Bankrupt Friday Project May Go to Harper UK UK blog-to-book publisher The Friday Project filed for the UK equivalent of bankruptcy on February 25. The company said when filing “the group now has insufficient funds to continue to trade and the directors have a responsibility not to allow the group to incur further liabilities where there is significant uncertainty about the group’s ability to meet their liabilities as they fall due.” The company indicated that “a delay in raising new funds last year led to a disruption in publishing books in the run-up to Christmas, which in turn led to […]

NBCC Award Winners Fiction Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao Autobiography Edwidge Danticat, Brother, I’m Dying Biography Tim Jeal, Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa’s Greatest Explorer General Nonfiction Harriet Washington, Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present Criticism Alex Ross, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century Poetry Mary Jo Bang, Elegy April Book Sense The new Book Sense recommendations have been posted: 1. GIRLS IN TRUCKS, by Katie Crouch UNACCUSTOMED EARTH, by Jhumpa Lahiri THE OUTCAST, by Sadie Jones BELONG TO ME, by […]

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, […]

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. […]

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 […]