Fourth quarter sales at Borders were $1.1 billion overall, down 12.9 percent from a year ago. The superstores comprised $816.1 million, down 15.3 percent on a same-store sales basis (and book comps were down 11.7 percent), and 14.8 percent overall. Waldenbooks accounted for $195.6 million in sales, down a more modest 4.7 percent on a same-store basis, and down 14.3 percent overall. International sales added $43.2 million, and Borders.com did $26.4 million in business. The company had net writedowns totaling $34.9 million in the quarter. Goodwill impairment was the largest charge, followed by store closures and severance costs. Adjusted income […]
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What Should BEA Do?
BEA show director responds to some of the chatter (and complaints) about the recently-announced decision to keep BEA in New York and change to a mid-week rather than a weekend show. “This fall we went through a process of recreating the event as if there never had been a BEA before… The location seemed like an easy choice, you’d base it in the capital of the publishing world, just like the biggest gaming show is in Vegas and the auto show is in Detroit.” As for dates, “after booksellers, the majority of attendees are professionals and they are not typically […]
Washington Post to Drop Book World
As the NBCC first reported on their blog, the Washington Post will drop its standalone book review section: “The last issue of Book World in print will be the February 15, 2009 issue. Thereafter, content will be split between the Outlook section and Style & Arts on Sundays. Daily book reviews in Style will continue. The promise is that there will be four additional broadsheet pages in Outlook for book coverage and one additional page in Style & Arts. That’s an equivalent of 12 tabloid pages. (Book World is 16 pages.) Jonathan Yardley’s reviews will appear in Outlook. Michael Dirda’s […]
Sales Flat at Rodale
As a private company, Rodale’s annual press release about their performance traditionally celebrates all the things that went well and little else. Today the company says that sales for 2008 were essentially flat, down 0.5 percent from the year before (when sales were $632 million). In the books division, they celebrate sales of “more than 1.5 million copies of Eat This, Not That! and more than 1.3 million copies of Flat Belly Diet!” The company says “Rodale Books saw a 3.5 percent increase across both trade and direct channels” and they claim that “revenues from books sold online increased 47 […]
Having Asked for Consumer Fair, Canadian Publishers Start to Snub New Reed Effort
Reed Exhibitions created their proposal for a consumer book fair in Toronto in the fall in response to publisher requests (and complaints about the inefficacy of Book Expo Canada). But now Random House Canada has announced that they are disappointed in the plans for the new fair and will not participate. Spokesperson Tracy Turriff says in a statement, “We attended a presentation about the plans for the show, and a number of challenges were raised, including basic elements like the venue and timing for the show. We are concerned that it will be difficult for this show to achieve success […]
Layoffs Hit Big University Presses
Cambridge University Press is laying off almost 160 people in the UK. Chief executive Stephen Bourne says: “We know that this is an incredibly difficult time for those staff that are affected and we will be doing all we can to support them through these changes.” He added, “This has been a very hard decision to make. There are parts of the business doing very well and a lot of them are overseas but two parts are not and one is simply not viable in the long term.” Hardest hit is their Cambridge Printing Services unit, where 133 jobs are […]