Publishers File Additional Amicus Brief Supporting First Amendment Rights of Llano County Library Patrons

Bloomsbury announces its trading update for the four months ended 30 June 2022, ahead of the Company’s Annual General Meeting (“AGM”) at 12.00pm today. Bloomsbury experienced strong trading for the first four months of its financial year, with year-on-year sales growth of 27%, demonstrating resilience and maintaining momentum from the prior year’s outstanding performance. Consumer bestsellers in the period included Paul Hollywood’s Bake, the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling, and Sarah J. Maas’ titles. In the UK, according to Nielsen BookScan, Sarah J. Maas has sold just over one million print books to date. Sarah J. Maas is also one of the most popular authors on TikTok. Non-Consumer division growth was driven by continued strong demand for Bloomsbury Digital Resources. The first half of 2022 has seen record UK consumer book sales, reported by Nielsen**, supporting the view that increased reading is here to stay.

A little more than three months after Small Press Distribution abruptly closed, leaving some 400 independent presses without a trade distributor, publishers and distributors alike are moving forward even as damage assessment continues. Approximately 25% of the stranded publishers have found new distributors: Asterism Books has signed about 80 presses, Itasca Books has onboarded 21, and Independent Publishers Group has taken on 11. An informal deadline of June 30 had previously been set for publishers to remove their inventory from Ingram Content Group and Publisher Storage and Shipping warehouses, to which SPD had sent their books as part of a failed plan to reinvent the distributor. Pam Nuffer, director of sales and marketing for PSSC, said that about 75% of the publishers who have inventory with them have provided PSSC with instructions on where their inventory should be shipped, and that PSSC has already shipped out about half of the books.

The Board of Directors announced the selection of the Chief Executive Officers (CEO) and company names for each of the two companies, which would become effective upon the completion of the spin-off: *The ODP Corporation – a leading B2B solutions provider serving small, medium and enterprise level companies, will consist of several operating companies, including the contract sales channel of ODP’s current Business Solutions Division, which will be renamed ODP Business Solutions, and ODP’s newly formed B2B digital platform technology business, which will be named Varis. ODP Business Solutions and Varis will be owned by ODP, but operated as separate businesses. ODP will also continue to own the global sourcing operations and other sourcing, supply chain and logistics assets. Gerry Smith will continue to serve as CEO of The ODP Corporation following the separation. *Office Depot – a leading provider of retail consumer and small business products and services distributed via approximately 1,100 Office Depot and OfficeMax retail locations and an award-winning eCommerce presence, officedepot.com, will be spun-off and will be named Office Depot, Inc. Kevin Moffitt, currently EVP, Chief Retail Officer of The ODP Corporation, will be appointed CEO of Office Depot upon completion of the spin-off.