassen stated that in the new century "[CBA Canada's] relevance waned somewhat... [and] we did not have the time, energy, finances or will to turn this ship around."
Media Sales Soar at Amazon
Led by a 33% increase in international media group sales, total media sales jumped 26% in Amazon's first quarter, to just under $2 billion. The increase was the fastest growth in the media segment, home to the e-tailer's book segment, in three years. Sales in Amazon's North America media group rose 21% in the first quarter, to $990 million. Preorders for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, now at 575,495, had only a small impact on first-quarter numbers. Total revenue at the e-tailer rose 33%, to $3.02 billion, and operating income jumped 38%, to $145 million.
Revenues Rise At MHE
Revenue at McGraw-Hill Education rose 5.6%, to $331.7 million, for the first quarter ended March 31, and the loss in the quarter was cut by 6.6%, to $90.7 million. The sales increase was led by an 11.5% gain in the higher education, professional and international group, where sales hit $186.9 million. Revenue in the school education group fell 1.2%, to $144.8 million.
'PW," Publishers Portal Ink Deal
PW has teamed up with Publishers Portal, which assists publishers by creating and distributing first-chapter excerpts and securing their posting by Barnes & Noble, Baker & Taylor, Ingram and other companies, provided that the books are in their systems. The excerpts are also mounted by hundreds of libraries if the title is part of their collections. Under the deal with PP, visitors to publishersweekly.com can click on the Publishers Portal icon on the PW homepage and be connected directly to publishersportal.com.
NBCC Works To Save Reviews
The news that the Atlanta Journal Constitution is eliminating its book review editor position, as well as other cuts to newspaper book review sections, prompted the National Book Critics Circle to begin their Campaign to Save Book Reviews. According to NBCC president John Freeman, the elimination of Teresa Weaver's job "became an excuse to start this campaign, but at our last board meeting we'd been talking about this issue, and in fact we've been talking about it kind of constantly."
Correction:
In Deals (Apr. 16), an item on the sale of Marshall Goldman's book Oilolopy should have identified Goldman, not David McBride, as former associate director of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard.
