“The single hardest thing to do in business is to make a deal, whether you’re buying or selling.” Former SouthComm, Inc. COO Blair Johnson knew the magnitude of the task before him when, in November 2017, the company’s equity backer Solidus ousted CEO Chris Ferrell and indicated its desire to exit the publishing business within eight months. “At that time, Solidus had decided they wanted to liquidate their position and get out of SouthComm,” Johnson tells Folio:. “[Managing partner] Vic Gatto and the board made a decision that we needed to do it, and do it quickly, and that Chris was probably not the right person to do it. He likes to buy and build, and it’s a different strategy when you have to liquidate.” And so Solidus handed the company reins to Johnson—who took over as CEO—and CFO Bob Mahoney, and the pair immediately began the process of selling off a company that comprised alt-weeklies serving five different cities, a robust b2b media business, and hundreds of employees, among other assets. In a b2b-media space characterized by frequent mergers and acquisitions, the circumstances may have felt a bit like déjà vu all over again for Johnson, who had arrived at SouthComm from Cygnus Business Media in 2015 after four years helping transition that company from bankruptcy to breakup. “We essentially had eight different entities that we had to find a new home for,” Johnson continues. “Clearly, the biggest of these was the b2b assets from legacy Cygnus.” The relative... Continue reading at 'Folio Magazine'
[ Folio Magazine | 2018-08-03 00:00:00 UTC ]
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After years of trying to write a memoir, Michael Coffey, the outgoing co-editorial director of Publishers Weekly, realized that fiction was the best way to extend ruminations about what it meant for him to be adopted. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2014-05-29 00:00:00 UTC ]
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On Wednesday, Sam Kean published one of Slate’s most popular stories of 2014, “Phineas Gage, Neuroscience’s Most Famous Patient.” The piece extends from Sam’s work on his latest book, The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons: The History of the Human Brain as Revealed by True Stories of Trauma,... Continue reading at Slate
[ Slate | 2014-05-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
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How a rooftop ritual turned into a “men’s grilling and lifestyle community” with chapters around the world and a brand new book, "ManBQue!: Meat. Beer. Rock and Roll." Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2014-05-05 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The biennial Festival of Faith and Writing at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich., featured high-profile authors and drew 2,000 attendees eager to explore the connections between faith and creative expression. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2014-04-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Libraries remain popular, but the American Library Association's State of American Libraries report also features a sobering message: school libraries have been devastated by budget cuts nationwide. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2014-04-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Offering a colorful and fanciful interface with more than 600 digital stories for kids, FarFaria is a subscription app for the iPad, providing unlimited access to its content for $3.99 a month. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2014-04-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Sphere has acquired an "incredible" true Holocaust story "about three pregnant... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2014-04-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Powering more than 50 e-bookstores for publishers specializing in such subjects as fiction, academic, professional and romance has given Qbend COO Kaushik Sampath many unique insights on e-retailing. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2014-04-04 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Pulitzer Prize winner Adam Johnson has won the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award for his short... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2014-04-04 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Nobel laureate was told by publisher that 'people will shudder and be puzzled and confused' by reading Echo's BonesA previously unpublished story by Samuel Beckett will go on sale in bookshops for the first time, 80 years after his publisher rejected it as a nightmare read that gave him "the... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2014-03-30 00:00:00 UTC ]
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'Gifts' consists of 18 short stories by young residents of Afghanistan who write about their lives – filled with tradition and warfare, on top of all the more ordinary things that young people everywhere hope and wish for. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor
[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2014-03-28 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Super Furry Animals second film will be accompanied by an album, a book and an appMusician Gruff Rhys latest project saw him following in the footsteps of 18th-century explorer John Evans, who spent 1792 hunting for a fabled Welsh-speaking Native American tribe.The American Interior project has... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2014-03-27 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Mark Thompson says New York Times journalism will remain impartial and won't be swayed by commercial considerationsMark Thompson, the chief executive of the New York Times, has hit out at rival Bloomberg for saying it shouldn't have published investigative news stories criticising China, because... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2014-03-26 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Andrew Lownie, recently short-listed for The Bookseller UK literary agent of the year, explains how the agency goes about selling its authors. Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2014-03-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Business Insider, one of the sites at the forefront of creating a native digital publishing model, happily announced the other day an additional investment of $12 million, bringing its total to about $30 million. Started by former securities ... Continue reading at Editor & Publisher
[ Editor & Publisher | 2014-03-17 00:00:00 UTC ]
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A newspaper that allowed its local police force to publish an article directly on to its website should be wary of celebrating the initiative.Torbay police posted a "story" on the site of the Torquay Herald Express, headlined "Who is this man?" over a picture of the said gentleman in a... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2014-03-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Peter James's Host, published on two disks, was an early example – but exactly where the medium started life is surprisingly tricky to identifyWhat was the first ebook? Debate rages … When Peter James published his thriller Host on two floppy disks, in 1993, it was billed as the "world's first... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2014-03-12 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Rolling Stone Keith Richards is to publish a picture book with illustrations by his daughter.... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2014-03-11 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Children's book illustrator Emma Levey talks BBC News through the process of bringing imagination to the printed page. Continue reading at BBC News
[ BBC News | 2014-03-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The author's "Tenth of December" was fittingly the tenth winner of the short fiction award, which came with a $20,000 prize. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2014-03-05 00:00:00 UTC ]
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