The reimagined Book Expo, mission focused on “what the booksellers have said they need to do business at the show” and armed with regional scholarships for each bookselling region has yielded…35 more ABA member stores represented at the show, ABA ceo Oren Teicher said. (Book Expo officials had said, “Our goal is to bring more stores to the show, and make sure all 50 states are represented.”) There are about 150 more individual ABA member booksellers present versus last year — when all badged booksellers and retailers numbered about 1,300. More broadly, at the ABA’s annual meeting on Thursday afternoon, […]
Bookstores
Riggio Opens Book Expo, “Reimagined” As A Show About Physical Booksellers
I imagine that if you spend much time at Book Expo over the next three days, you’re going to get pretty tired of hearing the word “reimagined” as that theme is repeated everywhere possible. Today’s reimagined mini-show floor, billed as focused on business to business exhibits, pretty much feels like Ingram Day (and remainders). Ingram’s sprawling business lines, both their B2B services but also their many distribution groups, comprise a significant portion of part of the show floor which is open today. But less than a third of the full show floor — like last year, much smaller than what […]
ABA Membership Rolls Grow Again
In advance of Book Expo, the American Booksellers Association told the AP that the organization added 78 members in the last year, growing to 1,835 members overall. Members store locations totaled 2,470, an increase of 149 from a year ago. That follows a quieter year, in which core membership had declined by 18 and member locations had grown by only 10 stores. ABA ceo Oren Teicher says in that in the first four months of 2018, ABA member stores reporting sales to Bookscan grew unit sales by over 5 percent — more or less in line with (actually slightly below) […]
People, Etc.: Leaver Resigns from Quarto, and More
Following the surprise annual meeting vote restoring co-founder Laurence Orbach as executive chairman of the Quarto board, company ceo Marcus Leaver has resigned his position. Chuk Kin Lau, who owns a 27-percent stake in the company and also joined the board in the recent will serve as interim ceo. Leaver said in the announcement: “I would like to thank everyone at Quarto for their hard work and resilience during my tenure as CEO.” Orbach writes: “The continued output of very high-quality books is a testament to Marcus’s leadership and an impressive demonstration of the strengths of Quarto’s talented employees. Quarto remains focused […]
People, Etc.
Will Lippincott has joined Aevitas Creative Management as an agent, based in Los Angeles. Previously he was an agent and founding partner at Lippincott, Massie & McQuilkin until he left there in late 2016 “to find new paths.” At Simon & Schuster Children’s, Nicole Ellul has been promoted to editor for Simon Pulse; Sarah McCabe becomes associate editor for Simon Pulse; and Tricia Lin moves up to assistant editor for Aladdin. Diego Molano Rodriguez joins the marketing department as marketing coordinator, moving over from the sales department where he was most recently sales assistant. Former Baltimore Sun books editor Michael Pakenham, 85, died May 9 in Hanover, […]
Amazon Says Over 1 Million Modest-Sized US Businesses Are Sellers; Opposes New Seattle Employee Tax
Is Amazon killing businesses around the country or enabling the creation and growth of new businesses — or could it be both? The company responded to charges that they are hollowing out traditional retailers and the communities they help sustain with a Small Business Impact Report. Previously Amazon has provided only a worldwide number for third-party sellers on their platform — more than two million — but the new study says there are “more than a million” US-based small- and medium-sized businesses sell through the site. Of those, over 300,000 just started selling on Amazon in 2017. And, going back […]