After yet another quarter of disappointing results, Borders cfo Mark Bierley took the lead in the company’s conference call in explaining their latest strategy towards “improving profitability” (which begs the question of how you can improve something that doesn’t exist). Since “a number of stores are dilutive to our EBITDA” they “intend to aggressively pursue lease buyouts from these stores. The buyout on these leases would, based on our assumptions, positively impact our long-term bottom line.” They also have a “comprehensive audit program” that’s “designed to reduce” losses from shoplifting, particularly in “stores that have historically seen high levels of […]
Bookstores
Borders' Core Skill: Shrinking
Reporting results for their first quarter ending May 1, in a still grim atmosphere for physical stores of all kinds, Borders sales fell 15.4 percent overall at $542 million. The loss from continuing operations of $64.5 million was better than a year ago, but the operating loss of $33.5 million was worse. Sales at the US stores fell further, down 16.1 percnent to $520–but same-store sales were down by only 11.4 percent company to a year ago. The company says that factoring out multimedia, which they theoretically pulled down dramatically years ago, comp store sales declined 6.8 percent, indicating less […]
Bezos Tells Shareholders No Color Screen Soon
Amazon ceo Jeff Bezos told the audience at the company’s annual meeting that their strategy for competing with Apple is the company looks to surge past Kindle in devices on the market is to stay focused on “serious reading households.” That strategy is said to drive the excuse for not adding a kolor Kindle any time soon. “Bezos said it would be easy to add a color LCD screen to the Kindle, but that it provided an inferior reading experience to the reflective E Ink Corp. technology that the device currently uses. As for color reflective screens, Mr. Bezos said […]
Survey Says Indies Need to Discount Bestsellers, Broaden Selection to Expand Sales
Verso Digital presented ABA members with results a new online survey conducted in April targeted at consumer intelligence relevant to independent booksellers. (They surveyed 9,300 book buyers, with an estimated margin of error of 1.5 percent.) The focus was to follow up on a finding from Verso’s earlier survey that indie “mindshare” is a lot bigger than indie market share–since 23 percent of book buyers list indie stores as one of their “favorite places to shop for books,” even though indie stores are estimated to have 5 percent or less of the actual dollar market for books. (At least one […]
Alibris Has Their Own Play for Self-Published (and Self-Promoting) Authors
Alibris has Author Stores, customizable, easy-to-create pages that let authors sell their books through the company’s marketplace (as well as their partners, including Barnes & Noble.com, Borders, Chapters Indigo, eBay, Half.com, and Waterstone’s.) CEO Brian Elliott says in the announcement “over a third of our marketplace sales are new books–most of those solidly in the ‘long tail’ — and through the new Author Stores sales channel and its dynamic features, authors can promote and sell more books.” You can view a sample author store at: http://www.alibris.com/stores/seanolaoire
ABA Actually Gains (9) Members for the Year
One previously-predictable lowpoint of BEA is moment during the American Booksellers Association annual meeting when a board member announces the annual decline in registered member stores. But this year, for the first time since we’ve been following the numbers, the association actually gained members–nine to be exact–with 1,410 registered stores. (That gain does not necessarily reflect a change in the entire store landscape, since not all independent bookstores are members of the national organization.) Here are the reported member-store numbers for the past decade: 2010: 1,4102009: 1,401 2008: 1,5242007: 1,580 2006: 1,6602005: 1,703 2004: 1,804 2003: 1,908 2002: 2,097 2001: […]