Barnes & Noble, Inc. founder Leonard Riggio, 75, announced he will retire in September from his position as executive chairman — after the annual shareholder meeting — though he intends to remain on the company’s board of directors. Riggio still controls 17.5 percent of Barnes & Noble’s shares (with Abrams Capital Management as the company’s second-largest holder, now with almost 14 percent of the stock). Paul Guenther, a board member since 2015 and former president of Paine Webber, will serve as BN’s nonexecutive chairman after Riggio’s retirement. “I’m no longer going to be in charge. I’m done with that. I’m done with being top […]
Bookstores
Bookselling: Chester County Book Company Closes for Good; Support for Murder by the Book Post-Flooding; and More
Chester County Book Company in West Chester, PA will close for good on July 31, three years after re-opening in a smaller location. Store owner Kathy Simoneaux Fortney said in an email to publishers and customers, “After crunching the numbers, the best option is for me to retire & close the store.” She called it “a difficult decision” and wrote, “We had a good 34-year run!” Murder By the Book, which suffered damage to its carpeting and other parts of the store after significant flooding in Houston, is asking for support through the sale of gift cards, books, and other […]
Amazon Wins NYC Education Contract, Bloomberg Says Prime Same-Day Delivery Excludes Black Neighborhoods
Amazon has won a contract with New York’s Department of Education to supply ebooks to students through a special marketplace site. The deal is worth approximately $30 million over the first three years, and the city has an option to extend the contract for another two years, worth an additional $34.5 million or so. The WSJ says Amazon is expected to make a commission of between 10 percent and 15 percent on the sales. Separately, Bloomberg has an extensive analysis of zip codes served by Amazon’s expanding Prime Same-Day Delivery service — suggesting that the rollout is favoring areas where […]
People, Etc.
Heather Jackson is leaving Harmony to become a literary agent, joining the David Black Agency on May 2. She will focus on commercial nonfiction and fiction, popular culture, and fresh narrative voices that inform, entertain, and shift the cultural conversation. At Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Stephanie Fletcher has been promoted to editor, culinary/lifestyle. In addition, Tim Mudie moves up to associate editor, and Pilar Garcia-Brown has been promoted to editorial associate. Beth Collins was promoted production manager at Beacon Press, and Daniel Barks was promoted to reprint and digital production manager. Founder of Clarion Books and author of nonfiction for young readers Jim Giblin died […]
Barnes & Noble Working On New Concept Store for Westchester
Barnes & Noble is taking over a retail space in Westchester County that has been vacant since Borders went bankrupt, and plans to build one of four new concept stores in the location. (It’s an odd, below-ground space reached through an escalator.) The retailer has been working through the Eastchester planning board, with minutes of a February 25 meeting quoting architect Greg Belanger: “This will be one of four stores built in this country this year that’s going to have a completely new design, not anything seen anywhere locally. They brought in new designer, an Italian designer.” They hope to open the […]
HarperCollins Officially Expands in France, and More
It’s book fair time — as the Bologna Book Fair officially opens — so Harper Collins has announced another expanded international unit. This time it is the formation of Harper Collins France. Previously, Harlequin SA was a joint venture in France with Hachette Livre, but Harper Collins bought out their partner. They will continue to work with Hachette in an “ongoing partnership for distribution and sales.” (They bought out Mondadori’s share of Harlequin Mondadori in September 2015, and they ended their joint venture in Brazil with Record Publishing Group — pairing instead with Ediuoro Group, last August. The new business will continue to publish […]