Random House and Penguin to Merge

by | Oct 29, 2012 | Industry Alerts

MARKUS DOHLE CHAIRMAN AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER MEMBER OF THE EXECUTIVE BOARD OF BERTELSMANN SE & CO. KGaA October 29, 2012 To Our Literary Agents, As you now know, our parent company Bertelsmann today signed an agreement with Pearson to combine Penguin and Random House’s respective trade-book publishing activities. In this new partnership with Penguin, we will be retaining the distinct identities of both companies’ imprints. You and your clients will benefit from an extraordinary breadth of publishing choices, and editorial talents and experience. Our Random House imprint leadership remains endowed with tremendous autonomy and financial resources to decide which books to publish, and how to publish them. We expect this to continue in our new business. With our backlist always a priority, Random House expects the new company to offer an even deeper catalogue, alongside our newly published titles. Our investments in enhancing the supply chain and our marketing support for physical retail will be unwavering, as we continue to transition in the digital space—to seek the most diversified retail marketplace for our titles. And we will be even better positioned to support our authors’ intellectual property and copyrights. The business combination is all ahead for us. Now, it is business as usual. Random House and Penguin remain competitors, and my colleagues and I remain focused on getting the most out of our terrific fall lists, while also working on the plans for our winter and spring title campaigns. We thank you for your many and ongoing contributions to Random House’s success, which has been a primary motivation behind Bertelsmann’s determination to extend and expand its commitment to...

DOJ Files Suit Against Apple and Publishers

by | Apr 12, 2012 | Industry Alerts

This week, the Department of Justice sued Apple and five major publishing houses claiming a conspiracy between the parties to collude on the price of electronic books.  Three of the publishers – Simon & Schuster, Hachette (Grand Central Publishing, Little, Brown & Co), and HarperCollins – simultaneously settled with the Justice Department, while the other two – Penguin and Macmillan (Holt, FSG, St Martin’s Press) – have decided to face the civil charges in court.  According to the details of the settlement that have been released, publishers must end their current agency plan agreements and retailers can now resume discounting ebooks as they did before the introduction of the “agency model” in January 2010. The agency model gave publishers the opportunity to set their own ebook prices as opposed to selling ebooks to retailers at wholesale, after which the retailers set their own discounts.  The Justice Department is claiming that Apple and the five publishers devised the system in order to subvert the dominance of Amazon’s Kindle in the digital market.  Apple insisted on “most favored nations” clauses to make sure that no other retailer received better terms than they received from the publishers. While our analysis of the DOJ’s action is not a legal one, we believe that the agency pricing model fostered a competitive market.  Since the agency model was instituted, Amazon’s near monopoly has dropped from a 90% share to about 60%.  Barnes & Noble’s Nook is now a viable competitor to the Kindle, with 25-30% of the market.  And while ebook prices did rise for consumers, they rose to a point where ebooks were financially...

Black, Inc Signs with Argo Navis Author Services

by | Apr 10, 2012 | Industry Alerts

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE EIGHT ADDITIONAL LITERARY AGENCIES SIGN WITH ARGO NAVIS New York, NY (April 10, 2012) — The Perseus Books Group announced today that eight additional literary agencies have signed onto its Argo Navis Author Services program. Authors represented by April Eberhardt Literary, David Black Agency, Elizabeth Kaplan Literary Agency, FinePrint Literary Management, Folio Literary Management, Levine Greenberg Literary Agency, Inc., Liza Royce Literary Agency, and Melanie Jackson Agency, LLC are now eligible to participate in Argo Navis. Under the Argo Navis arrangement the author is the publisher and the agent is the liaison to Argo Navis. “The David Black Agency has invested significantly in devising the best course for expanding digital publishing services for our clients,” said David Black. “It is our contention that our clients should have options for publishing their work digitally, and in pursuing that opportunity, uphold the standards of quality and accessibility that their readers expect. We’re pleased to offer our clients access to Argo Navis, an experienced, full-service digital and print-on-demand publishing option with wide distribution. We look forward to a successful partnership.” “We are pleased to see such an impressive and varied group of agencies sign onto Argo Navis,” Clare Peeters, VP of Corporate Strategy and Business Development for Perseus said. “We already have a number of books in the pipeline and are looking forward to adding many more as our program continues to grow.” ABOUT ARGO NAVIS Argo Navis is a leading distribution and marketing service for authors offered via multiple leading agents. Argo Navis enables professional authors who control the e-book rights to their reverted or not-in-print works to...