Indigo reported third quarter revenue just below flat for the 13 weeks ending December 29, 2018, with sales of $426 (CA) million compared to $433.3 million for the same period last year, a decrease of 1.7 percent. Comparable superstore sales were flat, with small format store comps up 2.8 percent, as online sales declined by $1.5 million, to $75 million overall. The company billed the results as “satisfying” given the challenges during and leading into the period: A strike at Canada Post, a delayed renovation schedule, the closure of two low-performing stores, an increase in the minimum wage, plus an accounting […]
Archives for February 2019
Indie Booksellers Need to Keep Innovating, and Scrambling
Yale undergrad Max Graham — son of Politics & Prose owners Bradley Graham and Lissa Muscatine — files a thoughtful, well-researched and clear-eyed piece about the continuing challenges for independent bookstores in Yale’s The Politic. The article builds on some of what was reported out of Winter Institute, as booksellers face the pressures of rising rents and wages (and we all deal with the profound realization that many of these treasured workers are making minimum wage), and turn more to non-book product. (This is when we remind you that ABA membership numbers, which include chains like Hudson Booksellers and Half-Price Books and […]
By the Actual Numbers, Sales and Profits Fell Slightly at Waterstones
As we’ve observed before, the UK press and the UK trade love the survival/revival story of bookselling chain Waterstones, regardless of what the numbers say. In the British tradition, the chain recently filed annual results for the fiscal year ending April 28, 2018 — prior to the sale of a controlling stake to Elliott Advisors — and the data shows another year of a small slide in both sales and earnings. Sales for the main group were £385.7 million, down £2.3 million, and all profits measures fell slightly as well. Operating profit was £24 million (down £.44 million), and after-tax […]
People, Etc.
Simon Green has joined Abrams Artists Agency to lead company’s book and publishing division. Green was at CAA, where he started the book department in 2009, until last spring. The agency says Green’s hiring “reflects [their] commitment to growing the company with distinguished agents as the agency continues to expand its roster of both agents and clients.” (Steve Ross, who started the book division for Abrams, created his own agency last fall.) Claire Roberts has founded her own literary agency, Claire Roberts Global Literary Management. In addition to author representation, the company also handles rights for a “select group of publishers and other literary agencies […]
People, Etc.
Liz Kelsch has been promoted to director of marketing for nonfiction and mystery at Sourcebooks. Picks Reese Witherspoon‘s book club pick for February is Jasmine Guillory’s The Proposal. Distribution Rizzoli New York will distribute Pavilion Books, Pavilion Children’s, Portico, Pitkin, and the National Trust via Penguin Random House Publisher Services, starting July 2019. Previously these lists were distributed by IPG. Bookselling A new bookstore, Still North Books, will open in Hanover, NH in the space that belonged to Dartmouth Bookstore, which closed last year after 146 years of operation. The new owner Allie Levy, who previously worked in the marketing department at HMH, says […]
Yes, More Salinger Is Coming, and No, Not Soon
The late J.D. Salinger’s son Matt Salinger confirmed to the Guardian that the author left behind a significant body of unpublished work after his death in 2010 which the estate has been working to prepare for publication. “It’s not ready,” Matt Salinger says. “He wanted me to pull it together, and because of the scope of the job, he knew it would take a long time. This was somebody who was writing for 50 years without publishing, so that’s a lot of material. So there’s not a reluctance or a protectiveness: when it’s ready, we’re going to share it.” As […]