Revenue

Hachette's new London headquarters Carmelite House will become a "talent magnet" for authors and publishers, but the move will not compromise competition between the adult divisions, c.e.o. Tim Hely Hutchinson has said.

In an interview with The Bookseller, Hely Hutchinson also addressed the issue of author contracts, and said Hachette UK would continue to buy other businesses, with its children's division in particular earmarked for growth.

The team at Book Business recently hosted a one-day, invite-only event in NY. I had the pleasure of attending as well as moderating the first panel of the day, "Transforming Your Company for the New Era of Book Publishing."

The day was filled with highly engaging discussions featuring panelists from McGraw-Hill, Pearson, Hachette, Cengage, Perseus, Rodale, HarperCollins, and Scribd. Here are a few of the most interesting points I took away from the event:

Unit sales across the total adult trade print market in 2014 were down by 3.5% compared to 2013, whereas the juvenile trade print market was up 4.1%. Despite the slight decline in the adult trade market, some categories were stronger in 2014 than the previous year, including Historical Fiction (42.6% increase in unit sales), Science (30.2% increase), Mystery & Detective (11.1% increase), and Comics & Graphic Novels (7.7% increase). In addition, sales figures in The Canadian Book Market do not include ebook sales, so the overall book market may be healthier than reflected.

The UK publishing industry appears to be in rude (or at least, moderately insulting) good health, according to figures from the Nielsen conference BookInsights, quoted in Publishing Perspectives and The Bookseller. The Nielsen numbers cited by Steve Bohme, UK Consumer Research Director at Nielsen Book, indicate that unit sales in the UK are pretty steady at 311 million units, with a 4 percent increase in spend per book, leading to an aggregate UK consumer book market of £2.2 billion ($3.26 billion).

When I reported on the story on Tuesday, I knew little more than that the negotiations had hit a snag.  The original BI article didn't include any direct quotes, just unnamed sources, but it was later updated to include this statement from Amazon:

I can't comment on that rumor. I can say that we have offered Harper the same terms for a contract that Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan have all recently agreed to.

I can also add that Publishers Lunch said that the contract negotiation had been going on for over a year.

The Yale Publishing Course (YPC) has just announced the Innovative Leader Scholarship. This scholarship recognizes mid- to senior-level book and magazine media professionals in all areas of publishing who demonstrate innovative, initiative-driven leadership that influences their organization and work in publishing. The scholarship covers the $5,450 tuition cost for the 2015 Yale Publishing Course.

At the Book Business Live: Executive Summit on Digital Publishing, held in New York City in March, leading publishers from the trade and education sectors gathered to share insight on how they’re managing change and working to reorient their organizations. During the panel “Transforming Your Company for the New Era of Book Publishing,” speakers were asked what maneuvers their organizations are making to thrive in an era of flux.

Released to mark Penguin Books' 80th birthday, the pocket-sized, 80p-a-pop Little Black Classics have been a hit, selling 70,545 copies in the first week of publication. The commercial success of the commute-length gobbets - 80 titles ranging from the Communist Manifesto to Sappho's poems to Mozart's letters to his father - is striking since they are all in the public domain. To quote a commenter on the Guardian website: "How many of these are not available in full on Project Gutenberg?"

How to explain the appeal? Partly it's the curation; but it also proves people like their reading matter cheap... and portable.

Last Thursday, as the world was entranced with the launch of the latest social media sharing app, the life-streaming Periscope for iOS, Publishing Perspectiveshosted its, "Designing Books for Tomorrow's Readers," by New York City. Throughout, speakers reiterated, rephrased and rehashed one phrase time and time again when it comes to reading millennial readers: "be authentic."

"Trying to speak to millennials in their own voice can backfire, it's like an adult crashing a kids party," said Raymond Braun, Social Marketing Manager for YouTube, and the man responsible for curating content for some of YouTube's 150 million social media followers.

Yesterday the Book Industry Study Group announced that executive director Len Vlahos will resign his position effective June 12th. Vlahos will join the senior management team of Tattered Cover bookstores in Denver, Colorado. He will eventually acquire a controlling interest of the bookstores from owner Joyce Meskis.