The Book Industry Study Group will present Wattpad with their annual Industry Innovator Award at the organization's annual meeting this Friday, April 22.
Shelve Under Business, Thriller, Mystery or Romance? The NYT Proclaims Barnes & Noble A Hero
The NYT celebrated Passover and Easter with a charming if tortured fable about Barnes & Noble that somehow hinges on a movie from 1998 and a lot of myth making. On a factual basis, the story is a modest update to a similar story from the New York Post that ran last September and in a crazy coincidence that surely has nothing to do with a $50 billion hedge fund looking to prepare the ground for an exit is paralleled by a story in the Financial Times. Barnes & Noble says its store sales “were up 3 percent last year […]
Waterstones Sales Fell 38.5 Percent In Pandemic Year
Waterstones filed their annual report for the fiscal year ending a year ago, as of April 24, 2021, revealing a substantial decline in sales. The company reached sales of only £231 million in the year, down £135 million (or 38.5 percent) from £376 million in the prior year. Operating profit was £13 million (versus £30 million the year before) and profit before tax was £4.17 million (versus £23 million the year before). Those positive margins seem to have come from substantial government support — roughly £41 million during the reported period — and a reduction in force, with the average […]
Maryland Concedes Legal Loss on Library Law — Mostly
The state of Maryland has replied to Judge Deborah L. Boardman’s order “to show cause why the preliminary injunction” blocking their unconstitutional library digital lending law “should not be converted to a permanent injunction.” Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh concedes the loss and does not offer any new evidence, noting, “The State acknowledges that there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and that the Court may grant or deny further relief in this matter without a further hearing or trial.” Instead he reaches for a final sliver, asking the judge to issue declaratory judgment in the AAP’s […]
First Quarter Deals: Sales Remain At Record Levels, Even As Six-Figure Deals Soften
Following a record year in 2021 for US deal transactions as measured through our PM deal reports, it’s time for an update on deal trends from the first quarter of 2022. To recap the baseline, 2021 saw a surge in dealmaking in the first and second quarters, followed by a modest pullback in the third quarter and a finish to the year that was slightly ahead of the first pandemic uptick from late 2020. In the end, US deals were up 9.4 percent overall, and six-figure deals grew even more, up over 21 percent. Those results aligned with industry stats: […]
After All These Years, Barnes & Noble Tries Again with Digital Audiobooks
Barnes & Noble is trying again with a full-fledged offering of digital audiobooks, available for single-title sales or through a monthly subscription priced at $14.99. They promise a catalog of over 300,000 titles. In a bit of brand confusion, the new initiative is called Barnes & Noble Audiobooks, though it’s tied to the all-but-dead Nook brand, since customers will listen to their audiobooks through the Nook mobile apps. (Separately, BN recently had to discontinue in-app purchases through their Android Nook app, after Google changed their terms to require the use of the Google Play billing system.)