The investor dispute over Barnes & Noble Education recorded another round of dueling press releases. Agitating investor Bay Capital Finance, which says it currently has beneficial ownership of a modest 25,000 shares in BNED, announced its intention to file a preliminary proxy statement with the SEC to solicit votes for the five people they want to nominate for election to the retailer’s board at the upcoming annual meeting. The record date for eligibility to vote at the annual meeting is July 29. Earlier this month, Bay Capital filed suit in Delaware to put forward their board nominees, after the company […]
Bookstores
Bookselling: Another Amazon Store, and a Replacement Barnes & Noble
Further to our report earlier in July that Amazon is hiring staff for a new, unspecified physical store in Detroit (either a Books store or a 4-Star outlet), the company is now similarly hiring for another new store in Houston. Separately, in line with earlier indications, Barnes & Noble has opened a new roughly 14,000-square-foot store at Cityplace in Woodbury, MN, taking the place of a larger, nearby store that closed on Tuesday.
People, Etc.
Kendra Levin will join Simon & Schuster Children’s as editorial director on September 1. She was most recently an editorial director at Penguin Children’s. Heidi Sachner has left her position as vp of books at F+W Media. Sachner will be working with the Penguin Publishing Group on a consulting basis to assist with the integration through the end of the year and can be reached at hsachner@optonline.net. Filipe Silva has joined Macmillan as international sales manager, reporting Devin Luna, vp, international sales & marketing. Silva will be responsible for sales in Macmillan’s open market territories, with direct sales responsibilities for […]
People, Etc.
Callie Garnett has been promoted to editor at Bloomsbury. Jessica Gilo has joined The Monacelli Group as marketing and publicity director. She was formerly the assistant marketing director, culinary & lifestyle at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. George Hodgman, 60, author of memoir Bettyville, and former editor at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Holt and Simon & Schuster died on Saturday. He was found in his apartment in New York, and the cause of death is pending. Bookselling Chicago’s Pilsen Community Books, which opened in 2016, is for sale. Owners Aaron Lippelt and Mary Gibbons, who also run The Dial bookshop, wrote in an […]
People, Etc.
At Macmillan Children’s, Allison Verost has been promoted to senior vice president, deputy publisher. Claire Fletcher has been promoted to senior managing editor, children’s at Chronicle Books. Zoey Cole has joined Scribner as an associate marketing manager. Previously, was a bookseller and events assistant at Books Are Magic. Kate Hutchison, director of business development and strategy at LSC Communications, has left the company. She is currently “seeking consulting opportunities and focusing on her podcast, Shelf-Care,” which will launch this fall. She can be reached at bookishkatenyc@gmail.com. In the UK, WH Smith’s international chairman and business development director Louis de Bourgoing […]
Amazon Has Been Working On Retail Stores Since 2012
Brad Stone and Matt Day have a deep look at Amazon’s slowly evolving efforts to open and scale their own physical stores, which began with a “top-secret project to revolutionize grocery stores” started back in 2012. Those efforts, curtailed and modified, are what led to the Amazon Go checkout-less convenience stores. They are up to only 14 locations and still “some Go stores seem almost deserted except for the lunchtime rush. Employees familiar with Amazon’s internal projections say the outlets in Chicago, in particular, are falling short of expectations, and the company has had to resort to raffles and giveaways […]