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Google Ends eBook Agreement with Indies
As of January 31, Google is ending its e-book contracts with resellers around the world as it moves to make them available solely through Google Play.
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B&N to Restore Marshall Cavendish Titles to Stores
The Authors Guild has brokered a one-time truce in Barnes & Noble's battle with Amazon that resulted in the bookstore chain's policy to not carry print books in its stores without the ability to sell e-book editions. In a letter sent to its members, the guild said that Barnes & Noble has agreed to its request to bring Marshall Cavendish children's books back to their stores' shelves.
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Building a Community Bookstore—on Telemundo
Starting this Friday, Telemundo will air a four-part series on how the Casa Latina design team is readying the space for La Casa Azul Bookstore to open in NYC.
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Bertrams To Open UAE Distribution Facility
UK wholesaler and distributor Bertrams has confirmed the opening of its UAE office, a story broken on Thursday's BookBrunch; the move has received an enthusiastic reception here in Abu Dabi.
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What’s Ahead for Canadian Indies?
April is the cruelest month, wrote T.S. Eliot, but this year, according to Canadian independent booksellers and the shoppers who love them, March might get the title as a spate of prominent indie closures were announced across the country. Vancouver is losing its remaining four Book Warehouse locations. Nicholas Hoare is closing both his Montreal and Ottawa stores. And in Toronto, the Book City minichain closed one of its five stores.
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The Book Stall Named 'PW' Bookstore of the Year; Kingman & Kindness Reps
Chicagoland continues to dominate bookselling with the Book Stall at Chestnut Court the 2012 PW Bookseller of the Year. For the first time, the rep title will be shared by Ann Kingman and Michael Kindness.
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Nebraska's Amended Agreement Approved
Nebraska Book Company got one more step closer to exiting Chapter 11 bankruptcy with yesterday’s signed order for the Amended and Restated Plan Support Agreement.
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Is ‘Buy Local’ Enough?
Like the Austin Independent Business Alliance, begun by Steve Bercu, co-owner of BookPeople, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, many early shop-local initiatives were started to keep Borders out. In Austin, Borders’s attempt to move across the street from Bercu’s store also led him to enlist Dan Houston and his strategic planning consultancy Civic Economics for their now classic study, in 2002, of BookPeople, Waterloo Records, and Borders, which showed for the first time the economic impact of the chains: for every $100 a customer spends, the local economy gets $13 back from a chain store, compared to $45, from a local merchant. Although Borders is gone, Barnes & Noble continues to hold on to a large slice of the bookselling pie. With Amazon poised to reach Wal-Mart proportions by the end of this decade, according to Stacy Mitchell, senior researcher with the New Rules Project of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, and the e-book onslaught, can shopping local turn the tide?
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Distribution: New Leaf Distribution Adds Hybrid Publisher, S&S Signs World Almanac
Georgia-based New Leaf Sales and Distribution Services continues to grow its distribution client base with the addition of hybrid publisher BQB Publishing. In other news, Simon & Schuster has agreed to distribute The World Almanac titles this summer.
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BAM Overcomes Weak Comps
The addition of 41 former Borders stores helped to give Books-A-Million its best holiday season in years for the quarter ended January 28, 2012, but how well that strategy will play out for the full year isn’t yet clear. While fourth quarter sales rose 10.7%, to just under $167 million, comparable store sales fell 5.7%. Earnings in the period rose to $7.5 million from $6.8 million. Executive chairman Clyde Anderson (who turned over the reins of CEO to Terry Finley last week) said in a conference call that despite the absence of Borders, customer traffic did not show a meaningful increase in the quarter. He noted that BAM and Borders stores had competed directly in only 15 locations. Asked about BAM’s future store plans, Finley told PW, “We will continue to be opportunistic in our real estate strategy, looking for underserved markets and attractive deals.”
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Specializing in Specialty Stores
To walk into the 5,000-square-foot book room of the Stephen Young showroom in Los Angeles’s Gift Mart is to feel the atmosphere of an old-fashioned library decorated with vintage globes and bird cages, where tables and chairs are arranged to give browsers a chance to sit and relax while deciding what to buy for their stores.
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Distribution: Bookmasters Agrees with Assemblies of God
One of the world's largest Pentecostal denominations signed with Bookmasters to distribute its publishing imprints in both the Christian and secular markets.
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New Stores Boost Books-A-Million as Comps Fall
The addition of 41 former Borders stores opened in October and November helped boost sales at Books-A-Million in the fourth quarter ended January 28 by 10.7% to $166.9 million.
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Northshire Bookstore Starts Radio Show
Northshire Bookstore in Manchester Center, Vt., is partnering with WAMC-FM, Northeast public radio, on a new author series, "Off the Shelf: Authors in Conversation". Inaugural guest Rachel Madow will talk about her new book, Drift, with Joe Donahue, host of WAMC's "The Book Show."
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Flat Start for Bookstore Sales
Bookstore sales were virtually flat in January compared to January 2011, according to preliminary estimates released Tuesday morning by the U.S. Census Bureau. Sales were $2.070 billion compared to $2.072 billion last January.
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Coady to Expand Just the Right Book!
Roxanne Coady may be selling RJ Julia in Madison, Ct., but she's decided to hold on to the Just the Right Book!, and turn it into a national book discovery Web site.
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Finding the Right Course
It’s not just trade bookstores that are feeling the pinch from online retailers and other discounters. At the National Association of College Stores’ Campus Market Expo held earlier this month at the Salt Lake Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City, Utah, NACS’s OnCampus Research division reported that approximately 67% of students comparison shop for textbooks, and close to half, or 43%, bypass their school stores entirely. Even when they do browse, that isn’t always with the intention of buying a book. One bookseller at a prep school in Florida found students using cell phones to photograph assigned reading. Many of NACS’s initiatives and educational sessions at CAMEX addressed shrinking margins and encouraged booksellers to create relationships with students to bring them into their stores.
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Capra Press Revived
When Noel Young launched Santa Barbara–based Capra Press in 1969 and began to publish a literary who’s who of writers that included Anaïs Nin, Henry Miller, Raymond Carver, Lawrence Durrell, and Ursula K. Le Guin it was a vibrant time for independent bookstores and small presses, the beginning of the golden era of the small press movement.
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Assouline Bookstore Goes Custom
While booksellers are weighing the advantages of adding POD services, Assouline has begun offering custom-binding at its flagship store at New York City.
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