John Evans of DIESEL Bookstores in California and Matt Norcross of McLean & Eakin Booksellers in Petosky, Michigan have been nominated to join the ABA board for three-year terms, and Ken White of San Francisco State University Bookstore has been put up for a second term. Becky Anderson of Anderson’s Bookshops will take over from Michael Tucker as ABA president and Steve Bercu of BookPeople will serve as vice president/secretary. Gonzalo Ferreyra will join Weldon Owen in San Francisco as director of marketing, print and digital on February 14. Previously, he was vp of sales at VIZ Media and director […]
Bookstores
Bookstore News
Diane Cox has bought Whittier, CA’s The Little Old Bookshop and will reopen it this week as Half Off Books. Item Flintridge Bookstore & Coffeehouse in La Cañada Flintridge, Calif., will re-open Monday in an expanded location. The store will have an Espresso Book Machine and host events.La Canada Online But The Muses Bookstore in Morganton, NC is closing after 40 years, calling the rise of ereading the “last nail” in the coffin. Item And Seattle bookshop Twice Sold Tales will relinquish its store in the city’s University District and sell books exclusively online.Seattle P-I
WSJ Puts Borders Bankruptcy On Slightly Slower Timetable Than Bloomberg
A quick headline and then a brief story moved by Bloomberg right before the end of trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday had an outsized impact. Bloomberg wrote that Borders “may file” for bankruptcy protection “as soon as next week, according to three people familiar with the matter.” In the final 10 minutes or so of trading, the market slammed Borders shares down 35 percent, to less than 50 cents a share, continuing to fall further still in after-market trading. This morning shares were trading under 37 cents a share. On the same timetable, Barnes & Noble […]
Waterstone’s Tells Publisher They Are Cutting Orders As of March
As part of Waterstone’s perpetual turnaround efforts in the UK, the chain informed multiple major publishers by e-mail earlier this week that for new titles coming in March they are cutting their initial orders by approximately 20 percent. Publishers were asked to cancel existing pre-orders so that the chain can place new orders at the lower inventory levels. They told publishers that “initial over-ordering of new titles” is continuing to create “substantial unnecessary costs across the supply chain, most notably in returns.” One UK executive noted that “they’re managing their working capital very carefully for obvious reasons” but the good […]
More Highlights From DBW’s First Day
We have lots more DBW coverage from Day 1 over at the PM website. Some of the highlights include: — An outside dose of reality on the future of brick-and-mortar bookselling from Goldman Sachs analyst Matt Fassler and Susquehanna Financial Group’s Marianne Wolk. Fassler was down on B&N’s prospects: “There are no safe investments, but publishers and booksellers are something to avoid” in his assessment, because they don’t control their own destiny. Wolk believes that Amazon makes little to no profit from ebooks as they try to maintain dominant market share, and doesn’t even think it’s a corporate goal to […]
Have Sales Reps Turned Into Marketers?
The sales department is in transition for a variety of reasons–declining bookstores, increased digital sales, an emphasis on just-in-time inventory, and more. At Digital Book World on Tuesday, David Wilk queried Rich Freese from NBN, Alison Lazarus from Macmillan, Michael Selleck from Simon & Schuster and Jaci Updike from Random House on the changes underway and ahead. Clearly the traditional sales rep is turning into more of a local marketing officer, though the exact expression of how that’s working varied among the participants. Lazarus expressed it most dramatically, saying “we’re telling our physical sales reps, ‘don’t sell so many of […]