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Find out the latest news from the bookselling industry. You will learn all about the business of audiobooks, ebooks, manga, newspapers and digital magazines
Scholastic sales were down 7% in the past 3 months
Scholastic has reported that over the course of the past three months, revenue was $215.2 million, a decrease of 7% compared to $232.6 million in the first quarter of 2020. The decline in revenue was due to the school distribution channels due to COVID-impacted delays in school openings, as well as a shift in the timing of the release, as planned, of new titles in the popular Dog Man book series. Partially offsetting these declines were strong audiobook sales in the current period and improved results across a number of education business lines, including digital product subscriptions, teaching resources, summer literacy camps and summer reading programs.
John Wiley & Sons experiences a digital boom
John Wiley and Sons have experienced a big profit in the past quarter, due to COVID and more people buying research and online access. Digital and online products offset continued declines in print revenue, leading to a 2% increase in sales. Revenue was $431.3 million in the quarter ended July 31, 2020, compared to $423.5 million in last year’s first quarter, total profit was $16.3 million. The major sales drivers were Wiley’s largest segment—research publishing and platforms—where sales increased 5%, to $240.8 million, and education learning, where sales jumped 29%, to $63.6 million.
Bertelsmann is considering a bid for Simon & Schuster
Bertelsmann is the parent company of Penguin Random House, and this year they own 100% of the company, after they bought out the stake Pearson had in it. Penguin Random House is responsible for almost half of all books published in the world, on a yearly basis. When Viacom and CBS merged, in late 2019, the company said that Simon & Schuster was “not a core asset. It is not video-based. It does not have significant connection for our broader business,” said ViacomCBS CEO Bob Bakish. “We have had multiple unsolicited inbound calls about that asset, and so as the market stabilizes, we are going to engage in a process” to examine strategic alternatives. ViacomCBS said publishing revenue in 2019 came to $814 million, down 1.3% from $825 million in the prior year.
Audiobook and ebook sales are up 15% at Penguin Random House
In the first six months of 2020, Penguin Random House announced that total revenue fell 8.9% and the publisher generated €7.85 billion Overall profit fell to €488 million from €502 million in the first six months of 2019. The pandemic was one of the reasons why book sales fell, globally. The publishers investment in digital, was one of the big reasons why the loss wasn’t greater.
Hummingbird Digital has been sold to 360 Media
Hummingbird is not a household name, but it was a service that allowed users to sell audiobooks and ebooks in their online store and earn a commission whenever something was sold. If you wanted to do business with the company, you had to be a US resident. Hummingbird was sold to 360 Media Direct, the marketing and fulfillment agency with roots in the magazine publishing world. 360 Media Direct was founded more than 30 years ago and has expanded to include a range of digital services, including lead generation tools, customer loyalty platforms and targeted advertising media programs
Scribd vows to cleanup SlideShare piracy
Linkedin Slideshare is a hotbed of piracy, there are thousands of ebooks available on the platform, in a myriad of formats. The repository for documents has been around for 14 years and so far, Linkedin has been ambivalent to the growing epidemic. Over the next several months, Scribd will be integrating their BookID system into the SlideShare platform to scan all uploads for potentially unauthorized content and will be removing anything that violates their TOS.
HarperCollins ebook sales are up 26%
One of the bright spots for the quarter were ebook sales, which were up 26%. The big genre sales within the digital division were children’s and general fiction. Audiobook and ebook sales represented 29% of consumer revenues for the quarter, which are higher than average. In the past, digital normally accounted for 21% on a quarterly basis
Amazon increases online sales by 48% in the past 3 months
Amazon has just reported in the 2nd quarter of 2020 (April, May, June) that online ordering has increased by 48% and generated $45.9 billion. Sales through third-party sellers rose even more, soaring 52%, to $18.2 billion. Since many stores were closed during the peak of the global pandemic, it makes sense more people were buying things online and Amazon seems to be the clear winner.
