Finance

Sales of 'Harry Potter and the Cursed Child' helped add almost $70 million to Scholastic’s trade division in the quarter ended August 31, and drove a 104% jump in revenue in the company’s children’s book publishing and distribution group.

According to figures released by the AAP's StatShot program, sales of adult books fell 10.3% and sales of children's/YA titles fell 2.1%, compared to the same period last year.

A veteran agent who was formerly a publisher confirmed a point for me about how trade publishing has changed over the past two decades, particularly for the big houses. This challenges a fundamental tenet of my father’s understanding of the business. (And that’s the still the source of most of mine.) I had long suspected…

The trade publishing segment has been operating in a low-growth environment for several years, and that trend appears to have continued into 2016. Financial reports for the first half of 2016 from five major publishers showed that none of the companies had a sales increase in the first half of the year; HarperCollins had the…

Barnes & Noble has not started fiscal 2017 on the right foot. The bookstore chain announced its 2017 Q1 earning yesterday, reporting a 6.6% drop in sales and 6.1% decline in revenue. The press release stated that sales were below expectations and that B&N experienced a net loss of $14.4 million in Q1 2017, compared…

In its first earnings release since firing CEO Ron Boire last month, Barnes & Noble reported that sales fell 6.6% in its first quarter of 2017, which ended July 30.

Today education, journal, and professional publisher John Wiley & Sons released its Q1 results for the 2017 fiscal year. While the publisher experienced growth in its journal and professional development businesses, its education division saw significant revenue declines, thanks to low-performing textbooks. Wiley’s overall revenue decreased 4% from Q1 2016, declining from $423 million to…

This post examines the latest quarterly financial reports from the big 5 book publishers and tries to draw some conclusions from the data. The big 5 are, of course, Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster. These companies are often seen as emblematic of the state of traditional trade book publishing in…

Elsevier's business trends "remain positive", with underlying revenue growth of 2% for the first half of 2016, parent company RELX Group has reported. Revenues for Elsevier — the Scientific, Technical and Medical division of the RELX Group — for the six months to 30th June were £1,056m (2015: £987m), 80% of which were generated by digital.

SEATTLE — April 28, 2016 — Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) today announced financial results for its first quarter ended March 31, 2016. Operating cash flow increased 44% to $11.3 billion for the trailing twelve months, compared with $7.8 billion for the trailing twelve months ended March 31, 2015. Free cash flow increased to $6.4 billion for the trailing…