Costco Wholesale Corporation Reports January Sales Results

Revenue is now expected to be over £260 million and profit before taxation and highlighted items is expected to be some £30 million for the year ended 28 February 2023.* This follows strong trading at the end of the year. Commenting on the results, Nigel Newton, Chief Executive of Bloomsbury, said: “Bloomsbury’s unique position in combining consumer and academic publishing combined with our investment in high quality content and company acquisitions has enabled us to achieve excellent trading for the year. We have seen strong demand for our titles - in print, ebook and audio - and continued digital growth. Two of our strongest performances in the year have come from very disparate ends of our publishing strategy - fantasy novels on the one hand and academic digital resources on the other - showing how well our balanced consumer and academic portfolio is working in practice."

Fake news is nothing new. Merriam-Webster traces the use of the term as far back as the 1890s, and the concept of fabricated stories existed even long before then. With the invention of the printing press, it became significantly easier to spread news and information. But was that news and information true? There were no editors. There were no reporters. There were no fact checkers. It was up to readers to decide what they believed, whether a story told them that the earth was round or that their neighbor was a witch. And as human beings, we are wired to automatically and effortlessly believe what people tell us. Neuroscience shows us that it takes an extra mental step to question a statement. For our brains, it’s cognitively easier to simply accept what we are told and move on. Today, we can create and widely disseminate information more easily than any other time in history. Whether it’s your 12-year-old son’s selfies, the beauty blog your mechanic started, or a new magazine launch from a century-old publisher, it is all considered content. And it all has the potential to reach a massive audience. But not all content is created equal. Consumers and marketers are beginning to fully realize that, along with the dangers associated with unverified facts, intentionally misleading information and unqualified recommendations. Click Read More below for more of the story.

The Book Manufacturers’ Institute (BMI) released the July results for its monthly survey on capacity and lead times for soft cover and hard cover books. As demand has skyrocketed and supply chain woes continue to hamper all segments of manufacturing, BMI put together the survey to get a better idea of what manufacturers were facing and what publishers should expect. July started to show a little easing in the space. According to responses regarding hard cover books, the average manufacturer was running at 84% of their capacity, down from June’s 90%. The average lead time for completed hard cover books dropped a whole month, going from 104 days to 74 days. For soft cover books, capacity usage stayed at 91% and the average lead time dropped from 84 days to 56 days, based on 16 responses.