Barnes & Noble Education reported results for their fiscal first quarter, a seasonally “low activity” period. Sales keep falling — at $319.7 million, down $18.2 million from a year ago, or 5.4 percent lower. They registered declines across all three business segments: College stores, the textbook wholesale business, and their digital student solutions. The announcement celebrates that general merchandise sales comps rose 4.9 percent (gaining $5.9 million) — yet course material sales fell 11 percent (down $13.7 million) and trade book sales declined 11.8 percent (falling $1.2 million). There you have the essential problem of this entire enterprise. The net […]
Archives for August 2019
People, Etc.
Isabel DaSilva has been promoted to associate marketing manager at Atria. RBmedia will publish over 170 audiobook editions of titles from sci-fi and fantasy publisher Baen Books over the next three years. Awards The Dayton Literary Peace Prize announced finalists: Fiction Insurrecto, by Gina Apostol (Soho Press) Sadness Is A White Bird, by Moriel Rothman Zecher (Atria) The Overstory, by Richard Powers (Norton) There There, by Tommy Orange (Knopf) What We Owe, by Golnaz Hashemzadeh (HMH) White Chrysanthemum, by Mary Lynn Bracht (Putnam) Nonfiction Educated, by Tara Westover (Random House) Frederick Douglass, by David Blight (Simon and Schuster) I Should […]
People, Etc.
Jeff Carroll will join Macmillan on September 3 as evp, marketing and consumer strategy, reporting to Maya Mavjee. He most recently led marketing efforts at Radio.com, after working at NBCUniversal and Viacom. Jaime Gelman has been promoted to assistant editor at BuzzPop. Awards The Rona Jaffe Foundation announced the winners of their annual writers’ awards: Selena Anderson (fiction), Magogodi oaMphela Makhene (fiction), Sarah Passino (poetry), Nicolette Polek (fiction), Elizabeth Schambelan (nonfiction), and Debbie Urbanski (fiction/nonfiction). Bookselling Philadelphia’s Penn Book Center in University City, which was in danger of closing at the end of the summer, will stay open under new ownership. […]
People, Etc.
Emma Hintzen has joined Sourcebooks eXplore as assistant editor. Bookselling Baltimore’s Greedy Reads will open a second location later this year in the Remington area. Owner Julia Fleischaker opened the first store in 2018. New bookstore Fabled Bookshop and Cafe in Waco, TX, opened over the weekend.
Hearing Set For Publishers’ Lawsuit, As Audible Responds with Disingenuous Statement
The Federal Court for New York’s Southern District agreed that the seven AAP publishers filing suit against Audible on Friday “demonstrated good cause for the setting of an expedited briefing schedule” due to Audible’s plan to launch Captions on or about September 10. A hearing was set before Judge Paul Crotty for the afternoon of September 5 for arguments on issuing a preliminary injunction blocking the new feature. In the meantime, Audible has until the end of the day Wednesday to file papers replying to the suit, and publishers have until September 3 to respond to those arguments. Late Friday, […]
AAP Sues Audible to Block Captions Initiative
When publishers first objected to Audible’s Captions initiative, which shows listeners a computer-generated transcription of the text of an audiobook as they listen, the company’s unsympathetic response was effectively, “we think this is great; if you object, you’ll have to sue us.” On Friday, the Association of American Publishers (AAP) did just that, filing suit in New York’s Southern District, asking the court to block the feature. AAP members Chronicle Books, Hachette Book Group, Harper Collins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House, Scholastic, and Simon & Schuster are all named as plaintiffs. With Audible expected to formally launch Captions on September 10, […]