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-- 5/15/00
Barker Wins $115K IMPAC Award
British writer Nicola Barker, author of the novel Wide Open, was selected as the winner of the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2000.
The award--which carries a cash prize of £75,000 (US$115,000) and is administered by the Dublin City Library--will be presented in Dublin on June 17 by Nobel Prize winner John Hume. The U.S. publisher of Wide Open is Ecco Press; it was published in Britain by Faber and Faber. More information about the award is at www.impacdublinaward.ie.
February Store Sales Strong
Following a weak January, retail bookstore sales jumped 11.7% to $1.09 billion in February, according to estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. Despite the double-digit gain, bookstore sales still trailed the increase posted by the entire retail sector, where sales in February 2000 were up 15.2% over February 1999. For the first two months of the year, retail bookstore sales rose 4% to $2.58 billion.
B&N Wins Funco
Barnes & Noble has won its bidding contest with Electronic Boutique Holding Corp. to acquire the video games retailer Funco Inc. B&N, which originally offered $135 million for the company (News, Apr. 10), sweetened its offer to $161.5 million to seal the deal. Funco, which operates 404 FuncoLand video game stores, will become part of B&N's Babbage's subsidiary, which is overseen by CEO Dick Fontaine and COO Dan DeMatteo.
For the fiscal year ended March 31, 1999, Funco had sales of $206.7 million, including $1.6 million generated from its Web site, and net income of $9.7 million. Sales through the first nine months of fiscal 2000 were $197.9 million, including $3.1 million in sales from its Web site; earnings were $5.4 million. B&N chairman Len Riggio told the Wall Street Journal that the video game market has the potential to be bigger than the consumer book market "within the next half of the decade. In the scheme of things, that's where we want to be."
Hastings's Earnings Charge Increases by $5 Million
Hastings Entertainment, which announced in March that it was restating results for the past five years downward by as much as $27 million (News, Mar. 13), reported earlier this month that the unexpected adjustments could total $32 million. In the wake of the accounting debacle, the company has replaced its chief financial officer, Thomas Nugent, who will serve as a consultant. The new CFO and senior v-p is Gaines Godfrey, a Hastings director since 1991 and former CFO and v-p, finance, for Mesa Petroleum.
The announcement about the higher losses came in a notification with the SEC that Hastings will delay the filing of its 10-k report for its most recent fiscal year because of adjustments "related to costs of returns and refused products returns and other matters." Hastings's president, John Marmaduke, noted that reconciling the accounting problem has been "even more difficult and time consuming than we first thought," but noted that the company's cash flow from operations remains unaffected by the changes.
Obituary: Murray Curtin
Murray Curtin, former literary agent and editor-in-chief of the Random House college department, died May 3 following a brief illness. He was 66. Donations may be made in his name to Memorial Sloan-Kettering, Palliative Care Center.
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