Restructuring at Simon & Schuster Digital

-- Publishers Weekly, 5/15/2008 2:01:00 PM

Ellie Hirschhorn, who took over as chief digital officer at Simon & Schuster in February, has announced a restructuring of S&S Digital with some new hires and promotions, while also announcing that Kate Tentler, senior v-p of the group, will be leaving at the end of June.

Adrian Norman has been named v-p of marketing and new products. Norman, who arrives from the Disney-ABC Television Group where he was executive director of digital media, will supervise the in-house group. Steve Morgan has come on board as v-p of engineering. Morgan was chief technology officer at Oxygen Media. Sue Fleming has been promoted to v-p, executive director of content and programming. Radhika Nayak has been promoted to v-p, director of product management. And Doug Stambaugh, who was hired in September from AOL, will remain executive director, business development and operations. Stambaugh will have responsibility for Simon & Schuster’s e-book publishing efforts, identifying new revenue streams, and developing partnerships with third party distribution, content and technology partners.

Hirschhorn said the new structure "will better position us to expand Simon & Schuster’s presence in the digital realm" and that the building of the house's digital warehouse "continues apace" with the announcement of "major digital initiatives” forthcoming. Hirschhorn added that Tentler "has been at the forefront of all our endeavors in this arena,” and thanked her for "everything she has done."

5/24/08 10:18am

Amazon.com buys Audible; March into digital content distribution continues

Amazon.com’s march into digital distribution of content continues–this time with plans to acquire Audible for $300 million.

In a statement on Thursday, Amazon said it will acquire Audible, which provides digital spoken word content–audio versions of books, newspapers and other programming. Audible offers more than 80,000 programs.

If you couple Audible with Amazon’s march into DRM-free music distribution the e-commerce giant is building quite a content arsenal. Obviously, Amazon’s Kindle (all resources) is going to be one key way this content is distributed. When Amazon reported earnings last night (Techmeme roundup) it noted that it was scrambling to keep up with Kindle demand.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said on the company’s earnings conference call:

Kindle is, in terms of demand, is outpacing our expectations, which is certainly something that we are very grateful for. It’s also on the manufacturing side causing us to scramble. We’re working very hard to increase the number of units that we can build and supply per week, so that we can get back — our goal is to get into a situation as quickly as we can where when you order a Kindle, we ship it immediately. That’s the standard we want to hold ourselves to and we are working very hard to get there. We are super-excited by the very strong demand.
If successful, Amazon could have a vertically integrated lock on digital content much like Apple. Amazon isn’t there yet, but the strategy does make you go hmm.

As for the nuts and bolts of the Audible purchase, Amazon is paying $11.50 a share for Audible. The deal is expected to close in the second quarter.