Shares in Barnes & Noble touched all-time lows in Tuesday’s trading with the company’s market cap below $800 million after dropping almost 6 percent–and the decline has continued in early trading today. On Thursday the retailer will report quarterly earnings. Their guidance forecast a loss of 10 cents to 15 cents a share, but analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters expect a loss of 16 cents per share, on sales of $1.17 billion. BAMM reports on Friday, and Borders releases results on Tuesday, November 25 after the market closes. At current prices, the market value of Barnes & Noble, Borders, Books-a-Million […]
UK Sales Down Over 4 Percent
Even as holiday sales volume picks up in the UK, as compared to last year sales are consistently down 4 percent or more. According to Nielsen Bookscan figures, total expenditures for the four weeks ending November 15 were down 4.1 percent, while unit sales declined 4.5 percent. For the recent week by itself, total spending dropped 3.9 percent compared to last year.Bookseller
People
At Picador, David Rogers and Sam Douglas have both been promoted to editor. Sam worked at Henry Holt for two years before joining Picador in April 2006. Among his titles at Picador are Ron Rash’s Chemistry and Other Stories, a PEN Faulkner finalist, and Beth Helms’ Dervishes, a Sargent First Novel Prize finalist, as well as a broad range of fiction and nonfiction reprints. Sarah Shumway has joined the Katherine Tegen Books imprint at Harper Children’s as senior editor, acquiring primarily middle-grade and YA fiction. She had been at Dutton Children’s. Don Weise has been named publisher of Alyson Books. […]
More on Cellphone Bar-Code Apps
On a private mailing list I belong to there was considerable discussion of the bar-code-reading apps for the new T-Mobile phone that is first to use Google’s Android operating system. One looks at a bar code and searches Google Book Search; another, called Shop Savvy, looks at the bar code through the built-in camera and “and up pops the cheapest price on the product as well as reviews from people who have purchased the product,” so it will present book prices (among other things) from a variety of sites. Yesterday on NPR’s All Tech Considered feature, they said the software […]
Ricci Takes GG as Hage Is Shut Out; Costa Gives Barry Second Chance
Nino Ricci won Canada’s Governor General’s award for fiction for his just-published novel ORIGIN OF SPECIES, and journalist Christie Blatchford won the non-fiction award for her book FIFTEEN DAYS: Stories of Bravery, Friendship, Life and Death from Inside the New Canadian Army. (Both titles were edited by Doubleday Canada Editorial Director Martha Kanya-Forstner.) Rawi Hage’s COCKROACH was the only work of fiction nominated for all three of Canada’s top fiction prizes, but failed to win any of the top honors. Click below for all 14 Governor General winners (with prizes for writing in both English and French).CBC In the UK, […]
Huckabee's Campaign Begins with A Book
Has the 2012 election season started? Mike Huckabee’s book DO THE RIGHT THING: Inside the Movement That’s Bringing Common Sense Back to America lands today, and most media interprets the book as the first part of an effort to build an Obama-esque movement among young conservatives for the next election. Time magazine leads: “in terms of payback, it will not disappoint. At once a memoir of his campaign, a treatise on the ills of the Republican Party and a blueprint for his own political future, Do the Right Thing is filled with sharp words for his fellow Republicans who frustrated […]