Amazon Will Pay French Fine, and Continue to Discount Books Per our speculation when first noting that a French court would fine Amazon a mighty one thousand euros a day for the sin of exceeding limits on discounting books, the company announced yesterday that it would pay the fines and continue the discounts rather than give in. Director of the French unit Xavier Garambois says, “We are determined to follow every avenue available to us to overturn this law.” Jeff Bezos invited French customers to sign an online petition of support for their appeal and by last night 120,000 people […]

Zagat for Sale The Zagats have hired Goldman Sachs to look for a buyer for their company. The NYT says they sold 5.5 million printed guides last year and claim over 1.5 million registered users at their web site. “Zagat has tried to build its online business, but it has largely remained a paid subscription service, preventing it from becoming a magnet for users and advertisers.” When they sold a stake in the company in 2000, it was valued at $100 million. Now, the NYT guesses, “it is unclear how large a price Zagat will attract. While the company is […]

Borders Beats Competitors with Increased Holiday Comps (but Not Increased Earnings); Flat Holidays at BAM Breaking a longstanding pattern, Borders is the only of the three big bookselling chains to report increased same-store sales for the holiday period. Same-store superstore sales of $755.4 million were up 2.4 percent in the nine-week holiday sales period, “as both customer transaction count and average ticket increased.” Music was down at Borders as well as at BN, with the segment declining 13 percent. They say that without music, their same-store superstore sales rose 4.3 percent, and that books as a category were up 3.4 […]

Soft Holiday Comps for BN, as Earnings Estimate Is Reduced Same-store sales at Barnes & Noble declined 0.4 percent for the the nine-week holiday period from November 4, 2007 to January 5, 2008, registering $1.2 billion overall. But book sales were somewhat stronger — the company says “sales of recorded music were significantly below forecast,” and excluding music same-store sales rose 0.8 percent. For the 48 weeks of the fiscal year so far, same-store sales (including the summer’s Potter bump) are up 2 percent, with total store sales of $4.3 billion. BN.com sales rose almost 11 percent during the holidays, […]

Big Cuts at McGraw-Hill Yesterday McGraw-Hill announced restructuring in “a limited number of business operations” that includes the elimination of over 600 jobs. McGraw-Hill Education is one of the hardest-hit units, with a $16.3 million pre-tax restructuring charge. About half of the job cuts will come from this division. The Higher Education, Professional and International Group “has taken steps to consolidate certain sales, editorial, marketing and administrative functions, primarily in our international locations, to better address new and existing revenue streams for textbooks, facilitate its strategic shift toward increased investments in digital and custom products, and enable greater efficiencies. The […]