USAir Captain Chesley Sullenberger will appear at BEA on Saturday afternoon, speaking from one of the convention’s new floor-based Author Stages and then signing a promotional piece for his forthcoming book from William Morrow. Globe Pequot group publisher Gary Krebs is leaving the company, and will join McGraw-Hill Professional as a group publisher next month. Author of THE MEANING OF NIGHT and THE GLASS OF TIME Michael Cox, 60, died Tuesday morning after a long battle with cancer.
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Granta continues to revamp their web site, now featuring articles and interviews that will not appear in the print magazine. They have finally added RSS feeds as well. Helen Chase, wife of William Chase and a former editor of Chase’s Calendar of Events died after a battle with Parkinson’s Disease. She co-managed Chase’s Calendar from its inception in 1957 until McGraw-Hill acquired it in 1989, and remained involved in the publishing process “right up until the last day of her life.” On April 6 John Mackey will join Oxford University Press as the Barnes & Noble national accounts manager. He […]
Borders' Sales and Margins Continue to Fall, But At Least their Debt Is Smaller
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 […]
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 […]