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Sales, Earnings Fall at Books-A-Million
Book-A-Million reported lower profits and earnings for both the fourth quarter and full fiscal 2010 for the year ended January 29. The results, said CEO Clyde Anderson in a prepared statement, "illustrate a dynamic and rapidly changing retail environment for booksellers." Anderson said BAM was pleased with the results of its partnership with Barnes & Noble to sell the Nook range of e-readers beginning in the fourth quarter as well as the performance of BAM's expanded toy and game business.
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MBA, GLiBA Joint Meeting Scores with Booksellers
It was unanimous: the 60 booksellers and more than a dozen publishers' reps who gathered for the first-ever joint spring meeting of the Midwest Booksellers Association and the Great Lakes Independent Booksellers Association agreed that the event was a huge success that exceeded their expectations.
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Three Borders Stores Get a Reprieve; List of Creditors Revealed
Borders has decided to keep three of the 28 additional stores it said it was going to close last week open. Separately, a list of companies owed at least $100,000 has been released.
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Book Comps Off at Hastings, But Retailer Posts Profit
Book comps fell 4.2% in the fiscal year ended January 31 at Hastings Entertainment, one of only two categories to post negative comps for the year (music was the other). Book sales were particularly soft in the fourth quarter, declining 7.0%, which Hastings attributed to decreased sales of new trade paperbacks, mass market books, and hardcovers, which Hastings said was due to some degree to "the increasing popularity of electronic book readers." Sales of used hardcovers rose approximately 10.0% for the quarter, and sales of value books increased 12.5%.
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Karin Slaughter’s Library Campaign Starts in Atlanta
In the fight for more funding, America’s libraries have a new champion in thriller author Karin Slaughter and her Save the Libraries Campaign, whose inaugural event on March 12 raised $42,000 for the 25-branch DeKalb County Public Library in Atlanta, Ga.
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B&N Is #1 in Trade Books
Barnes & Noble, through its combination of physical bookstores and bn.com, remained the largest outlet for the sale of trade books in 2010. That was one of the first findings from Bowker’s annual rollup of its monthly book consumer tracking program, PubTrack Consumer.
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A Different Trend: A Toy Store Moves into Books
At a time when independent bookstores are looking to increase their margins with nonbook items—educational toys, Bucky Balls, and Bananagrams—and Barnes & Noble and Borders are adding large toy sections to their superstores, one independent toy store is doing the opposite and growing its books department.
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Digital Still The Hot Topic at Diamond Comics Retailer Summit
Dueling digital formats were the big news story on the first day of the 2011 Diamond Retailer Summit, an annual meeting of comics shop owners organized by Diamond Comics Distributors, the biggest U.S. comics distributor, on the eve of the C2E2 pop culture festival in Chicago. Overall combined 2010 sales of periodical and graphic novel comics were reported to be down slightly, while gaming and apparel made big sales gains at comics stores.
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Four Joseph-Beth Stores on the Auction Block; Fredericksburg to Close
Bowing to pressure from the Unsecured Creditors Committee, Joseph-Beth Booksellers is putting four of its stores and its assets up for auction. The bidding deadline is April 19. The auction will take place no later than April 22, with a court approval hearing slated for April 27. Joseph-Beth is also asking the court for permission to begin a closing sale at its Fredericksburg, Va., location as early as a week from today.
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Borders Targets 28 More Stores for Closing
One month after Borders went into bankruptcy and got court approval to close 200 stores by the end of April, it is readying going-out-of-business sales for 28 more. They will close by the end of May. In its first-day filings, Borders reserved the option to close up to 75 more stores on top of the initial 200.
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Borders Gets DIP, Outlines Downsizing, Rejects Leases
The bankruptcy court on Wednesday approved Borders's DIP motion, giving the chain at least $450 million to fund its ongoing operations. Papers filed with the court order also provided some indication of how Borders believes the downsizing of its operations will impact its spending and cost requirements through June. Also yesterday, the court approved early rejections of five more leases.
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Kinokuniya Bookstores Challenged by Japanese Disasters
The Kinokuniya Bookstore chain, known as the Barnes & Noble of Japan, has suffered profound damage and business disruptions in the wake of last week’s earthquake and tsunami in the region, particularly at the Sendai location. Kinokuniya has 65 stores in Japan and eight in the U.S.
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Borders Gets Extension to Assume or Reject Leases
At Tuesday morning's omnibus hearing in Borders's Chapter 11 proceedings, Judge Martin Glenn of federal bankruptcy court in the Southern District of New York granted the chain's motion to extend the time it can assume or reject leases for another 90 to 210 days.
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January Bookstore Sales Dropped 4.5%
Bookstore sales fell 4.5% in January, to $2.19 billion, according to estimates released by the U.S. Census Bureau. The decline was due in part to snowstorms in much of the North that hindered sales to both trade and college bookstores in the month. Sales to the overall retail market fared better, increasing 7.4%.
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Anderson's Named PW Bookstore of the Year; John Eklund Rep
In a clean sweep for the heartland, Anderson's Books, which includes Anderson's Bookshops in Naperville and Downer's Grove, Ill., ABCFairs, and Two Doors East, and Milwaukee-based sales rep John Eklund, with Harvard, Yale, and MIT presses, were named this year's PW Bookstore of the Year and Rep of the Year. They will be honored at a ceremony at BookExpo America and in Publishers Weekly's pre-BEA issue on April 25.
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Bookseller Nancy Landon Dies at 74
Nancy Landon, owner of the Brewster Bookstore in Brewster, Mass., and children’s book buyer for Toy Castle in Potomac, Md., and Toy Kingdom in Rockville, died on Wednesday, March 9. She was 74.
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Successful Transitions: Three New Indie Owners Stress Community
Three Northern California bookstores have successfully transitioned to new owners in moves that the indie community could take as a sign that bookselling is still a viable and attractive business.
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Borders to Decide Fate of 75 Stores This Week
In a brief conference call to vendors Friday afternoon, Borders CEO Mike Edwards said that the company will make a decision this week on whether or not to close 75 more stores, an option it reserved in its first-day filing to close 200 stores. If it decides to close more outlets, the stores will be selected from among Borders’s 285 superstores. "We do not anticipate closing our small-format stores or airport stores," Edwards said.
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Publishers Ask Borders to Return Inventory
As the Borders bankruptcy finishes its third week, some publishers are trying another tack to recoup at least part of their losses. Yesterday Source Interlink and Thomas Nelson Publishers filed motions of reclamation for the return of their inventory.
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Borders Gets Approval to Reject Unexpired Leases
On Friday U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Martin Glenn in the Southern District of New York cancelled a hearing on Borders’s motion regarding unexpired leases. Instead, he signed the proposed order enabling Borders to reject four leases and to abandon personal property within their premises effective February 16, with the commencement of the bankruptcy. The leases in Boise, Boulder, Minneapolis, and Grove City, Oh., were set to expire between 2015 and 2023 and together account for close to a quarter million dollars of the bookseller’s monthly rental obligations.
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