Following Engadget’s report in early April, yesterday Target confirmed that they will start selling Kindle as of April 25. But they’ll start with just their downtown Minneapolis store and south Florida (which apparently holds 102 Targets), “rolling out to more Target stores later this year.” (Does that confirm that the target Kindle demographic is retirees?) Target has a total of 1,740 stores.Release As for Nook, Barnes & Noble will start airing television commercials for their ereader this week. The WSJ says it’s BN’s first television campaign in over a decade. Unlike Amazon’s whimsical/abstract Kindle ads, the nook spot actually talks […]
Bookstores
Bookselling: Fire Destoys Wisconsin Store; Potential Buyers for Toronto Landmark
Cover to Cover Books & Gifts in Tomahawk, WI was destroyed by a fire yesterday morning. Fire officials said the cause was unknown, and the store owners could not be reached for comment by the local paper.Wausau Herald On the brighter side, Toronto Women’s Bookstore will remain open longer than planned, at least until the end of May, after two potential buyers emerged.Quill and Quire Also of interest to independent booksellers, today Google announced the renaming of their Local Business Center to Google Place, now with extra features. In certain cities you can pay to add prominent “tags” to your […]
People, Announcements, Etc.
Wylie O’Sullivan has been promoted to senior editor at Free Press, where she started in 2001 as an editorial assistant. Christina Biamonte will join Sony’s Digital Reading Business Division as new Content Account Manager, eBooks. She has been Subsidiary Rights Manager at Houghton Mifflin. At Sony, she will forge new publisher relationships and act as relationship manager for existing publishing partners. On Tuesday, Zondervan laid off 30 employees as part of a “streamlining [of] our operations,” with a total workforce of 374 people. At the same time, the company is hiring for its digital and multimedia operations, with the Grand […]
Life Under Agency: No Solution Yet for Wholesalers and Sales Tax
The Diesel eBookstore started blogging recently, in part to communicate with customers about the business interruptions from the transition to the agency model by at least some publishers. They reported that “negotiations between our distributors and the Agency Five publishers are taking a lot longer than expected” and “there is no current ETA” on when those files will be reinstated and sales-tax compliant. As they note in their most recent post, per our report from last week, after the agency titles are restored Diesel will need to collect sales and forward it to publishers, who will remit and report to […]
Bookselling: New Store, Old Story
Half Price Books will open their second Oklahoma City-area story in August.News OK Separately, former distributor Don Linn rants over last week’s non-story that “publishers are squeezing booksellers on credit.” He writes: “while you may feel like you ‘deserve’ better credit terms than others and that your credit risk is somehow different from some other credit risk, it’s just not true. Publishers and distributors already act as the bank with relatively generous terms and, in case you haven’t noticed, you get to return anything you choose to at anytime for full credit forever. So spare me the whining about credit, […]
Bookselling: Indie Expands In Borders' Shadow
Pittsburgh-area Bradley’s Books is opening three new stores this month, in mall-based locations previously filled by Borders Express stores. Owner Mike Paper tells the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, “Our competitive advantage lies in the fact we deal with primarily bargain books–overstocks, remainders, close-outs, things we can find at deep discounts. In today’s environment, it’s especially valuable to offer consumers value.”PTR