For the second time, Barnes & Noble has restructured their agreement to purchase and resell Nook-branded Samsung tablets — with the parties finally admitting the market is much smaller than planned and agreeing to a far more modest goal of selling $10 million worth of units. We had reported discussions on the renegotiation that were mentioned in the bookseller’s March SEC filing. When the partnership was first brokered in 2014, BN agreed to buy at least 1 million devices within a year. An extension gave them until June 30 of this year, but device sales for the bookseller had continued to […]
eNews
Quotable: Bezos Confirms the Known About Stores
It’s making news that Amazon ceo Jeff Bezos confirmed at the company’s annual meeting what is already known about their store rollout, without adding anything in particular: “We’re definitely going to open additional stores, how many we don’t know yet,” he said. “In these early days it’s all about learning, rather than trying to earn a lot of revenue.” Their second store in La Jolla, CA is due to open this summer. As we have noted before, job postings on the company’s site indicate the intention to hire a full management infrastructure to support multiple stores. After all, among recent listings, […]
Goodreads Enters eMail Deals Business
One tried and true digital marketing tool (for now, at least) is email deal newsletters, and now Goodreads is joining the game. Goodreads Deals will alert site members when an ebook on their “want to read” list or an author they follow is discounted. They are also offering daily deals email newsletters in three genre fiction categories, along with “bestsellers,” and they say they plan “to expand into more genres as quickly as we can.” The program starts in the US. In the press release Goodreads ceo Otis Chandler says, “This program is also a powerful new marketing tool for authors and publishers; […]
IDPF Considers Merging Into Larger W3C
After three years of collaboration, the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) announced from BEA that discussions are ongoing about having the organization absorbed into the larger — but more broadly focused — World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The press release says they are exploring “mutual interest in combining their respective organizations to more quickly advance publishing technologies on the Open Web Platform.” Comments will be solicited from the organizations’ members — for a little while — and initial reactions on Tuesday made it clear that some IDPF members may not be ready to give up on an independent organization to become […]
Sales Fall 11 Percent At HarperCollins
News Corporation reported fiscal third quarter earnings after the close of the market on Thursday, with sales falling $44 million at HarperCollins, down 11 percent to $358 million for the period. The impact on EBITDA was sharper, at $36 million, down $20 million from a year ago. The company blamed “lower revenues from American Sniper by Chris Kyle and the Divergent series by Veronica Roth (… combined, those two franchises accounted for the majority of the year-over-year revenue shortfall …), lower e-book sales and negative foreign currency fluctuations,” though they did implement some “cost savings initiatives.” That negative sales trend has been […]
People, Etc.
Angie Giammarino has joined Rodale as senior marketing manager. Previously she was a marketing manager at Macmillan. Carin Siegfried has joined Soho Press as sales manager. Previously she worked with both national accounts and independent retailers at Baker & Taylor. Miriam Keil has joined Chronicle Books as the associate sales manager, specialty markets. She was most recently at First Book. In addition, the specialty markets department has promoted Julia Carvalho to senior sales manager; Samantha Steele to sales manager; and Noëlle Simkins to sales coordinator. Don Linn announced via Twitter that he has “parted ways” with the University of Chicago […]