From Publisher’s Weekly:
Simon & Schuster couldn’t defy gravity forever: The publisher’s soaring results in the first half of 2022 slowed in the third quarter. Still, sales rose 10% in the quarter ended September 30, 2022, over last year’s comparable period to $353 million, while profits were flat at $93 million. For the first nine months of 2022, sales were up 19%, to $863 million, and earnings increased 29%, to $223 million. CEO Jonathan Karp said the nation’s third largest trade publisher is on track for another record year.
Karp credited the continued success of S&S, despite being for sale of more than two years, to “having the right books and at the right time,” as well as “great execution” by all S&S divisions.
In the most recent quarter, higher costs finally caught up to S&S as it has with its major competitors, but Karp commended the company’s operations teams for “surmounting the challenges presented by economic headwinds.” The 10% sales gain in the quarter was led by S&S’s adult, audio, and international divisions, as well as its distribution business, which officially opened a new facility in Jackson, Tenn., in the quarter.
S&S has benefitted from four Colleen Hoover bestsellers, with the newest blockbuster It Starts with Us, released October 18, hitting #1 across S&S’s international territories and providing a great start to the publisher’s fourth quarter. The adult publishing group also had a major nonfiction hit in Jennette McCurdy’s I’m Glad My Mom Died, which has sold more than 1 million copies since its release in August. On the international front, S&S U.K. is having a record year and has new hits with A Pocketful of Happiness by Richard E. Grant and The Satsuma Complex by Bob Mortimer.
Link to the rest at Publisher’s Weekly