Booksellers

Amazon ceo Jeff Bezos wrote his annual letter to shareholders and, as with last year’s letter, he focuses on the trinity (or “three big pillars”) of Prime, Marketplace, and AWS. (The last time he mentioned readers or Kindle was two years ago.) Prime membership grew 47 percent growth in the US last year and counts “tens of millions of members worldwide.” And “close to 50 percent of units sold on Amazon are sold by third-party sellers” (which includes publishers who sell ebooks on an agency basis). This year’s letter also speaks vaguely at length about “corporate cultures,” following criticism of Amazon’s work environment: “For better or for […]

As usual, Barnes & Noble’s more detailed SEC quarterly filing followed their Thursday morning earnings report, and it offers some additional details about their business. Perhaps most notably, the company forget to underscore that in their most important holiday quarter, they sold fewer books. Book sales fell $12.3 million (or 1.7 percent), “on lower sales of trade and juvenile titles, partially offset by strong sales of coloring books.” The continuing mess at BN.com — where they took a site that was not performing well and performed an extensive revamp that made it worse — brought site sales down $15.6 million […]

Barnes & Noble reported results for the fiscal third quarter ending January 30 — including the big holiday period when the company makes most of its money for the year. Sales of $1.414 billion were down $26 million (or 1.8 percent), “due to lower online sales and store closures” on the retail side, plus the unstoppable decline of Nook. Retail sales, at BN stores and BN.com, fell 1.2 percent overall — but same store sales were up, barely, 0.2 percent on “the continued strength of adult coloring books, as well as our Toys & Games, music and gift businesses.” That’s in line […]