Founder and president of Rainy Day Books in Kansas City Vivien Jennings and her husband Roger Doeren are selling the 47-year-old store, Kansas City Business Journal reports. “As the world begins to open back up, the pace and hospitality of the author events we produce requires greater stamina than we have at ages 77 and 70,” they said in an email newsletter. “It is time for someone new to be the face and voice of Rainy Day Books.” The owners’ son, Geoffrey, will screen potential buyers through June then in July will follow up with those “who we believe are […]
Bookstores
Bookselling: Another Longtime Barnes & Noble Store to Close, In New Jersey
This time it’s their store in Clark, NJ, a location that has been in business for 24 years. Like the big Boston store at the Prudential Center, this store will close on June 19, after the “landlord has opted not to renew our lease.” Another New Jersey BN store, in Springfield, is reportedly at the end of its lease after 30 years in that location is likely to be demolished later this year to make way for a newly-built Chick-fil-A.
Big Boston Barnes & Noble Store to Close
Missing from the recent NYT version of Barnes & Noble’s trajectory was any mention of the large superstores that have been closing, sometimes swapped out for much smaller stores in the same area. Next on that list is the chain’s big 36,000-square-foot store in Boston’s Prudential Center, which will close June 19 after 20 years in that location. The store said it was unable to negotiate a lease renewal with the landlord, and the chain encourages area customers to drive outside of Boston to its locations in Hingham and Peabody. BN has been having particular trouble in the Boston area: […]
Amazon Launches AaaS (Pronunciation Not Disclosed)
As an answer to fast-growing Shopify, Amazon plans to launch what is effectively “Amazon as a Service,” which they are calling Buy with Prime. The pitch is to allow merchants the “shopping benefits of Prime…whether they sell in Amazon’s store or beyond.” The service will bundle Amazon’s Prime delivery service (and returns management) along with Amazon Pay checkout, running from merchants’ own websites. Significantly, merchant will also “receive shopper order information, including email addresses, which they can use to provide excellent customer service, and build direct relationships with shoppers.” The initial launch invites are limited to merchants using Fulfillment by […]
Shelve Under Business, Thriller, Mystery or Romance? The NYT Proclaims Barnes & Noble A Hero
The NYT celebrated Passover and Easter with a charming if tortured fable about Barnes & Noble that somehow hinges on a movie from 1998 and a lot of myth making. On a factual basis, the story is a modest update to a similar story from the New York Post that ran last September and in a crazy coincidence that surely has nothing to do with a $50 billion hedge fund looking to prepare the ground for an exit is paralleled by a story in the Financial Times. Barnes & Noble says its store sales “were up 3 percent last year […]
Bookselling: B&N Cheyenne to Move to Unknown Location
The Barnes & Noble in Cheyenne, WY will move to a temporary location in Frontier Mall this Spring, and a permanent location next year. The last day at its current address is May 15, and store manager Gage Nix told Cap City News that the store doesn’t yet know where in the mall the temporary location will be. In a letter posted throughout the current location, the store said, “the landlord has made the decision to redevelop the space and has opted not to renew our lease.” As with other B&N moves, the letter asks for location ideas to be emailed […]