Bookselling Amazon Books is planning a new location on Bethesda Row in Bethesda, Maryland. The retailer filed a building permit on November 8 to renovate the 6,000-square-foot space at 7117 Arlington Road, currently occupied by a home furnishing store. Barnes & Noble will close their big, nearby 37,500-square-foot store at Bethesda Row at the end of the year when their lease expires, after 20 years in the location. In Washington, DC proper, online bookseller Mahogany Books will open a physical store at the Anacostia Arts Center on November 24. Harassment DC Comics has reportedly fired group editor Eddie Berganza, following an extensive report in BuzzFeed recounting […]
Bookstores
Bookselling: Regulator Bookshop Sold; Kinokuniya To Open in Austin; and More
The Regulator Bookshop in Durham, NC will be sold to two store employees. Longtime owners Tom Campbell and John Valentine announced plans to retire on March 1 and sell the bookstore, which has operated for more than 40 years, to Wander Lorentz de Haas and Elliot Berger. Campbell, a co-founder of the shop, told the Herald-Sun: “We are not as young as we once were and we were thinking of moving on. We had two people who were interested in taking over that we thought would do a good job, and it all kind of came together.” The bookshop is […]
Barnes & Noble Opens Smaller Store In Texas, Sets Virginia Opening
The somewhat slower-than-expected rollout of Barnes & Noble‘s previously-announced concept stores is in its final stages. The smaller-format test store in Legacy West in Plano, TX opens today (after originally aiming for a spring debut). The 9,000 to 10,000 square foot store — a little less than half the size of the first concept store in Eastchester, NY — is said to carry approximately 17,000 titles. The restaurant space remains sizable even with the smaller bookstore footprint, with seating for 178 people. Separately, the delayed fifth and final of the announced concept stores in Ashburn, VA is now set to open […]
Dropping Another University, Amazon Said to Withdraw from Campus Contracts
Last month the University of Massachusetts at Amherst announced that Amazon was canceling their contract to serve as the official textbook provider bookstore (and pay the school commission) as of December 2018. Now SUNY’s Stony Brook University indicates that Amazon is withdrawing as their official textbook supplier as well after the spring 2018 semester. The school says on its website that “Amazon has decided to change their business model nationwide, and starting Summer 2018, Amazon will no longer be providing customized course material services to higher education institutions.” Office manager of the Office of the Bookstore Liaison Vlad Moraru told […]
Briefs: Kirkus Prize Winners, and More
KF Literary Scouting has been appointed scout for Tchelet in Israel and Eksmo in Russia. Awards The winners of the Kirkus Prize were announced Thursday night at a ceremony in Austin, TX. Lesley Nneka Arimah’s What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky (Riverhead) won for fiction, and Jack E. Davis’s The Gulf (Liveright) took the nonfiction category. The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline (DCB) won in Young Readers’ Literature. Best Of The renamed New York Times/New York Public Library Best Illustrated Children’s Books Awards announced its ten best books of the year: Muddy, written by Michael Mahin, illustrated by Evan Turk Frida […]
Bookselling: Indigo to Test US Stores, and More
Canadian bookseller Indigo reported fiscal second quarter sales on Thursday, showing their continuing and successful conversion from “books and music” to a “cultural department store”: Sales of $224.5 million (CA) were up $7.5 million compared to a year ago, driven by non-book sales. Print sales actually fell $5 million, to $131 million, as general merchandise sales grew $11 million. Print now comprises 58.4 percent of Indigo’s sales, compared to 63.1 percent a year ago. Retail superstore comps increased 2 percent, as small format store comps fell 4 percent — with the print and small-format store weakness blamed on comparisons to last […]