Google’s 3 major rivals will join a coalition of nonprofit groups, individuals and library associations, tentatively called the Open Book Alliance, in opposing the Google Books Settlement. The group, led by antitrust lawyer Gary L. Reback and the Internet Archive’s Peter Brantley, plans to make a case to the Justice Department that the arrangement is anticompetitive, with individual members likely filing court objections independently. “This deal has enormous, far-reaching anticompetitive consequences that people are just beginning to wake up to,” Reback told the NYT. Brantley separately told the WSJ that members of the coalition “all see problems with the settlement […]
Archives for August 2009
Books-A-Million Sales Down, Profits Rise
For the second quarter ending August 1, Books-A-Million’s total sales decreased 0.7% to $122.4 million while comparable store sales were dropped 4.9%. But the retailer posted an increase in profits (as they did in Q1) with net income rising to $1.5 million, even factoring in a non-cash after-tax impairment charge of $0.2 million to reduce the asset carrying value of certain store locations. In the accompanying statement, Chairman and CEO Clyde Anderson attributed the quarter’s “challenging sales environment” to there being no comparable book to Stephenie Meyer’s Breaking Dawn, released at the same time last year. Nonetheless, Anderson pointed to […]
Amazon UK to Fine Publishers for "Leaked Deliveries", Other Charges
An email leaked to the Bookseller claims that Amazon UK will start fining publishers £500 for “rejected deliveries” and could introduce a range of other charges. Starting on August 24, Amazon will apply charges to anyone failing to meet the retailer’s compliance “requirements [as] detailed in the vendor manual”. The email also hints that the £500 fine is an “initial” sum, suggesting additional sums could be applied. Amazon.co.uk also said that “the coming months” would see this charge extended to “include fees for other critical operational requirements” and that it would deduct the charges from publishers’ inventory payments. One publisher […]
Analysts Remain Unimpressed with "Better Than Expected" B&N Earnings Report
Even though B&N’s second quarter profits fell 5 percent, which was better than initial predictions, some analysts remained unimpressed with the retailer’s report, not to mention share prices falling 84 cents (or 4%) to $20.11 in yesterday’s trading. Standard & Poor’s Equity Research Retail Analyst Michael Souers kept his $16 price target and “strong sell” recommendation on the shares: “Facing long-term challenges such as a secular decline in adult readership levels as well as an increasing shift toward eBooks, we think shares are overvalued,” he said in a note. B&N also delayed updating its annual forecast until approximately October 1, […]
P&W Q&A With Agent Georges Borchardt
The latest in Jofie Ferrari-Adler’s series of interviews for Poets & Writers is with literary agent Georges Borchardt. Over a fifty-year career he’s represented authors ranging from Tennessee Williams, Aldous Huxley, Samuel Beckett, T. C. Boyle, Robert Coover, David Guterson, Anne Applebaum, Stanley Crouch yet is deemed a “hidden gem” in the publishing industry for being “cherished by their colleagues and peers but barely known outside of the business.” On why his background is different from others in publishing: “most literary agents in America have English as their native language. But I started out without knowing the language. I grew […]
People
At Books-A-Million, Doug Markham has been promoted to the newly created position of executive v-p/chief administrative officer in charge of the company’s warehouse operations, information technology and human resources, as well as the oversight of BAM’s finance function. He had been the company’s CFO since 2006 and secretary since March 2008, Replacing Markham as CFO will be Brian W. White, who served as interim CEO between January-July 2008 when Markham was on deployment to active military service. Terry Finley has been promoted to executive v-p/chief merchandising officer in addition to his current responsibilities as president, Books-A-Million, Inc. merchandising group, and […]