The press release we cited earlier today regarding changes at the US book club giant was an “erroneous press release issued by a vendor with whom we have an arm’s length relationship,” Bookspan editorial director Sharon Fantera reports. That release has been pulled from PR Newswire. Bookspan underscores that there has been no change in the company’s name (our erroneous inference from the release) or primary strategy. They do operate on the web under the URL BooksOnline.com but the company itself remains Bookspan. While “positive option has made up a small portion of book club membership for years,” (that’s the […]
BAM Has the Best Holiday Comps, As Indies Take A Hit
Books-A-Million reported sales for the nine-week period ending January 3 of $127.5 million, down 2.5 percent from a year ago, and a decline of 5.6 percent on a comparable-store basis. Which actually makes them the top performer among the three biggest book chains. CEO Sandra Cochran says, “Given the challenging retail environment, we were pleased that we could record an improvement in the sales trend we saw during the third quarter. Holiday sales came later than ever this year, reflecting a cautious and price-sensitive consumer. The success of Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series was the big story in books this season. […]
BN.com Gets a President, and More People News
BarnesandNoble.com, which has been operating without a chief executive since Marie Toulantis left the position of ceo in August, is getting a new leader. Still with the lesser title of president, William J. Lynch, Jr. will take over on February 2. He was evp of marketing and general manager of HSN.com, and from 2004 to 2008, he was ceo and co-founder of gifts.com. Barnes & Noble ceo Steve Riggio says, “He has experience in product development, brand marketing, relationship marketing and direct marketing; he has managed both a technology start-up company and run large e-commerce organizations.” Sales fell 11 percent […]
BEA Offers Some Free Attendance to ABA Members; ABA Drops Off-Site Meetings
As we previewed in our BEA piece last month, the convention has been working with the American Booksellers Association (ABA) to help “ease the economic challenges facing booksellers who wish to attend the 2009 trade show” and get more bookseller engagement at the main convention facility. (As we’ve noted in a variety of annual commentaries, the ABA has been pulling away from the center of the action.) Today they announced that BEA will “offer limited free convention attendance to ABA bookstore members.” The ABA’s coo Oren Teicher explains that “member stores will be receiving free passes to the show based […]
2008 Sales: Meyer the New Rowling
Stephenie Meyer sold over 15 million books in the US in 2008, and that’s just in outlets tracked by Nielsen Bookscan, where various editions of her books claimed 9 of the top 50 spots for the year. That total sale is millions of copies more than Rowling’s sales from books in to top last year, when Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows tracked 7,740,000 units, and two other titles on the list gave her sales of 8.6 million copies. (NB, that doesn’t include other backlist editions that did not sell enough to make the top 50.) Meyer occupies 6 of […]
End of An Era: Book Clubs Abandon "Negative Option"
The book club giant comprising Book-of-the-Month Club, Literary Guild, the Doubleday Book Club and all the rest of the former Bookspan–now renamed Booksonline, so I guess you know the new owners’ strategy–has given up the practice of shipping books to members who forget to tell them not to. “No books are shipped to members automatically anymore,” the announcement declares. “In this day and age of commercial overabundance and enlightened consumers armed with access to a boundless pool of information, it just couldn’t fly anymore.” The clubs now operate from www.bookclubs-online.com.Release