The Globe and Mail has further information on Amazon’s application to Canada’s government, seeking permission to open their own distribution center within the country. The etailer currently dispatches its Canadian shipments through a unit of Canada Post. HMV Canada president Humphrey Kadaner says, “This would bring Amazon into competition with pretty much every retailer in Canada, assuming they expand their product offering as they have in the States. They really would become much more of a general retailer.” Indigo ceo Heather Reisman says, “This is evolution…. It just needs to be transparent and evenly applied.” She has written to the […]
Bookstores
Borders Reportedly Looking to Extend Credit Agreement
The folks at Debtwire–the same outfit, we should remember, that misreported a story earlier this year contending that some vendors had retained counsel to collect monies owed to them by Borders–has filed another long story, carried on the FT web site, about Borders’ credit issues. Close watchers of the company know that there have been two significant liquidity deadlines: their $42.5 million loan from principal owner Pershing Square is due April 1, and the revolving credit agreement that allows them to conduct business expires in July 2011. Getting that credit line renewed in today’s world of restricted lending, particularly since […]
Indies Choice Award Finalists
The ABA announced the nominees for their annual book awards. Member booksellers can vote during most of the month of March, with the winners to be named in April. Adult FictionBorder Songs, by Jim Lynch (Knopf)Brooklyn, by Colm Toibin (Scribner)The Children’s Book, by A.S. Byatt (Knopf)Cutting for Stone, by Abraham Verghese (Knopf)Generosity: An Enhancement, by Richard Powers (FSG)Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel (Holt) Adult NonfictionAnimals Make Us Human, by Temple Grandin (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)Lit: A Memoir, by Mary Karr (HarperCollins)The Lost City of Z, by David Grann (Doubleday)Stitches: A Memoir, by David Small (W.W. Norton)Strength in What Remains, by Tracy […]
Announcements
David Patterson has left Holt, where he was an editor, and starts today at Foundry Literary + Media as an agent. Irish bookselling chain Hughes & Hughes declared bankruptcy. Ulster Bank appointed David Carson of Deloitte as receiver. The company blamed a variety of factors, from reduced air traffic which suppressed business at its successful airport bookstores to higher rents and the internet.Irish Times Gordon Wood won the American History Book Prize for Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815, which includes the title of American Historian Laureate. Mexican author and guerrilla movement scholar Carlos Montemayor, 62, […]
Burkle Continues Agitating Against Barnes & Noble Board
It was fairly obvious that the Barnes & Noble board of directors would decline investor Ron Burkle’s request that they grant him an exception from the poison pill provision that they adopted specifically to block Burkle and his friends from threatening the Riggios’ de facto control over the company. But in a new letter to the board, Burkle expresses surprise that the company’s independent directors did not contact him before dismissing his concerns, and he asks for a meeting: “I would have hoped that the non-management members of the Board would have contacted me before unilaterally rejecting my request that […]
Alibris Buys Monsoon
Online used-book marketplace Alibris’s parent company is acquiring Oregon-based marketplace selling solutions company Monsoon for a combination of cash and stock. (Monsoon helps sellers list their good across multiple marketplaces.) Alibris owner Oak Hill Capital provided funding along with additional bank financing. The two companies will continue to operate separately. Monsoon ceo Kanth Gopalpur will continue to run the company. He says in the announcement, “This transaction will provide the combined Monsoon-Alibris customer base with even more opportunities to expand their businesses and increase sales. We will be able to take advantage of additional resources, technology, and capital in order […]