Bloomsbury Reports

Commenting on his company's results and prospects Bloomsbury CEO, Nigel Newton, said:

“We have had a good first half performance, particularly, in the UK Adult and Specialist Divisions. As well as continuing to enjoy notable success from long-running bestselling titles such as The Kite Runner, we are also well positioned with strong publishing lists for the second half and beyond. We are now seeing the benefits of our focused strategy, which is positioning us well for the rest of the financial year and the longer term.”

Other points from the press release:

• Profit before investment income increased 6.1% to £3.5m (2007, £3.3m)
• Investment income increased to £1.9m (2007, £0.6m)
• Earnings per share increased 41.2% to 4.97 pence (2007, 3.52 pence)
• Interim dividend up 7.1% to 0.75p per share (2007, 0.70p)
• Strong list for second half including Alice Schroeder’s biography of Warren Buffet; The Snowball; Just Me by Sheila Hancock; The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer; and, on December 4, JK Rowling’s The Tales of Beedle The Bard
• Net cash balances increased by 13.0% to £53.8m (31 December 2007, £47.6m)
• Well positioned for further organic and acquisition-related growth
• Strongest ever first six months sales performance from the UK Adult trade division

Newton in further comments noted that:

The programme of digitising our entire English language catalogue has been completed. This will enable us to increase significantly the range of electronic products we can offer both to individual buyers and to resellers serving the library and institutional markets, where we have already made encouraging sales of e-book collections. Digitisation also enables us to make our titles more easily available as print on demand (“POD”), a particularly appropriate model for specialist publishing where a wide range of titles are sold in small numbers consistently over a long period of time. In addition to digitising the in-print backlist, we are engaged in an active process of digitising out of print titles in order to offer them POD and in a variety of electronic formats.

Bloomsbury intends to expand the academic part of its Specialist Publishing Division and a number of acquisitions under consideration. We have appointed Jonathan Glasspool as Managing Director of Bloomsbury Academic. The recent growth of the Methuen Drama list, many titles of which sell to higher education students and lecturers, illustrates how well Bloomsbury can reach the academic and higher education markets.

Our sharing of copyrights across the Atlantic and other initiatives have resulted in a considerable year-on-year improvement in the results of Bloomsbury USA, with sales growth of 10% and a 60% reduction in operating losses.

Lagardere Reports

Corporate owner of Hachette UK and Grand Central Publishing reported their first half results yesterday. Here are some relevant parts from their press release:

Lagardère Publishing– Net sales for the first half of 2008 were €908m, an increase of 1.3% on a reported basis and 4.5% on a like-for-like basis. The business achieved a respectable performance in the United States, the United Kingdom and Spain, but there was a further decline in Literature in France. Part-works were affected by a drop in French and Italian sales, partly offset by good performances in the United Kingdom and Japan.

EBIT before associates [amortization of goodwill] of €71m, unchanged from the 2007 first-half figure, with an improved operating performance canceled out by negative currency effects. Good contributions from the United Kingdom (other than in educational books) and from Education in Spain offset a decline in profits from General Literature in France and Part-works. The contribution from the United States rose by over 10%, driven by an excellent performance in Fiction/Non-Fiction.

OCLC's Copyright Registry

Earlier this summer at an industry conference OCLC 'announced' that they would begin work on a Registry of Copyright for published works. I had some involvement in this project last year and I am glad to see that they are formally announcing the launch of the registry. The ways and hows are covered by fellow traveller Peter Brantley:

I had a long talk with Bill Carney yesterday at OCLC; Bill is the "owner" of this product. Although OCLC is concerned about the sustainability of this service, I stressed the need for an open and free api that would permit use of the contents of the registry by any (machine) comer, providing at least essential information -- perhaps OCLC could offer payment tiers with fuller, more complete data, for example including rights-holder provided notes.Bill was definitely supportive of such an api, and is actively soliciting feedback from others about the registry's desired functionality. An api (of any sort) does not yet exist, but OCLC has discussed its need, and is giving it at least a modest priority (lagging, I believe, behind constructing the necessary authorization infrastructure for user-submitted write updates). If you wish to provide feedback to OCLC, it can be left at the OCLC CER website.

