Finance
Restructuring charges and the global pandemic took a toll on Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2020, as the company reported a 25.8% decline in revenue in the year and a net loss of $480 million, compared to a loss of $213.8 million in 2019. HMH's trade division, which is for sale, had a 6% sales gain.
Sparked by a strong fourth quarter, Simon & Schuster finished 2020 with both sales and earnings up about 11% over 2019. A slew of adult nonfiction hits helped to drive the gains.
The company behind the London Book Fair, the “retired” BookExpo, and other publishing-adjacent events saw revenue plunge by 71% in 2020 compared to 2019. Reed said that, due to the pandemic, it is managing its 2021 event schedule “flexibly.”
In the quarter ended December 31, sales rose 23% at HarperCollins over the comparable period a year ago, and earnings soared 65%. Susan Panuccio, CFO of HC parent company News Corp, said the second period results marked the best quarterly performance in HC's history.
Helped by the November release of the blockbuster 'A Promised Land,' sales of adult trade titles jumped 35.4% in November over a year ago and sales in the children/young adult category rose 30.7%.
Peter McGuigan, the cofounder of Foundry Literary + Media, filed a lawsuit against his former business partner, Yfat Reiss Gendell, on Friday. The suit claims that Gendell made illegal withdrawals of more than $860,000 from the former partners' literary agency.
Revenue in Educational Development Corp.'s direct sales division jumped 68.4% in the third quarter ended November 30, 2020, leading to a 63.5% increase in total sales for the publisher. Net income rose 63.5% over last year's third quarter.
When the former cofounders of Foundry Literary + Media parted ways in September to launch their own literary agencies, the partners confirmed that thousands of contracts would still be handled by Foundry. It appears that payments to some authors with contracts residing at Foundry have not been going out.
A second-half rally helped to limit the decline of the Publishers Weekly Stock Index to 4% in 2020, as four of the seven companies on the PWSI managed to post an increase in their stock prices compared to the beginning of the year.
Revenue at Scholastic's book fairs dropped 79% and total revenue at Scholastic dropped 32% in the quarter ended November 31, 2020, compared to the second quarter of fiscal 2020, as the pandemic led to a significant decline in the number of fairs held. The publisher has tapped two new leaders for its international and educational…