English Chess Forum

It seems that "New in Chess" has been demerged from the chess.com group , as have Quality Chess and Everyman Chess.

From an email

New In Chess leaves the Chess.com family and proudly joins two other chess book publishers, Quality Chess and Everyman Chess. The new company will be a vibrant, independent chess publisher, aiming for up to fifty new titles yearly and maintaining a catalog of nearly a thousand printed books. Grandmaster Jacob Aagaard will be the CEO and owner of the new company, which will be home to award-winning authors such as Garry Kasparov and Judit Polgar, Matthew Sadler and Axel Smith, Yasser Seirawan and Charles Hertan, Boris Gelfand and R.B. Ramesh, Joel Benjamin and Sam Shankland, Jan Timman and Genna Sosonko.

(edit) It seems that in effect Quality Chess have bought New in Chess and Everyman Chess from chess.com. In return, chess.com have acquired the digital rights to Quality Chess for use by chessable. (/edit)

(edit) Quality rather than Everyman (/edit)

chess.com

Chess.com’s print publishing operations, comprising of New in Chess and Everyman Chess are splitting off from Chess.com and merging with Quality Chess to create a group of strong and independent print publishing companies. The New in Chess magazine will see no major changes, while lots of digital content by the three publishers will continue to be available on Chessable and Chess.com.

The significant deal in the chess world, unveiled on Monday, involves the transfer of operations, existing assets, and intellectual property related to print rights, liabilities, and employees of the two brands to chess publishing company Quality Chess. In exchange, Chessable, owned by Chess.com, has acquired the digital rights of Quality Chess' extensive catalog of over 200 titles. Chessable will keep the rights related to the digital content of New in Chess and Everyman.

A group aiming for 50 new yearly titles, damn that's a big expectation - I would steer well clear of any company that thought it is realistic to pump out so many books, even if they do achieve the goal it's largely going to be AI generated rubbish.

Keen (but not Keene) to discover what is really going on (rather than speculation) I have contacted some of parties involved.

I cannot post all of the details since some are "Commercial in Confidence" however:


"In return, chess.com have acquired the digital rights to Everyman Chess for use by Chessable."

To the best of my knowledge that bit is not correct. chess.com have acquired the digital rights of QC, not EC or NIC (they had already bought EC and NIC so had those rights - it was likely the only reason they bought them in the first place).

Further to the above we have from NIC today:

"Dear Chess Friend,

New In Chess leaves the Chess.com family and proudly joins two other chess book publishers, Quality Chess and Everyman Chess. The new company will be a vibrant, independent chess publisher, aiming for up to fifty new titles yearly and maintaining a catalog of nearly a thousand printed books. Grandmaster Jacob Aagaard will be the CEO and owner of the new company, which will be home to award-winning authors such as Garry Kasparov and Judit Polgar, Matthew Sadler and Axel Smith, Yasser Seirawan and Charles Hertan, Boris Gelfand and R.B. Ramesh, Joel Benjamin and Sam Shankland, Jan Timman and Genna Sosonko.

As a small, independent chess publisher, New In Chess has an interesting company history. We were founded in 1968 (Dutch only) or 1984 (English). New In Chess was acquired by the Dutch publishing giant Elsevier in 1985 and sold back to the founder shortly after when Elsevier realized that chess was too niche. In 2021, we were acquired by the Play Magus Group, which subsequently was bought by Chess.com.
In recent years, our print book catalog has helped Chessable launch its fascinating chess learning platform, converting our author content into courses and videos. But Chess.com and Chessable are 100% online - and we still print a lot of books and magazines. We love the smell of ink and we enjoy reading a beautifully produced book into the wee hours of the night. The online and print business models are different. It makes sense to be a separate company and a partner where we can both grow the game of chess.

The three publishing houses will operate as separate businesses, says grandmaster Jacob Aagaard. "New in Chess will continue much as it has." The New in Chess magazine will also continue as it is, focusing on independent journalism and entertaining chess content.
Dmitri Shneider, Chess.com's Vice President of Global Operations, expressed his enthusiasm about the future collaboration of the companies. Part of the deal between Chess.com and Quality is that more courses will become available at Chessable. “Quality Chess’ content is very highly regarded by the chess community and we look forward to expanding our Quality Chess offerings on Chessable, as well as on Chess.com itself, in the foreseeable future.”

If you have any questions for me or for Jacob Aagaard, as a subscriber of the magazine or a customer of the shop, please email us directly via [email protected]

best wishes,

Remmelt Otten
New In Chess
"

Joey Stewart wrote: ↑

Wed Jun 26, 2024 5:02 pm

A group aiming for 50 new yearly titles, damn that's a big expectation - I would steer well clear of any company that thought it is realistic to pump out so many books, even if they do achieve the goal it's largely going to be AI generated rubbish.

It's effectively going to be three non trivial publishing companies output (loosely it seems) combined. Ok, Everyman have been a bit less active in the past few years but it's probably roughly their normal combined output.

Must be a considerable percentage of the chess book market in one company actually.

MartinCarpenter wrote: ↑

Thu Jun 27, 2024 9:26 am

Joey Stewart wrote: ↑

Wed Jun 26, 2024 5:02 pm

A group aiming for 50 new yearly titles, damn that's a big expectation - I would steer well clear of any company that thought it is realistic to pump out so many books, even if they do achieve the goal it's largely going to be AI generated rubbish.

It's effectively going to be three non trivial publishing companies output (loosely it seems) combined. Ok, Everyman have been a bit less active in the past few years but it's probably roughly their normal combined output.

Must be a considerable percentage of the chess book market in one company actually.

Except for Thinkers Publishing, Gambit Publications, McFarland Publishers, Chess Stars, Batsford and some minor players.