Waterstones is preparing to restructure store management and has begun the required consultation with more than 560 employees that will result in an unspecified number of layoffs, the Bookseller reports. In a letter to staff, managing director James Daunt said the current positions of branch manager, assistant manager, general manager and deputy manager will be abolished, replaced with a “bookshop manager” role that will “call on different skills.” Daunt explained: “It is particularly important that we do this because more than ever before our managers will be central to our ability to deliver effective bookshops: the decisions that define the […]
Bookstores
Anonymous Microsoft Insider Denies Nook Story; Barnes & Noble Stock Suffers
The grain of salt we advised on the flawed TechCrunch report of potential interest in Microsoft buying out the digital assets of Nook Media has turned into a veritable salt flat. Another site, Insider Monkey, posted an item early Monday afternoon said to come from “a highly placed source inside Microsoft” denying the likelihood of a deal. Barnes & Noble stock fell 13 percent in about 30 minutes Monday afternoon on very heavy volume. It hit a trough and by 3 PM started to recover some of the losses, off about $2.20 a share or 9.5 percent for the day, […]
Report of Microsoft Offer to Buy Nook’s Digital Business Drives BN Shares
Wednesday night TechCrunch claimed to have obtained internal documents in which “Microsoft is offering to pay $1 billion to buy the digital assets of Nook Media LLC.” — and the stock market responded Thursday morning with a jump in Barnes & Noble’s stock. It opened up more than 25 percent or about $4.60 a share but has settled over the next 90 minutes, up about $3 a share. Prior to the report, BN’s entire market cap was just over $1 billion. But the TC piece is full of errors and oddities, starting with the belief that Nook Media “also includes […]
Bookselling: Fundraising Campaign for BookCourt North; New Children’s Bookstore in Edgewater, MD; and More
BookCourt in Brooklyn has launched a fundraising campaign on Indiegogo to buy the Bibliobarn in the Catskills and rename it BookCourt North: Bookshop, Event Space, and Writers’ Retreat. Should they raise the $300,000 needed to buy and renovate the Bibliobarn, which opened for business in 1996, BookCourt would convert the second floor into a writers’ retreat, host events on within the barn and on the five acres of land surrounding it, and possibly open a cafe. Current owners H.L & Linda Wilson put the property for sale and hope to move to a nearby Catskills town. Children’s bookstore Edgewater Books […]
Meyer, Percy and Hosseini Among Monthly Bookseller Picks
The ABA named Philipp Meyer’s THE SON their No. 1 pick for June. That’s three No. 1s in a row for the Spring/Summer edition of our Buzz Books 2013 sampler (following Anthony Marra and Kate Atkinson). There are 4 other Indie Next June picks that you can preview right now in Buzz Books (Bulawayo, Miller, Disclafani, and Wascom). In all, nearly half of the 28 books we first featured and previewed in February have made “best of the month” lists from major booksellers over the past three months. Download it while you still can to read excerpts of these titles […]
People, Awards, Etc.
Longtime Author Solutions ceo Kevin Weiss is leaving the company for a new position (to be announced separately next week). President of Penguin International Andrew Phillips is taking over as ceo of Author Solutions, which Penguin acquired last July. Phillips led the launch of Partridge, the Penguin Author Solutions partnership in India. Penguin chairman and ceo John Makinson said in the announcement: “This is a bitter-sweet announcement because we shall be sorry to lose Kevin, who has provided the stability and clear leadership that Author Solutions needed in the year after our acquisition. But I always recognised that Kevin would seek […]