No Merriness at Waterstone’s A trading update from HMV on the 12 week period ending December 16 confirms the continuing bad news for chain booksellers in the UK, as same-store sales at Waterstone’s fell yet again by 3.7 percent. The company blames “continuing promotional activity in the book market” (e.g. deep discounts on frontlists aren’t going away, and retail gravity continues to favor Tesco at al. — in other words, the market has changed dramatically, and Waterstone’s has not.) In their September update the company implied that sales erosion was improving, but this number isn’t much better than the 4.1 […]