Aurora Anaya-Cerda will open a bookstore, La Casa Azul, on East Harlem’s E. 103rd Street in spring 2012 after raising the needed $40,000. Organizers of the Word Up pop-up bookstore at Broadway and W. 176th Street is negotiating to stay permanently. Organized by Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance, the store has been there rent-free for five months, and is negotiating a paying lease and looking to raise funds for what has become a community arts center. As we clipped earlier in the week, the NYDN says that Astoria’s Seaburn Bookstore will close rather than renew their lease after 16 years in […]
Bookstores
Christian Group Calls Barnes & Noble “Naughty” For Not Emphasizing Christmas More
The silly season is here in full. In a Daily Show-worthy announcement, the conservative Christian group American Family Association has released of list of companies they consider “for,” “marginal,” and “against” Christmas, which Barnes & Noble included among the 14 chains they deem “naughty.” (Amazon is deemed “for” Christmas.) The evaluation is based on one important mode of expression: advertising. The list aspires to determine “if a company was ‘Christmas-friendly’ in their advertising.” Different references to secular Christmas symbols (“trees, wreaths, lights, etc.”) were “considered as an attempt to reach ‘Christmas shoppers.” And “if a company has items associated with […]
Briefs: Indie Bookscan Holiday Sales Up 15.5 Percent; Bloomsbury’s New Literary Events Line; and More
The ABA announced that member in-store book sales over the Thanksgiving holiday long weekend, as tracked by Bookscan, increased 15.5 percent over the same week in 2010. Sales in store websites powered by ABA IndieCommerce also increased by 60 percent for the same weekend (plus Cyber Monday) as compared to last year. Ann Patchett’s STATE OF WONDER and Laura Hillenbrand’s UNBROKEN topped the Indie bestseller lists for hardcover fiction and non-fiction, respectively, in 2011. Indie Bestseller Lists page Also from the ABA, this year’s Winter Institute 7 in January will feature a new One Institute, One Read program. Tying in […]
Bookselling: Online Shopping Habits of Bookstore Browsers; Daunt on “Ruthless, Moneymaking Devil” Amazon; and More
A new survey conducted in October by The Codex Group gives statistical heft to a phenomenon noted anecdotally by independent booksellers for years: 24 percent of people who said they had bought books from an online retailer in the last month said they had first seen the books in a brick-and-mortar location. (One could, on the other hand, be surprised that the percentage isn’t higher.) Furthermore, 39 percent of people who bought books from Amazon during the same period did so after viewing the book in a physical shop. Codex Group president Peter Hildick-Smith may draw the wrong conclusion in […]
Barnes & Noble Roller-Coaster
The stock market keeps changing its mind about Barnes & Noble. On November 7, the bookseller’s shares traded at $11.33. Eleven trading days later, they peaked at $18.47, up almost 65 percent. After yesterday’s disappointing earnings news, shares dropped as much as 20 percent and finished the day with a $2 per share decline. Today, shares rebounded dramatically currently up almost 12 percent.
Bookselling: Stores Closing in NJ, MA, and More
Metuchen, NJ-based new and used bookstore The Raconteur will close on January 31 after 7 years in business. “I still love being here and meeting the people,” owner Alex Dawson told the NYT. “But I feel like I don’t want to be a shop clerk anymore. That’s what it boils down to.” Cherry Picked Books in Easthampton, MA will also be closing at the end of January. Owner Michael Engel bought the store in 2007 and had been been “half-heartedly” looking for a buyer over the last several months. “Nobody wants to buy a used bookstore,” Engel told Masslive.com. “It’s […]