Per our report yesterday that additional executives were leaving Borders beyond the two names disclosed in Monday’s SEC filing, the WSJ reports that the recent high-level job reductions also include svp for business development Larry Norton, svp for marketing Bill Dandy, and vp of real estate Tony Grant. Separately, anonymous Borders employees say via an online message board that three of five regional vice presidents were also let go. They report that in a conference call among general managers, employees were told the store network has been rezoned into just two regions. The NYT adds that publishers indicate Borders executives […]
19 of Top 50 USA Today Bestsellers Sold More eBooks than Print Versions
USA Today has analyzed the bestseller list they will publish in the paper tomorrow, reflecting sales in the unusual post-Christmas week. Launched by millions of newly-gifted devices with e-reading capability and assisted by lousy weather in many parts of the country, all six of top bestsellers for the week sold more ebooks than print books, as did 19 of the top 50 titles. USA Today notes that “tt’s the first time the top-50 list has had more than two titles in which the e-version outsold print.” (Many publishers have indicated that their biggest titles were already selling anywhere from 20 […]
Waterstone’s Parent HMV Reports Terrible Holiday Following UK Snow
Snowstorms in the UK dampened holiday sales at many outlets, and the HMV was the first of the big retailers to warn markets. Their Waterstone’s unit did well on a relative basis, with same-store sales for the 10-week holiday period declining 2.1 percent. (As we noted in December, Waterstone’s comps were down 3.2 percent for the first six months of the year, and the chain has been in “turnaround” mode since at least 2005.) HMV stores fared far worse, falling 13.6 percent on a same-store basis, and 11.9 percent overall in the 10-week period. HMV warned markets that it will […]
People, Costa Winners, and More
Mary Ellen O’Neill is joining Workman Publishing as a senior editor. Most recently she was publisher of Collins Lifestyle and editorial director of cookbooks/executive editor at Morrow. Cynthia Zigmund is now representing authors exclusively through her own company, Second City Publishing Services. Tamson Weston has left Disney-Hyperion to found Tamson Weston Books, an editorial consultancy. She will be working with agents and publishers to develop book projects and help new authors fine-tune manuscripts, proposals and picture book dummies. As of February Susan Sandérus will join Bruna in the Netherlands as commissioning editor. She has been at Fontein Publishers and worked […]
The Year In Sales: Print Sales Decline Less Than eBooks Gained, As Retail Market Share Is Hit
Many in the trade were feeling relatively positive about business trends at the end of the year until the Borders news broke. For the 51 weeks of book sales, through Sunday, December 26, print book sales as tracked by Nielsen BookScan were down 4.4 percent overall. (The comparable reporting period from 2009 ran through December 27.) With ebook sales at the major reporting houses rising from roughly 3 percent a year ago to approximately 9 percent or more in dollars (and likely even more by units) by the end of this year it’s likely that the decline in print sales […]
eNews and More: FiledBy Works With Ingram; Johnson eBook; More Kindle Tablet Apps; and Kaplan’s Free Promotion
FiledBy is providing author-generated book information to the Ingram Content Group to populate their title databases including iPage. As part of the agreement, Ingram will also stream book and author data to FiledBy for inclusion on their website. Ingram Chief Content Officer Phil Ollila says, “Our work with FiledBy will give us an additional source to obtain the most up-to-date and accurate bibliographic data for books in our database.” Putnam has released Spencer Johnson’s longtime bestseller Who Moved My Cheese?, first published in 1998, as an ebook today. Amazon confirmed today that they will support all of those new Android […]