WORD Bookstore will open a second location in Jersey City, NJ later this year. The new store, which will be located close to the Grove Street PATH Station, will be larger than the original Brooklyn location and have a cafe. Owner Christine Onorati told Shelf Awareness the new WORD location’s inventory “will be ‘very similar’ to the Brooklyn store but with an expanded kids section” while the cafe will double as an event space. “I have very high hopes for this new store, and I’m excited to help foster the vibrant, literary, community-focused spirit of Jersey City.” Black Forest Books […]
Bookstores
ABA Sales Softened In Second Half; UK eSales Still Lag US Considerably
As a group, ABA bookstores had a good year in 2012–but what’s implied in this BTW story is more significant than the stated statistics, ratifying our “story we can’t report” from yesterday. The ABA provides another indication that, despite happy anecdotal holiday sales reports,holiday book sales were soft, providing a soft ending to the year as early blockbusters (Hunger Games; Fifty Shades; etc.) gave way to a holiday season with few dominant, breakout books and a cooling off of the ebook market. (Barnes & Noble’s “core” non-Nook-related bookstores sales fell 3.1 percent during the holiday sales period.) What the ABA […]
Nook Sales Fall 12.6 Percent Over Holidays, As Core BN Store Sales Also Declined
Barnes & Noble followed up their pre-New Year’s sales warning with a fuller holiday sales report: Same-store sales at the BN superstores and BN.com fell 8.2 percent (and 10.9 percent overall), at $1.2 billion for the nine-week period. Much of the decline was due to weaker sales of Nook devices and accessories but even leaving that product line aside, “core” store sales still declined 3.1 percent compared to last year “due to lower bookstore traffic.” (A core decline had been forecast, however, in the low-to-mid single digits, and the company said those sales “exceeded expectations.”) In the last quarter BN management […]
Bookselling: Prairie Lights’ New Publishing Venture: Robin’s Bookstore, Puddn’Head Books Close; And More
Prairie Lights Bookstore is teaming up with the University of Iowa Press to publish a handful of books annually, starting with Philip Levine’s poetry collection SWEET WILL. The Iowa Press-Citizen reports Prairie Lights will act as the publisher, while UI Press will produce, design and distribute the books. Store co-owner Jan Weissmiller told the paper there aren’t any strict guidelines on what will be published, but the work “will likely be fiction, poetry and literary non-fiction, rather than history or journalism.” The LA Times profiled recently-opened bookstore Bank of Books, Malibu, highlighting the “novel ways” the store attracts customers, including […]
Bookselling: More BN Stores to Close; Foyles Turns a Smaller Profit in 2012; And More
Barnes & Noble will close both of its stores in Irving, TX on December 31. The Irving mall and Las Colinas locations are shutting down “as part of the national book store’s recent business decision to reevaluate low-selling locations,” according to neighborsgo.com. It goes along with the pattern in which BN closes stores when the leases expire if they cannot agree on acceptable renewals: December 31 will also see the shutdown of stores in Westlake, TX; Plainfield, IL; Campbell, CA; and, as previously reported, the Sixth Avenue store in New York’s West Village. BN will also close a store in […]
BN Closed Tikatok; Faces Further PIN Pad Inquiries and Another Possible Patent Fight
Barnes & Noble’s latest quarterly filing unusually contained a few interesting nuggets that were not announced when the company first reported basic earnings information for the period. They “decided to shut down the operations of Tikatok,” the online children’s writing platform, and took an impairment charge of $1.97 million on the closure. BN bought Tikatok three years ago for $2.3 million “as part of its overall digital strategy, expanding the company’s reach to additional parents, educators and librarians.” On the plus side, after the quarter closed, in November they received their first operating payment from Microsoft as part of the new […]