Rowman & Littlefield announced their 2013 results informally, saying that book and journal sales rose by $4.1 million (or more than 8 percent) to $51 million for the year, helped by their acquisition of Down East Books. Digital products comprised just under 10 percent of publishing sales. They launched an ebookstore within their web site last summer, selling “around 12,000 ebooks” directly. Their distribution companies NBN and NBNInternational had client sales of $79 million in the year. CEO Jed Lyons declared in the announcement: “2013 was our best year since we started the business in 1975.” This time a year […]
Booksellers
Amazon Continues Growing, But Less Than Analysts Guessed; Income Rises At Bertelsmann
Amazon reported fourth quarter sales after the close of the market on Thursday, with sales of $25.6 billion (up 20 percent) and net income of $239 million, or 51 cents a share. (That’s a profit margin of less than 1 percent.) Analysts were expecting slightly higher sales and considerably better earnings, so the stock is down about 9 percent — or roughly $35 a share — in morning trading so far. Before you get carried away, however, note that the stock was up $19 a share yesterday ahead of the earnings. And even at today’s lower levels, shares are still 37 percent […]
Waterstone’s Congratulates Itself As Sales Fell Another 3 Percent
The Bookseller highlights cheerful remarks from Waterstone’s managing director James Daunt that their three-year turnaround plan is “on track” after the company’s results — already dated — through April 2013 were revealed. The silver lining is that sales only fell 3 percent, and their operating losses were also smaller. Daunt adds: “We put together a plan three years ago and we think we have delivered pretty much to the plan. These results are clearly a step forward but we have much more to do.” As you can see, sales at the chain are down 30 percent from their peak 5 years […]
Amazon Grows In Fourth Quarter, and Stock Slides On Lower Than Expected Sales and Earnings
Amazon reported fourth quarter sales after the close of the market on Thursday, with sales of $25.6 billion (up 20 percent) and net income of $239 million, or 51 cents a share. (That’s a profit margin of less than 1 percent.) Analysts were expecting higher sales and earnings, and the stock is down sharply in early after-hours trading but finished down $19 a share — after gaining about the same amount during regular trading, so a wash on the day. North American media sales in the quarter were $3.5 billion, up 21 percent, and international media sales were up only […]
Soft Holiday Sales for Barnes & Noble Are Still An “Improvement” As Digital Content Falls Again
Barnes & Noble followed up their weak second quarter sales report with some improvement over the following 9-week holiday sales period (through December 28): Same-store sales at the BN superstores and BN.com declined 6.6 percent overall, and 5.5 percent on a comparable-sales basis, at $1.1 billion. But nearly all of the retail decline was due to weaker sales of Nook devices and accessories; “core” store sales were “essentially flat”, down 0.2 percent compared to last year. General book sales probably declined more, since the company points to “strong increases in our juvenile, gift and toys & games categories.” But the […]
Yet Another Weak Quarter for Books-A-Million
Hours after Barnes & Noble reported their second quarter financial results, Books-A-Million did the same Tuesday afternoon for its third quarter following the close of the market. Sales for the quarter ending November 2 fell 3.5 percent to $100.5 million. Same-store sales declined further, down 9.2 percent — and they had another big net loss of $7.1 million, or 47 cents per share (compared to a loss of $2.7 million a year ago). CEO Terrance Finley said in the release: “Our third quarter results are an improvement over the very difficult comparisons in the first half of the year. Comparable […]