Potter to Appear July 21
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the final volume in the wildly popular series, will be released July 21. No page count has been announced, but Deathly will be priced at $34.99. Following last Thursday's announcement, Deathly shot to #1 at Amazon, which is offering the book for $18.89; other retailers are sure to discount the book.
Media Sales Up at Amazon
North America media sales in 2006 rose 15%, to $3.58 billion, at Amazon.com. The fourth quarter was the media group's strongest, with sales up 21%, to $1.25 billion. Sales of books were up by more than 10% in the last quarter, Amazon reported. Revenue for the entire company jumped 26% in the year, to $10.71 billion, though net income fell to $190 million from $359 million.
Cat's Pajamas Acquired
The Media Services Group Ltd. (MSGL), provider of publishing and event management software, has acquired the Cat's Pajamas, creator of the popular Cat's Pajamas book publishing system. Based in Burlington, Wash., Cat's Pajamas provides publishers with a suite of customized modules to help process invoicing and returns, accounts/ receivable, inventory, sales commissions and royalty statements. Cat's Pajamas has more than 200 customers, mostly midsize publishers.
Holiday Up At Indigo
Sales rose 3.4%, to C$320.5 million, in the third quarter ended Dec. 30, 2006, at Canada's Indigo Books & Music. Profit was up 3%, to C$41.0 million. Same-store sales increased 2.5%, to C$206.5 million, in superstores, while total sales at small-format stores rose 0.6%, to C$62.1 million.
LHE Opens in San Diego
Levy Home Entertainment has opened an office in San Diego, Calif., to accommodate six former AMS employees who have joined the company. LHE is rumored to be interested in acquiring AMS, but a Levy spokesperson limited his comments to noting that the former AMS employees "will be focused on helping us win some warehouse club business, which we have been pursuing for years."
Lightning Heads to Pa.
Print-on-demand leader Lightning Source will open a new facility near Allentown, Pa., in June. The plant, Lightning's third, will house 16 b&w presses, 10 web-fed color presses, five sheet-fed color presses and 12 binding lines, and within three years should employ 150 people.
RH Value Shifts
Sheryl Stebbins will leave her position as v-p and publisher of Random House Value Publishing in June, and the operation will be supervised by Susan Hettleman, sales marketing manager. In addition to repackaging backlist works, the division will publish 60 new titles in 2007, a slight reduction from last year.
RD Second Quarter Up
In its final quarterly filing before it is acquired by the private equity firm Ripplewood Holdings, Reader's Digest reported that total revenue for the second quarter ended December 31 rose 5%, to $802 million, and the company had operating income of $113.5 million, compared to a loss of $76.2 million in last year's second quarter. The loss in the previous fiscal-year period included a $188-million charge related to the writedown of Books-Are-Fun assets.
New Phoenix Backer
Kenin Spivak, an entrepreneur with a background in the entertainment and media fields, has acquired a significant interest in Phoenix Books and Audio and has been named chairman of the company, which has been renamed Phoenix New Millennium. With Spivak on board, Phoenix will broaden its business interests to include creating programming for new media, developing feature films from its book library and event management. Phoenix was founded in 2005 by Michael Viner, who remains president and CEO.
