Barnes & Noble reports fourth quarter and full fiscal year earnings on Tuesday morning before the market opens. Analysts have low expectations, looking for sales to fall about 4 percent to $1.33 billion, and predicting another sizable loss of 99 cents per share. The company’s stock has fallen back to earth since the error-plagued TechCrunch report on documents showing possible interest in a Microsoft buyout of Nook–which sent shares up to more than $23 a share in May. (It has given up almost all of those gains, now back under $19 a share–falling again first thing this morning, along with […]
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Ira Silverberg will leave the National Endowment of the Arts, where he has been director of literature since October 2011, on July 11 and return to New York City, saying in a statement “the demands of family are such that I must return.” Literature program officer Amy Stolls has been appointed acting director of literature until a permanent hire is in place. At the Random House Speakers Bureau, Caitlin McCaskey has joined as agent direct. Previously she worked at the HarperCollins Speakers Bureau. In addition, Jayme Boucher has been promoted to senior agent. Lynda Zuber Sassi will rejoin Chronicle Books […]
Bookselling: RiverRun Will Open Second Location in Maine; BN Recommends FIN & LADY; and More
RiverRun Bookstore will open a second, smaller store this September in Kittery, Maine that will carry new and used books. Owner Tom Holbrook wrote in a note to customers: “It will be like RiverRun Portsmouth, except it will be about the size of your living room.” RiverRun’s expansion is happening “because we care about our Maine customers and don’t want to lose them. We loooovvve Portsmouth, but we understand that between bridge repair, parking, and general hubbub, it can be hard to shop here sometimes.” Barnes & Noble’s newest BN Recommends pick is Cathleen Schine’s novel FIN & LADY, published […]
Bookselling: Word Up Finds NY Space; Marcus Books in SF Faces Eviction
Word Up Community Bookshop, the “completely implausible store” in Washington Heights, aka “upstate Manhattan,” has successfully raised $60,000 on IndieGoGo from over 800 supporters. The store has signed a lease for a new storefront location at 2113 Amsterdam Avenue, by 165 Street. The reopening has not been scheduled yet. San Francisco’s Marcus Books, said to be the country’s oldest black bookstore, is due to be evicted from the space they have occupied since 1960 by June 18. The building was sold at a bankruptcy auction in April after the store’s owners defaulted on a loan they say was “predatory.” (They […]
“Difficult Negotiations” Persist Between S&S and B&N, Limiting Author Events, Too
One controversy not evident on the BEA show floor but still very heated off the floor is the stand-off on terms between Barnes & Noble and Simon & Schuster that has resulted in reduced business between the publisher and the bookseller since the beginning of the year. (For some publishers, discussion of revamped terms with B&N began last summer, and we’re told there is renewed pressure from the booksellers on those who have not changed business terms.) It landed back on the radar when S&S author William Kent Krueger blogged that he was told to cancel two events scheduled for […]
ABA Sales “Hold Our Own” After Strong 2012
ABA ceo Oren Teicher shared continuing positive sales news with member booksellers at the organization’s annual meeting on Thursday afternoon at BEA. “As you know, unit sales in our channel, as reported to our weekly Indie Bestseller List, were up almost 8 percent last year,” Teicher said. “This year we are seeing the good news continue, as we hold our own in unit sales for 2013 against a first quarter in 2012 that saw very strong double-digit growth.” The coming NPR promotional campaign run by Kobo is “a direct assault” on the problem that “Kobo remains the most successful e-book […]