The stock market keeps changing its mind about Barnes & Noble. On November 7, the bookseller’s shares traded at $11.33. Eleven trading days later, they peaked at $18.47, up almost 65 percent. After yesterday’s disappointing earnings news, shares dropped as much as 20 percent and finished the day with a $2 per share decline. Today, shares rebounded dramatically currently up almost 12 percent.
Archives for December 2011
People, Etc.
Penguin USA ceo David Shanks is PW’s “person of the year,” cited “for his leadership role in building a solid foundation for his company while making the necessary investments and changes to build for the future.” Rochelle Bourgault joins Shambhala Publications this month, working mainly on their new Roost Books imprint. She will report to Sara Bercholz and work closely with Roost editor Jennifer Urban-Brown. Bourgault was formerly an editor at Quarry Books. Amanda Knox’s co-defendant (and former boyfriend) Raffaele Sollecito, exonerated of murder charges and released from prison at the same time as Knox last month, has signed with […]
eNews: Indiebound Reader App Launches; eBooks in Europe; and More
Indiebound has launched its ebook reading app, Indiebound Reader, in conjunction with Bluefire, as announced in August (and originally set for release in October). So far the app is only available for Android devices, but “it will soon be available” for iOS devices. Consistent with Apple’s revised rules, the iOS version will be for reading only, and will not include in-app purchasing. Indiebound Reader page At the same Reuters Global Media summit where Penguin ceo John Makinson spoke of “dark clouds” hovering over the publishing horizon in 2012, Hachette ceo Arnaud Nourry was more optimistic about the prospects for digital […]
eBook Sales Register Lower in September
The AAP announced their tabulation of sales for September from reporting publishers. In the closely-watched ebook sales category–where the AAP’s monthly number is the only standing statistic we have to go on, the 18 reporting publishers recorded sales of $80.3 million, down from $88.8 million in August. (Two university presses, Stanford and University of Nebraska, were added to the tabulations starting this month.) With strong fall shipments of printed books, ebook sales were lower than both hardcover and trade paperback adult sales, and comprised 15.7 percent of all recorded trade sales. (As a reminder, the AAP counts religious sales as […]
Kindle Launches in Spain and Italy, and More eNews
As promised earlier this fall, Amazon’s newest Kindle Stores launched Thursday in Spain and Italy, along with local-language Kindles retailing for 99 euros and the Kindle Direct Publishing service for authors and small publishers. The Italian Kindle Store features over 16,000 Italian-language Kindle titles, while the Spanish store offers more than 22,000 Spanish-language Kindle titles, including 3 exclusive backlist nonfiction titles self-published through KDP by El País journalist and bestselling author Rosa Montero. (Montero also has 2 Kindle titles available from her current publisher, Planeta imprint Seix Barral, and 4 more of her backlist books published with her agency Balcells in an earlier experiment […]
Nook Costs Keep Mounting As Barnes & Noble Misses Sales and Profit Expectations
Barnes & Noble announced second quarter earnings this morning, which we are going to look at from a few perspectives. From a Wall Street vantage point, this was a poor report. Sales were $90 million lower than analysts were expecting, and the company reported a 17-cent-per-share loss, while investors were anticipating a 3-cent-per-share gain. (The company also revealed that the preferred dividend to Liberty Media cost regular shareholders 6 cents a share this quarter.) After a big run-up over the past 15 trading days, investors are pounding Barnes & Noble’s stock again, down almost 20 percent in morning trading, back […]