TODAY'S NEWS

Unit Sales Flat in 2008, BookScan Shows
by Jim Milliot
Unit book sales were virtually flat in 2008, slipping 0.2%, to 756.1 million units, according to Nielsen BookScan which tracks about 70% of all book sales. Units rose 5% in 2007. Most of the unit gains were supplied by the juvenile segment which had a 6.2% increase. Adult fiction sales inched ahead 0.4%, while adult nonfiction units declined 3.9%. The segment still sold the most units, however, with BookScan reporting nonfiction unit sales of just under 300 million last year. Figures exclude sales through nontraditional outlets.

More Cuts at McGraw-Hill Education
by Jim Milliot
McGraw-Hill Education ended 2008 the same way it began--by cutting hundreds of jobs. Parent company McGraw-Hill Cos. reported yesterday that it eliminated 215 positions in MHE as part of a companywide downsizing program that cut a total of 375 jobs in the fourth quarter. MHC took a restructuring charge of $26.3 million to account for the downsizing, including $11.4 million associated with the cuts in the eduction group. For the full year, MHE lost 455 jobs, for which MHC took a charge of $25.3 million. The number of positions eliminated for all of MHC totalled 1,045, which resulted in a $73.4 million charge. Read on »

Canadian Booksellers See Late Holiday Rally
by Joshua Kerbel
The turn in the value of the Canadian dollar helped to make for a smoother holiday season in 2008 compared to 2007 for many Canadian booksellers. “We had a real problem with price perception in the fall 2007 season as the Canadian dollar reached it's peak, we ended up selling a lot of our books at the U.S. cover price, even when it meant taking a cut on our margin,” said Joseph Stewart, owner of Blackberry Books in Vancouver, British Columbia. “This fall, on the other, hand with a much weaker Canadian dollar people were only to happy to pay the Canadian cover price.” Read on »

OverDrive Digital "Checkouts" Jumped 76% in 2008
OverDrive reported that it registered approximately 5.3 million checkouts of digital material from the 8,500 libraries that used its service in 2008, a 76% increase over the 3 million checkouts in 2007. The OverDrive digital service offers downloads of audiobooks, e-books, music and video from a single platform. The addition of more publishers (including Penguin, Random House and Simon & Schuster) to the service as well as the launch of MP3 and Mac formats were cited as major factors in the increase in usage. OverDrive added 50,000 e-books, 10,000 audiobooks and 5,000 music and video titles in 2008, bringing its digital catalogue to 150,000 titles.

During the year, Stephenie Meyer was the most downloaded author at libraries with her Twilight the most downloaded audiobook as well as the most downloaded e-book through OverDrive libraries. Meyer’s Eclipse and New Moon were the second and third most downloaded e-books followed by two Lisa Kleypas titles--Devil in Winter and Because You’re Mine. On the audiobook side, New Moon and Eclipse came in at third and fourth place, respectively, with John Grisham’s The Appeal in the second spot, while James Patterson’s 7th Heaven came in fifth.

Richard Seaver Dies
Richard W. Seaver, founder and president of Arcade Publishing, died on Monday. He was 82. A memorial service will be announced in a few days. In lieu of flowers, Arcade is requesting mourners consider a contribution to PEN American Center, 588 Broadway, Suite 303, New York, New York 10012. For more on Seaver, and his legacy, see today's Morning Report.

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MORE STORIES

Lerner Gives New Roles to Top Execs
Undeterred by its having to recently pull its fall release, Angel Girl, from bookstore and library shelves, Lerner Publishing Group is moving forward into 2009 with a major hire, as well as job moves for key company personnel.

Terri Reden has been named v-p, marketing, while current director of marketing Lois Wallentine will take on the title of director of product development and marketing research. Sales director David Wexler, a 12-year Lerner employee, has been promoted to executive v-p, sales; Margaret Wunderlich has been promoted to executive v-p, CFO, and Joni Sussman, the director of Kar-Ben, Lerner’s imprint specializing in Jewish-interest books for the past four years, has been named that imprint’s publisher. Read on »

The PW Morning Report
A daily round-up of the latest publishing news: Richard Seaver Dead; Neale Donald Walsch Cops to Plagiarism; New Tolkien; Coulter: She’s Back; and Time to Turn the Pixel on the Book? Read on »

AUTHORS ON THE AIR

Authors on the Air: Vanity Fair's Tales of Hollywood; The 4 Day Diet; The Invention of Air
This morning on The Early Show, Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter told Vanity Fair's Tales of Hollywood: Rebels, Reds, and Graduates and the Wild Stories Behind the Making of 13 Iconic Films (Penguin, 978-0143114710, $16). After the jump: Dr. Ian K. Smith, Bob Greene, and Joan Rivers. Read on »

PICTURE OF THE DAY

Watching Your P's and Q
Quincy Jones visited Book Passage in Corte Madera, Calif., late last month to promote his new book, The Complete Quincy Jones: My Journey & Passions (Insight Editions). Jones (seated) is joined here by his director of security, Glenn Fuentes, and Carlos Santana. Photo credit: Michael Collopy Read on »

JOB OF THE DAY

PW VIRTUAL EDITION

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