Read the whole post. (Unsure why I neglected to mention this before).

Michael's Gotta Gun

Was anyone else more than slightly taken aback to find out that Simon & Schuster Editor in Chief Michael Korda has an assault rifle? Buried in this silly promo NYT's piece on his upcoming book, author Peter Manson lets us all know we better call ahead before we show up at Michael's house:

Mr. Manso called the weapon “a literary affectation” that he bought legally, before a change in gun laws made it illegal to possess, after seeing one owned by Michael Korda, the longtime Simon & Schuster editor in chief, who edited Mr. Manso’s Brando biography. “Listen, Michael Korda had one, Hunter Thompson had one, I thought it would be cool,” Mr. Manso said.

I have to get me one of those "literary affectations." I could do some target shooting out the window of PND towers. This morning there may be several S&S employees thinking twice about that request for a raise.

The other thing amusing about this article (and it was pointless other than to let us know he is in the process of uncovering the dark under belly of corruption in Provincetown and writing a book about it) was that Manso has lived there on and off for 60 years and suddenly the 'corruption' is a surprise. He should come to Hoboken. There's enough here for several books.

On The (Internet) Radio Tonight

I have been invited to speak on web radio about the publishing industry and Personanondata - in 15mins! There is a call in feature so if you are inclined follow the instructions below:

The Interview starts at 8:30 EST (8/27). Call in to talk to me on the show by dialing 646-200-4071. The show is aired LIVE at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Circle-Of-Seven and an active chat session is online. After the show is aired, it is available for download at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Circle-Of-Seven. Take a look at http://www.cospradio.com/ to learn more about COSP Radio.

Borders 2Q Loss Improves

On their call this morning Border's management sounded far more confident and at-ease in contrast to previous calls over the past several quarters. In the current economic environment and given the rebuilding effort going on at Borders their results were encouraging. From the press release:

Borders reported results for the second quarter, ended Aug. 2, 2008 and reported a second quarter loss from continuing operations of $11.3 million or $0.19 per share, representing an improvement over the same period last year when Borders Group recorded a loss of $18.1 million or $0.31 per share.

Borders Group achieved second quarter consolidated sales from continuing operations of $749.2 million, a decrease of 6.9% over 2007. As stated, the second quarter loss from continuing operations improved to $11.3 million or $0.19 per share compared to $18.1 million or $0.31 per share a year ago. The improvement was due primarily to expense reductions, lower interest expense and a tax benefit. Excluding non-operating adjustments, the second quarter loss from continuing operations improved to $10.5 million or $0.18 per share from $12.1 million or $0.21 per share a year ago.

CEO George Jones indicated that the Borders rewards program now has 28mm members. It has been very successful and email programs have great 'open-rates' and integrating with Internet site is generating great customer response. They are becoming more sophisticated in how they use the data associated with how their rewards customers buy - they are not just sending e-mail blasts. Since July when the Internet store "really got going" they have generated $7mm in revenue. Jones also said that they are in process of implementing interactive kiosks in the stores and that these will integrate with internet site.

CFO Wilheim noted that they are "sitting in a very comfortable position" from a cash and debt perspective. Jones stated that they have significantly improved the financial position of the company with respect to both debt (balance sheet) and expense reduction. They feel very proud of what they have done and confident that at least their commitments over the next 6-12mths will not pose a problem to the operations of the company. The company has really attacked their operating expenses and also successfully reduced inventory carry by 14%. The inventory reduction was done by eliminating titles that sold 1 copy per year per store.

The results were released yesterday after the close and their share price was up 13% in after hours trading.

Amazon.com Buys Shelfari - Updated

Via Paid Content. Hot on the heels of their acquisition of ABE books, Amazon has purchased the rest of Shelfari. Amazon had invested in the company some two years ago and had hoped it would come to rival librarything in popularity. Interestingly, librarything now also counts Amazon as an investor in it thanks to the investment ABE made in librarything 3-4 years ago. It is likely that librarything owner Tim Spalding will negotiate with Amazon to buy back the share they now own (and I would assume there was a 'change of control' provision in his original deal with ABE). It will be interesting to see who he jumps into bed with next - if anyone.



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