-
BAM!’s Stores In Place
When the 2011 holiday selling season begins in earnest around Thanksgiving, Books-A-Million will have more than 250 stores open as it completes the rebranding and re-opening of stores it took over from Borders. BAM! will move into 41 former Borders locations by mid-November, an expansion that will put the country’s second largest bookstore chain in eight new states—Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, New Hampshire, New York, South Dakota, and Wisconsin—and give the retailer a presence in a total of 31 states. It is also closing 21 outlets.
-
Digital Catalogues Take Over
Going from paper to electronic catalogues has become one of the biggest upheavals in the way independent bookstores buy, on a par with cutbacks in field sales reps. “I don’t think our choice is between paper and electronic catalogues,” says Carole Horne, general manager of Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, Mass., who views digital catalogues as a given. “Frankly, I like electronic catalogues. They save me time, and they save paper.” More importantly, they save publishers on printing and mailing costs.
-
BAM Announces Plan for 41 New Stores
Beginning October 28 and continuing through mid-November BAM! will open a total of 41 new stores.
-
St. Mark's Bookshop Gets Rejection from Landlord, Looks Ahead
St. Mark's Bookshop, which has recently been in discussion over a rent reduction with its landlord, Cooper Union, was told yesterday that they would not be granted that cost cut.
-
SCIBA Sees Bounce in Bookseller, Librarian Support
Although the exhibit space was considerably smaller than in past years at the Southern California Independent Booksellers Association trade show and Authors Feast at the Long Beach Hilton on October 22, an increase in bookseller and librarian attendance helped offset the drop in publisher support to the organization.
-
Skylight Books Looking for Customer Support
During cocktail hour at this weekend's SCIBA meeting, Skylight Books’ owner Kerry Slattery disclosed that she’ll be e-mailing customers in the next couple of weeks to notify them that the store needs their support and mobilization to keep Skylight open.
-
Is There a Bookstore of the Future?
At the New England Independent Booksellers Association annual fall conference earlier this month, booksellers and publishers grappled not just with the question of what bricks-and-mortar bookstores will look like in the future, but how long they will continue to exist.
-
NEIBA Gets Back to Children's Bookselling Basics
This year's New England Independent Booksellers Association fall conference, held in Providence, R.I., from October 12–14, offered a chance for children's booksellers to get a refresher on basics like handselling and to meet authors like Loren Long, Ally Condie, and Brian Selznick.
-
Authors Wow GLiBA Booksellers
For many GLIBA booksellers attending this year's show in Dearborn, Mich., the roster of 68 authors – especially the children's book authors – just couldn't get any better.
-
Linden Tree On the Move
Shortly after Jill Curcio and Dianne Edmonds bought Linden Tree Books in Los Altos, Calif., in the summer of 2010, the building that housed their store was sold. So, at the beginning of October, the pair moved the store across the street, after an inventory reduction sale.
-
Borders Had Meager September Sales; Customers Get More Time to Opt Out
Revenue from Borders’s going-out-of business sales slowed to a trickle in September, with the company reporting sales of just $3.3 million in the August 28-September 24 period. The last of Borders stores closed during the period.
-
Continental Sales: Not Your Father's Rep Group
In the 10 years since Terry Wybel, formed Continental Sales, Inc., Wybel estimates that 75% of individual commission rep groups have gone out of business, but CSI, which will introduce French children’s book publisher Auzou Éditions to the U.S. market next year, has posted double-digit gains in the last few years.
-
NEIBA Tackles the Future
This year’s New England Independent Booksellers Association fall conference, held at the Rhode Island Convention Center in Providence, R.I., from October 12-14, had a slight bump in attendance with more than 400 attendees for the organization’s first mid-week show.
-
Bookstore Sales Jumped in August
Bookstore sales jumped 11.8% in August, to $2.44 billion, an increase that likely reflects strong sales of books and other items through college bookstores and the going-out-of-business sales at Borders.
-
The Spirit of St. Louis Bookstores
What a difference nine months can make. St. Louis, Mo.’s booksellers are feeling a confidence and optimism these days that didn’t exist in February, when four independent booksellers—Left Bank Books, Subterranean Books, Pudd’nhead Books, and Main Street Books—formed the St. Louis Independent Bookstore Alliance (SLIBA) in an effort to keep Subterranean from going out of business.
-
Obituary: Nicky Salan, 1934-2011
San Francisco bookseller Necia (“Nicky”) Salan, a founding mother of both the Association of Booksellers for Children (now the ABC Children’s Group at the ABA) and the Northern California Children’s Booksellers Association, died at home after a long illness on Monday, October 10. She was 77 years old. The bookstore she founded, Cover to Cover Booksellers in San Francisco, grew out of her love for children’s literature and small, Saturday sales of children’s literature from her home.
-
Borders: More Troubles with IP Sale
After what turned out to be a minor hiccup when it looked as if Barnes & Noble’s purchase of Borders’s intellectual property assets might founder because of Judge Martin Glenn’s concerns over privacy issues, Borders and the Creditors’ Committee together with the consumer privacy ombudsman Michael St. Patrick Baxter got things back on track within a matter of days, and it was approved late last month. Now new concerns have arisen about how B&N is meeting the sale proviso to give customers the ability to opt out.
-
College Bookstores in Dynamic Times
The digital transition and sputtering economy are not only bringing changes to general bookstores, but to college bookstores as well. College stores are dealing with a changed landscape of their own: more textbook choices that now include rentals and digital texts; trade book sections with sales declines; and now that college apparel, or spirit wear, has become a fashion statement, other retailers, including Victoria’s Secret, are getting in on the action.
-
Three Questions for a Children's Bookseller: Meghan Goel
Meghan Goel, children’s book buyer at BookPeople in Austin, Tex., cues us in to the books she (and her customers) are looking forward to this season.
-
Kids' Books Front and Center at MPIBA
Given that children’s book buyer Meghan Goel of BookPeople in Austin, Tex., is president of the Mountains and Plains Independent Booksellers Association and that children’s books have been a bright spot for many stores this year, children’s authors were front and center at last weekend’s MPIBA trade show.
Browse archive by date:
