Reporting preliminary annual results for the fiscal year ending August 31, the UK’s WH Smith said sales fell 5 percent at their High Street stores, at 892 million pounds. Same-store sales on books declined 4 percent, but their gross margin increased, with high street operating profit of 49 million pounds, up 4 percent. The company credited itself with “further progress implementing our strategy to build on our authority as a popular book specialist. We saw good market share performance versus the general retail market with strong market shares in kids books and celebrity autobiographies.”Smith statement Bloomsbury offered a brief “interim […]
International News
Random House Settles Billionaire's Vinegar Lawsuit and Apologizes, Though Author Does Not
Random House has settled a lawsuit brought by UK wine expert Michael Broadbent over the book BILLIONAIRE’S VINEGAR by Benjamin Wallace. The publisher apologized for allegations in the book that, as Broadbent’s attorneys put it, he “had behaved in an unprofessional manner in the way in which he had auctioned some bottles [said to have been owned by Thomas Jefferson] and that his relationship and dealings with Hardy Rodenstock, who discovered the original collection, was suspected of being improper.” The NYT says Random “issued a statement in court accepting that they were not true. Random House also paid an undisclosed […]
Everyone's Got a Frankfurt Press Release
One of the more interesting comes from LibreDigital, which assembled “aggregate statistics on how books are being browsed across retail and social networking sites.” They found that women browse more–comprising 54 percent of viewers, but spending “nearly 70 percent more time browsing books online than men do.” That makes it no surprise that the most popular genre browsed is romance novels. They were followed by books for tweens/teens and business books. On average, browsers looked at 46 pages of each book viewed. CEO Russell Reader says “We know that allowing readers to preview book chapters before buying has a positive […]
Fewer English-Speakers, But the World Still Gathers In Frankfurt
At the official opening press conference for the Frankfurt Book Fair today, show director Juergen Boos noted that “the economic crisis has also left its mark on the Book Fair: particularly our colleagues from the English- speaking world have reduced exhibition space due to economic developments. Eastern European exhibitors are also not present in the same numbers as last year.” But overall exhibition space is down just 2 percent this year, and Boos told the Fair’s own Publishing Perspectives more bluntly, “If you’re talking about an economic crisis, then you have to talk about an economic crisis hitting American and […]
Grove Atlantic Reduces Stake In Atlantic Books, As Allen and Unwin Buys In
Grove Atlantic is selling a portion of its majority stake in the UK’s Atlantic Books, remaining as “a significant minority shareholder,” while Australia’s Allen and Unwin is becoming a “significant” shareholder itself. The company is said to have obtained “substantial” (we don’t know if that’s more or less than significant) new financing as well, in part to help drive the expansion of the Corvus line–all logical developments following Anthony Cheetham’s joining the company earlier this year. Morgan Entrekin will remain on the Atlantic Books board, now joined by Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Ravi Mirchandandi.Bookseller
BN eReader Unveiling Next Week?; Amazon UK Prices Aim at $13.95
Barnes & Noble is holding an event at Chelsea Piers next week, on October 20, billed as “a major event in our company’s history,” so the NYT speculates that’s when they will unveil their own branded ereading device. The Times also “reports” on what Lunch revealed in July: that Barnes & Noble has been negotiating with publishers to give ebook purchasers the right to “lend” their ebooks to other people. (At the time we reported on it, the proposal under discussion would allow “lending” the ebook to one person at a time, up to three or four times, with DRM […]