It’s hard to get a clear story on the latest layoffs at Barnes & Noble. As we first reported last Friday, employees were told of some additional reductions last Thursday that included the elimination of the Nook accessories (as well as its leader). We were told informally that some Nook channel sales people were also let go (plus a director not connected to Nook). On Monday, Business Insider ran an erroneous story based on an email from an unidentified person claiming the company “fired its Nook hardware engineering staff” on Thursday. Dutifully ricocheted by most every tech blog in the […]
Bookstores
Bookselling: Chapitre Closes 23 of 57 Stores, Eliminates Over 400 Jobs; and More
France’s bankrupt second-largest bookstore chain Chapitre completed its dissolution with the court approved sale of 8 more stores, and the formal closure of the remaining 23 locations they were unable to sell, out of a total of 57 branches. France’s Les Echos says 434 jobs will be eliminated as a result — including 100 jobs at company headquarters — or a third of their workforce. Chapitre’s owner Actissia announced last summer that it intended to sell the chain outright and, if it could not find a buyer, would close all stores by summer 2014. Eleven stores had closed last December, with […]
Packer Asks “Is Amazon Good for Books?”
And if you have to ask, the implied — but not particularly explicit — answer is no. George Packer looks at Amazon and the book business in this week’s New Yorker. Much of the piece will be familiar to our readers. He does find evidence of a forgotten Amazon imprint from late 1999 from former employee James Marcus, when “Amazon tried publishing books, leasing the rights to a defunct imprint called Weathervane and putting out a few titles,” mostly revived remainders. “Weathervane fell into an oblivion so complete that there’s no trace of it on the Internet. (Representatives at the […]
Amazon’s Best of February; BN Discover Great New Writers Award Finalists
Amazon announced their February books of the month, with Lisa Moore’s Caught as their “spotlight pick” and Joshua Max Feldman’s The Book of Jonah as the “featured debut.” The other picks are: An Officer and a Spy, Robert Harris The Race Underground, Doug Most Annihilation, Jeff VanderMeer Young Money, Kevin Roose The Wives of Los Alamos, TaraShea Nesbit This Dark Road to Mercy, Wiley Cash Red Rising, Pierce Brown Chance, Kem Nunn All Joy and No Fun, Jennifer Senior Separately, Barnes & Noble announced the finalists for its Discover Great New Writers Award, with winners in fiction and nonfiction to be named on […]
March Indie Next Picks; and Costco’s February Choice
The No. 1 Indie Next Pick for March is SHOTGUN LOVESONGS by Nickolas Butler, and Isla Morley’s novel is the first of our 2014 Spring/Summer Buzz Books to make the ABA lists (most of our featured titles don’t land until April or beyond). The full list includes: The Enchanted, by Rene Denfeld Gemin, by Carol Cassella After I’m Gone, by Laura Lippman The Weight of Blood, by Laura McHugh The Museum of Extraordinary Things, by Alice Hoffman The Accident, by Chris Pavone A Circle of Wives, by Alice LaPlante The Spinning Heart, by Donal Ryan Above, by Isla Morley Bark: […]
Bookselling: Chains Challenged In Netherlands and Poland, and More
Less than a year after Dutch investment group Procures bought bankrupt bookstore chain Selexyz for €3.5m and combined operations with the secondhand and discount De Slegte chain under the banner Polare, the entire company is facing new financial woes. The 20 Polare stores “temporarily” closed Tuesday and their online store has suspended operations as well as part of a “strategic organization,”according to NLTimes.nl, but ceo Jan van de Wouw told RTL Nieuws that Polare is negotiating with “two interested parties” to reopen the stores. Tuesday’s shutdown came just two months after Polare laid off 54 of 336 full-time workers, with book […]