One prominent event at Book Expo on Friday was unlisted appearance by Hillary Clinton in advance of the June 10 release of HARD CHOICES. Hosted by Simon & Schuster, she addressed a group of about 120 booksellers. The publisher says that Clinton “spoke briefly about her experience writing the book, and some of the issues that matter most to her, then posed for pictures with attendees.” Here she is with Simon & Schuster publisher Jonathan Karp at Javits. Separately, it’s the darndest thing, but someone interested in Clinton’s public image helped Politico “obtain” one controversial chapter from the embargoed book: […]
Archives for May 2014
Books-a-Million Celebrates A Flat First Quarter
Sales eked up $200,000 at Books-A-Million in their fiscal first quarter, ending May 3, reaching $103.8 million for the period. Same-store sales were down 2.5 percent, however, and the net loss of $5.6 million was significantly higher. (A year ago their loss was mitigated by a $2 million tax benefit.) Ceo Terrance Finley was upbeat nonetheless: “Sales in the first half of the quarter were strong driven by the momentum of the fourth quarter book lineup. We saw traffic slow later in the quarter, but we were pleased that we achieved our plan in our core book business, as well […]
Books-a-Million Adds HBG Featured Shop; BN Features A Few Titles; Wal-Mart Books HBG; Gladwell Speaks
Books-a-Million announced on Friday the creation of a dedicated online shop featuring Hachette Book Group titles at www.booksamillion.com/hbg. The top of the HBG home page says in headline type, “Don’t miss out on your next favorite book, pre-order today!” And one of the home page carousels is labelled, “Pre-Order the HBG Books You Want from the Bookseller You Can Count On.” The press release notes: “This announcement comes in addition to Books-A-Million’s commitment to offer their customers a discount of up to 30 percent off a wide selection of Hachette Book Group pre-order titles, and 40 percent off select current Hachette […]
Reed Aims for Two-Day BookCon In 2015 (and Four-Day BEA)
With strong ticket sales heading into the inaugural BookCon on Saturday as we reported Friday morning, Reed Exhibitions is engaged in a process to expand the consumer show to two days in 2015 — and would stretch the BEA exhibition floor to four days along with that if it goes forward. Currently BEA is scheduled for Thursday, May 28 through Saturday, May 30, 2015 in New York. (The show moves to Chicago in 2016.) The company said in a statement provided to us: “The move to 4 days with 2 days of BookCon is certainly being considered for 2015. Our […]
Upcoming: The Book Con, and the Copyright Com
As of Friday morning, Lance Fensterman at Reed Exhibitions told us they have sold approximately 9,000 tickets to consumers for Saturday’s inaugural Book Con, with more sales expected on site tomorrow. “There is no science to estimating walk up,” Fensterman said in answer to our query, “but we are prepared to continue selling a couple thousand tickets and then at that point it will be a sell out.” Looking ahead to next week, the House Judiciary Committee is coming to town. As part of ongoing efforts to reevaluate the nation’s copyright laws, the committee is holding a hearing on Monday at the […]
At BEA: Isaacson On Collaboration; Patterson On Amazon/Hachette, Again; and More
Walter Isaacson discussed his forthcoming book THE INNOVATORS with Slate publisher Jacob Weisberg Friday morning at BEA. The book, which traces the lineage of technological innovation from Ada Lovelace (“I didn’t know much about her until my daughter introduced me”), Charles Babbage and Alan Turing to the founders of Intel to Twitter’s Ev Williams, was an antidote to his biography of Steve Jobs. “Almost every great innovator in the book had a great collaborator,” Isaacson said, adding he wanted to show “three to four great types of leaders” as opposed to the singular, uncompromising vision of Jobs. “People would come […]