Booksource to Pull Back from Retail St. Louis wholesaler Booksource will stop servicing retailers by the end of the year — an $11 million business — and will focus on supplying books to schools. (The company also owns Peaceable Kingdom Press.) Barnes & Noble has been the company’s largest retail customer, but president Neil Jaffe says, “Buying Random House’s books and selling them to Barnes & Noble isn’t very profitable.” The St. Louis Post Dispatch indicates, “Booksource has reduced its staff by about a dozen and has plans for further cutbacks before the end of the year. As part of […]

NBAs As you probably know, the National Book Awards were presented last night, to: Fiction Lily Tuck, THE NEWS FROM PARAGUAY (Harper) Nonfiction Kevin Boyle, ARC OF JUSTICE: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age (Holt) Young People’s Literature Pete Hautman, GODLESS (Simon & Schuster) Poetry Jean Valentine, DOOR IN THE MOUNTAIN: New and Collected Poems, 1965-2003 (Wesleyan University Press) Having read way too many articles about the same, not particularly news-filled event, our preferred version is in the Washington Post. The Washington-focused lead observes, “A history professor from Ohio beat the collective efforts of […]

Sales Down at Borders, Though BAM Move Past Stormy Days Rather as expected, Borders turned in a bad third quarter. Comparable superstore sales were down 1.6 percent from a year ago, registering $564 million. Same-store Walden sales fell 4.1 percent, at $151 million overall, and the international segment continues to post rapid growth, now up to $119 million in sales for the quarter. Overall, the company had a net loss of $1.5 million for the quarter, versus a profit of $0.5 million a year ago. CEO Greg Josefowicz blames the poor results on “sluggish store traffic and a slowdown in […]

Random Gets A New Client Random House Distribution Services will take over back-office functions for Candlewick Press starting April 1, 2005, moving over from Penguin Group. Candlewick has been with Penguin since their start in 1992. Candlewick will continue to be responsible for sales, and they are staying with Penguin Canada as their Canadian distributor. BN.com Ups Ante on Free Shipping With sales sliding at BN.com, the company has taken a page from their competitor’s playbook with today’s announcement of “fast & free delivery.” The program promises receipt of orders within three business days after shipping, with no shipping charge […]

Barnes & Noble’s Q3 Report Sends Bad Tidings to Publishers Same-store sales inched up 0.9 percent in the third quarter at Barnes & Noble’s superstores, for a total of $895 million, as B. Dalton continues to fade away, down to $35.9 million for the quarter (with comparable store sales sliding 3.3 percent). And at BN.com, pro-forma sales dropped 8 percent, to $91.8 million. The headline on most third-party accounts, however, is that profits dropped to $7.6 million, down from $10.2 million a year ago. At the BN superstores alone, operating profit fell to $12 million, from $15 million a year […]

Penguin UK Postpones Date for Full Warehouse Operations; “Reps are Acknowledging that Christmas will be Terrible” Publishing News is starting to add some teeth to their coverage of the ongoing Penguin UK warehouse story. One “senior figure” says “Reps are acknowledging that Christmas will be terrible, but they are fearful of admitting it.” Another remarks: “They’ll have the new Jamie Oliver on the van, but not core fiction.” Penguin itself is now officially admitting that the new fully automated warehouse will not be, um, fully automated, until next March “at the earliest” (i.e. later than that). Out of one side […]