AAP Rekindled Just to finish up our coverage of the remarks by Steve Kessel of Amazon at yesterday’s AAP meeting, he continued to evade providing much in the way of substantive details to Richard Sarnoff’s questions. One implied message was don’t expect any big physical changes in the Kindle any time soon: “We’re pretty focused on the current iteration of Kindle.” Their focus is on “getting back in stock” with the devices and “increasing the selection beyond the 100,000 or so books that are available today.” He had “no comment specifically” on Sarnoff’s queries about things like a better screen, […]
Lunch for Wednesday, March 5
From the AAP Annual Meeting Borders CEO George Jones led off the APP’s meeting this morning, saying that early indications from their new concept store are encouraging. Though the store carries twenty percent fewer titles than a typical superstore, “the number of titles selling has doubled” according to Jones, who calls the change “dramatic.” The store has only been open two and half weeks, but Jones says “sales have been way better than expectations.” Jones called the current coop system “crazy,” noting they have “16,000 individual co-op agreements” and “a lot of endcaps make so sense” in merchandising to readers. […]
Lunch for Tuesday, March 4
Signals From BN on “Recessionary Pressure” Barnes & Noble stores reported preliminary results for fiscal 2007 after the close of the market yesterday and warned that “the company believes that recessionary pressures in this uncertain economic environment will make 2008 an especially challenging retail year.” They added, “the company’s post-holiday sales trends have continued into the first quarter of 2008 and the bookselling environment remains very competitive.… Given this environment, the company is focusing its efforts on managing its expenses and working capital with a realistic view of market conditions, as well as continuing to refine its marketing strategies and […]
Lunch for Monday, March 3
Rinaldi Leaves Bloomsbury Richard Charkin announced today, “It is with enormous regret that I have to let you know that Karen Rinaldi, President of Bloomsbury USA, has accepted a very senior and interesting post at Rodale Books. Karen has been the heart and soul of one of the most innovative and successful publishing companies in the USA. She has been instrumental in building a great list of books, a great team of people and a great reputation for Bloomsbury. We shall all miss her enormously but she has left a superb legacy on which we can build and for that […]
Lunch Weekly for Monday, March 3
Deal Reports Just e-mail to deals@PublishersMarketplace if you aren’t using the online form linked below. Report a deal using the online form The Key As usual, the handy key to our Lunch deal categories. While all reports are always welcome, those that include a category will generally receive a higher listing when it comes time to put them all together. “nice deal” $1 – $49,000 “very nice deal” $50,000 – $99,000 “good deal” $100,000 – $250,000 “significant deal” $251,000 – $499,000 “major deal” $500,000 and up FICTION Debut Game designer/scriptwriter Jonathan Howard’s JOHANNES CABAL, in which a snob obsessed […]
Lunch for Friday, February 29
Oprah Sells Tolle at Record Pace Following Oprah’s enthusiastic endorsement Eckhart Tolle’s A NEW EARTH has added another 3.45 million copies in print, “the record for the most copies ever shipped by Penguin Group USA in a four-week period.” That’s on top of an initial shipment of 776,000 copies in advance of the Oprah announcement. BN buyer Jules Herbert says “for the first four weeks on sale [it] is our bestselling Oprah’s Book Club title.” The publisher says over 500,000 people have registered for the 10-week webinar that begins next Monday night. LAT Nominees The paper announced the nominees for […]