Barnes & Noble announced results for their new fiscal quarter, aligned to dovetail with the just-acquired BN College. Reporting sales for the past nine weeks of the new quarter, same-store sales at BN fell 4.1 percent at $665 million, while results at BN.com rose 8 percent to $91 million. The retailer said that for the full fiscal 2010 quarter, they expect that comp-store sales decline to range between 1 percent and 3 percent–meaning they see sales improving from here. Of course those forward-looking comparisons are set against a lower bar–October is when book sales started to plunge last year as […]
Bookstores
Bookselling: Co-Op Signs Lease for Old Schwartz Space But Still Needs Funds
The Open Book co-operative has signed a one-year lease to take over a former Harry Schwartz bookstore space–but a spokesman says “we’re about halfway there” in raising the money needed to actually open a store. They say they have raised about $50,000, and are hoping news of the lease encourage more supporters to come forward. The group is hoping to be able to open a store in the 10,000-square-foot space by November.
Bookselling: Village Books to Add Espresso and Symtio Cards
Washington’s Village Books told customers recently that next month the store will have an Espresso book machine and will start selling Symtio cards for downloadable ebooks and audio books. Co-owner Chuck Robinson says, “There are obviously changes rapidly taking place in our industry, and instead of standing on the sidelines and waiting to see what will happen, we’ve decided to jump right in.” Wisely, he recognizes that much of the demand for the Espresso will come from customers wanting help with self-publishing. And “he personally wants to print books on local history that he’s enjoyed but have been out of […]
People and Bookselling
Two editors at Pocket, including editorial director Maggie Crawford, and an editorial assistant at Simon Spotlight Entertainment were laid off last week, the Observer reports. At Little Brown UK, David Shelley has been promoted to the new position of deputy publisher. French-language bookstore Librairie de France will close at the end of September after 74 years in business at New York’s Rockefeller Center. The store faced a tripling of its rent.NYDN
Bookselling: Study Says 400 Bookstores Could Close This Year
A study by Chicago’s Grant Thornton warns that 10,000 retail stores across the US may close this year–twice the number of last year’s closings. Among the sectors they predict will be hardest hit are bookstores, with the firm saying that 400 bookstores could close in 2009, which they calculate as a 500 percent increase over 2008. (That would seem to undercount the 2008 closings given the reductions at Borders Group. And we could only find the prediction on bookstores in this Chicago Sun Times article, rather than the report itself.)Sun TimesDownload study
Borders Earnings Preview is Somewhat Neutral
Borders is set to report its quarterly earnings later today and analysts aren’t expecting much in the way of good news, considering the retailer has spent much of the year reshuffling management and facing “intense competition” from other retailers. One analyst pointed to Borders’ inability to keep pace on selling electronic books, but added “it could not reasonably have been expected to invest in an alternative given its financial distress.” Still, stock prices, which have risen 33 percent since May 3, are “mostly undervalued” based on high-term cash flow.Earnings Preview