Mergers & Acquisitions
April 1, 2016 at 1:44 pm
WESTCHESTER, Ill. — Mar 30, 2016 – Follett Corporation today announced that the company has acquired Wobo, Inc. (formerly Woody's Books, Inc.), a leading service for independent managed campus stores to find and purchase books online in volume. The acquisition includes Wobo, Inc. assets including the BookVolume tool, enabling Follett Wholesale to leverage new technology…
April 1, 2016 at 1:39 pm
The sale of the Perseus Books Group has been completed. It was announced in March that Hachette was acquiring the company's publishing business, while Ingram Content Group was buying Perseus' distribution arm. Ingram, which acquired Perseus' four distribution divisions through the deal — Perseus Distribution, Publishers Group West (PGW,) Consortium, Legato plus its digital asset…
March 4, 2016 at 2:10 pm
NASHVILLE, Tenn. and NEW YORK — March 3, 2016 — The Perseus Books Group and Ingram Content Group today announced that the two companies have entered into a binding agreement to sell Perseus’ client services business to Ingram. “We are delighted to be welcoming new colleagues from Perseus and publisher clients from Perseus distribution to Ingram…
March 1, 2016 at 3:32 pm
NEW YORK — March 1, 2016 — The Perseus Books Group and Hachette Book Group announced today that they have entered into a binding commitment to sell Perseus’s publishing business to Hachette. The transaction is expected to close after regulatory approval is received. Michael Pietsch, Hachette Book Group CEO, said, “We’re thrilled to welcome Perseus…
February 22, 2016 at 12:40 pm
The Italian division of HarperCollins, HarperCollins Italia, has acquired 20lines, an app for iPhone and Android that allows to people write, read and share short-format stories. The publisher, which announced the news on its Italian website, said 20lines has more than 220,000 registered users, who create more then 15,000 new stories every month.
February 12, 2016 at 2:41 pm
Global ecommerce giant Amazon has bought a 26% stake in Westland — a publishing house under Tata Group's Trent — to support the company's expansion globally and enter new business formats. Westland is one of the largest and fastest-growing publishing houses in India, having brought out books of bestselling authors such as Amish, Ashwin Sanghi,…
February 3, 2016 at 12:16 pm
Yesterday The Quarto Group, a global illustrated book publisher, announced its acquisition of The Harvard Common Press (HCP), an independent cookbook and childcare publisher based in Beverly, MA. HCP will become a new imprint under the Quarto umbrella, adding hundreds of titles to the Quarto backlist and expanding the publisher’s footprint in the culinary category.…
January 12, 2016 at 1:12 pm
In what looks to be a response to declining mass market sales, Penguin has merged its Berkley imprint into the unified Putnam and Dutton group. Ivan Held, previously named president of a unified Putnam and Dutton imprint, will now take over the direction of the Berkley Publishing Group. As a result of the changes, Leslie…
January 11, 2016 at 1:04 pm
The biggest deals in the publishing industry in 2015 occurred outside of the trade sector. Unlike 2013, when the Random House–Penguin merger was completed, or 2014, when HarperCollins acquired Harlequin, the major trade houses did not make any major acquisitions last year. The biggest acquisitions in 2015 were in professional and educational publishing, led by…
January 8, 2016 at 12:58 pm
Penguin Random House announced the sale of Author Solutions on Tuesday, leading to headlines stating it has exited the self-publishing business and various commentators congratulating it for cleaning house. Unfortunately, neither of those things are true. Four Penguin Random House-owned vanity presses will remain in operation – Partridge India, Partridge Singapore, Partridge Africa, and MeGustaEscribir…
