Longfellow Books in Portland, ME suffered extensive damage in the wake of the blizzard that hit much of the Northeastern US. “Apparently the wind blew in a window on the second floor, which caused pipes to freeze,” the store wrote on its Facebook page. The sprinkler system also turned on and “drenched the store’s books”, causing damage to nearly half of the store’s 30,000 titles. Co-owner Chris Bowe told the Portland Press-Herald he hopes Longfellow can re-open by Thursday night, in time for a Valentine’s Day benefit reading. In store closure news, Books-A-Million will close its Charlotte, NC location by […]
Bookstores
Indigo Sales Decline On Fewer eReaders and Lack of Hits
Canada’s dominant bookseller Indigo reported a 4.9 percent decrease in sales of $335.6 million for the fiscal third quarter ending December 29. With echoes of Barnes & Noble’s holiday report, “the decrease was primarily driven by lower ereader revenues compared to last year,” along with a “lack of hit book titles in the quarter” and a reduction of their smaller-format stores by 8 locations. Superstore sales comps were down 5 percent, and small-format store comps fell 5.2 percent, though online sales increased 3.6 percent. EBITDA declined over 15 percent for the period, to $36 million. Their nonbook merchandise continues to expand: […]
Waterstones’ First Year Under New Management Shows Big Losses
Fretting about the state of Barnes & Noble’s bookstores is put into perspective by reports from the UK on the performance of Waterstone’s. A government corporate filing showed just how badly the chain had been suffering. It’s important to underscore that the results everyone is writing about are old–they cover the fiscal year ending almost a year ago, in April 2012. The bookseller had a £25.4 million operating loss, and a £37.3 million after-tax loss. Sales fell 14 percent, down to £410.4 million, and same-store sales dropped 11.1 percent. Managing director James Daunt blamed the result on “what I inherited…. […]
Ish No More; Bookish.com Is Live
After years of development, three ceos, eight figures of funding and the challenges of operating a start-up joint venture after the founding partners negotiated settlements with the Department of Justice over alleged collusion, Bookish.com officially launched to the public on Monday evening. (As HBG ceo David Young told the AP, “We received clearance for Bookish, but every time any of us talk about something we have to conform to the DOJ rules.”) The three founding partners–Hachette Book Group, Penguin and Simon & Schuster–are joined by 16 other publishers (including the other three largest publishers, as well as Harlequin, HMH, Norton. […]
BN Hopes for An Orderly Reduction of 20 Stores A Year, For A Decade
CEO of Barnes & Noble’s retail group Mitchell Klipper reiterates the company’s expectations for an orderly slimming of their bookstore base to the WSJ. BN forecasts that they will close about 20 stores a year for the forseeable future–meaning that “in 10 years we’ll have 450 to 500 stores,” Klipper said, compared to 689 stores right now. (They reached “peak superstores” in 2008, when the chain comprised 726 BN outlets.) One key to whether that strategy plays out as predicted is their lease portfolio, since bookstores are a real estate business as much as anything. BN has a very flexible […]
ABA Lists New Stores for 2012
The ABA provides their annual roster of new member bookstores that opened during the previous, listing 40 new stores that opened in 2012 in 24 states. As usual, the list includes brand-new stores selling new books (28); new branches of existing business (5); and new stores that primarily sell used books (7). That compares to 37 new member stores in 2011–which included 23 new bookstores, and 6 new branches of existing members. It’s informal, but since readers often ask us for tallies of stores that closed, in the Publishers Lunch archives we find reports of at least 28 independent bookstores that […]