The clobbering of Barnes & Noble’s stock continued yesterday after our post following their conference call, down over 19 percent for the day on trading volume more than four times higher than usual. It was the largest one-day drop in the bookseller’s shares since November 2001. At current prices that leaves the company’s market capitalization at a little over $750 million (and remember that it was just 9 months ago that the company itself decided the BN College unit was worth $460 million). In a rough day across Wall Street, Amazon shares declined as well, down approximately 7.5 percent. As […]
Archives for June 2010
ePublishing: Kindle's 70 Percent Royalty Begins; Toshiba eStore Powered by Blio to Launch Soon; Google Looks to Indies and Analyst Looks to Android Tablets
Amazon announced that their 70 percent royalty offer to authors and publishers using their self-service digital text platform and agreeing to a variety of conditions on pricing, availability and features is now available. (The offer currently applies only on sales to US customers.) They say that they have improved the platform itself as well, including “a simplified two-step process for publishing.”Release Toshiba has announced their Book Place ebookstore will launch “in the coming weeks,” to be powered by Baker & Taylor’s Blio. They promise syncing with up to five devices, including tablets and smartphones. Book Place will be pre-loaded on […]
People, Etc.
Rachel Vogel has joined Movable Type Literary Group as associate agent and international rights manager. She was at Lippincott Massie McQuilken. She’ll specialize in upmarket fiction and narrative non-fiction. Mary Glenn has been promoted to associate publisher for McGraw-Hill Professional’s business group. Moises Martinez has been promoted to director, Spanish language sales at Random House, leading domestic sales for Spanish titles from Vintage Espanol and Random House Mondadori. At Granta and Portobello in the UK, Kelly Pike joins the company as publicity manager in mid-July. She was a publicity manager at Saqi and Telegram Books. National Book Network has created […]
Waterstone's Sales Decline 6.3% for the Year. As Profit Evaporates
Waterstone’s parent HMV reported good sales for the overall group for fiscal 2009, reaching a new high of 2.017 billion pounds, though “the one area of disappointment was in the financial performance” of the bookselling unit. At 513.6 million pounds for the year, Waterstone’s sales fell 6.3 percent, as operating profit was just 2.8 million pounds, a significant decline from 10 million pounds a year ago. The company says that their previously-announced new strategic plan “is already beginning to have a positive impact.” On their controversial new distribution center, they say “it is clear that the implementation…also adversely impacted performance […]
Stock Market Turns On Barnes & Noble As Executives Detail Strategy
Following Barnes & Noble’s fourth quarter loss and prediction of more losses in the year ahead driven by their investments in technology, investors unloaded on the company’s stock in morning trading. On very heavy volume, the booksellers’ shares were down as much as 17 percent in the first hour of trading, touching levels not reached since the depths of the 2008 market collapse, before rebounding noticeably, down about 10.5 percent as we post. (The market is down broadly, with the S&P 500 off about 2.5 percent, and Amazon is down almost 5 percent this morning.) Having likely anticipated the market’s […]
eDeals: Symtio Sold to Libre Digital; Overdrive Adds Disney and Partners with Internet Archive, As IA Invents Their Own Rules for Lending Older Titles As eBooks
Zondervan has sold the technology and infrastructure behind their Symtio business to LibreDigital (in which Zondervan parent HarperCollins is also an investor). The sale covers “the Symtio e-commerce technology, existing e-commerce contracts and applications, and key e-commerce staff,” but not Symtio’s retail card business, which the release says ” Zondervan is in negotiations to sell separately.” It’s a curious bifurcation, since Symtio has always promoted their “digital product cards” as the heart of the business that lets physical retailers sell and activate cards that allow the downloading of digital media. LibreDigital ceo Russell Reeder says in the announcement they will […]