It’s a safe bet that when David Young of Hachette, Madeline McIntosh of Random House and Drake McFeely of Norton first agreed to discuss the impact of digitization at the ABA’s Winter Institute in San Jose they had no idea of the hot-button issues the timing would bring. For the most part the questions skirted the issues rather than plunging in, but it was the first chance to hear publicly from Random House, which so far has spoken more by not making a deal with Apple than anything else. Young made it clear that at Hachette they “had been considering […]
Bookstores
Pershing Square's Ackman on Borders: "We Don't See It As a Likely Bankruptcy."
As part of a segment on CNBC’s Fast Money Tuesday evening, Pershing Square CEO and founder Willam Ackman – Borders’ majority stakeholder and holder of a $42.5 million loan that will come due on April 1 – prognosticated on the retailer’s chances of survival: “I think [bankruptcy] is a low-probability event. The company’s made a lot of progress in last 12 months from operational and a financial point of view” and “really stabilized itself financially.” He later added: “The stock trades as if it’s going to go bankrupt at $1 a share…[but] we’re going to see more when company reports […]
Burkle Complains to Barnes & Noble Board; "Allow me to acquire up to 37%" Stake Like the Riggios
We return to another of the hot topics of recent months: what does investor Ron Burkle and his investor-friends at Aletheia Research want with Barnes & Noble now that they have built 19 percent and 17 percent blocks of the company’s stock, respectively? Are they looking to take control of the company, force it private, or simply overthrow the Riggio family from control? Yesterday Burkle filed with the SEC to indicate the acquisition of more shares, accompanied by a letter that he sent to the BN board. He makes it clear that he would like to “wag[e] a successful proxy […]
Barnes & Noble Discover Award Finalists
The bookseller announced the contenders for their annual Discover Awards, to be presented on March 3: FictionBarb Johnson, More of This World or Maybe Another (HarperPerennial)Victor Lodato, Mathilda Savitch (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)C. E. Morgan, All the Living (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) NonfictionDave Cullen, Columbine (Twelve)Toby Lester, The Fourth Part of the World: The Race to the Ends of the Earth, and the Epic Story of the Map that Gave America Its Name (Twelve)Neil White, In the Sanctuary of Outcasts: A Memoir (William Morrow)Release
Newton Children's Store for Sale; NAIBA Defends Sales Reps
The children’s bookstore connected to Newtonville Books The Lizard Tale, in Newton, MA is up for sale. Newtonville Books owner Mary Cotton notes, “We just renewed the lease, so we can pursue this sale in a leisurely manner with the hope of finding someone whose passion for children’s literature matches my passion for adult literature and the literary programming we provide the community through Newtonville Books.” The New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association has given voice to the concerns of their members in an open letter to publishers: “Restricting field reps to large stores will give publishers a skewed view of […]
Amazon Removes Macmillan Buy Buttons
Many have wondered how Amazon would react to the biggest publishers’ efforts to challenge the etailer’s loss-leader price point for new releases in ebook form and move broadly to an agency model for selling ebooks, with Apple’s iBookstore but also broadly across accounts. And, as reported earlier, the speculation intensified after the WSJ played a video of Steve Jobs assuring Walt Mossberg that Amazon would need to sell ebooks at the same price as Apple because “publishers will actually withhold their [e]books from Amazon…because they are not happy with the price.” Sometime late Friday Amazon took the lead on withholding, […]