To celebrate the spring equinox, Shelf Awareness is taking a long weekend and will return on Monday.

Also, today's issue was late in order to include information from Barnes & Noble and Borders. Our apologies!

See you next week!

 

Borders Group's new strategic plan, reflecting the thinking of CEO George Jones, who joined the company last year, puts an emphasis on Borders's U.S. superstores, online selling, new technology as well as merchandising and marketing initiatives. Under the plan, Borders aims to sell most of its international stores; end its outsourcing of online sales to Amazon.com; close nearly half of its Walden stores; offer digital products, digital downloading and personal publishing opportunities in stores and online; and build a proprietary publishing operation, among other things.

"We need to reinvent our business to exploit the rapid changes taking place in how consumers access information and entertainment," Jones said in a statement. "Our ultimate goal is to make Borders a vital community gathering place where people come together to see, touch, interact and learn--online and in-store. . . . We have an opportunity within our domestic superstore business to build on our key assets--a powerful brand, a strong network of store locations, knowledgeable employees and nearly 17 million loyal members of our Borders Rewards program who love our superstores."

With the changes, the company will more broadly resemble archrival Barnes & Noble, which has no stores abroad, a strong e-commerce site and a proprietary publishing program that makes some traditional publishers nervous.

Among the elements of the Borders plan:

International

The company will "explore strategic alternatives," i.e., try to sell, most of its international operations, including its stores in the U.K. (Books etc., too), Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. The anticipated sales will not include franchised operations in Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates, the Paperchase stationery business, Borders's Puerto Rico stores or the Singapore store, which will be used to support franchise operations, which the company wants to expand. It commented: "The franchise model requires little capital investment from Borders Group but yields high profit and growth opportunities."

Waldenbooks

During 2006, Borders closed 124 Waldenbooks Specialty Retail stores, leaving it with 546 Walden stores. During the next two years, Borders intends to close another 250 "under-performing" Walden stores, which will leave about 300 by the end of 2008. By comparison, at its height Waldenbooks had well over 1,000 outlets across the country.

Online operations

Borders is developing its own e-commerce Web site, which it aims to launch early next year. Among other things, Borders wants to use the site to extend in-store programs to the Web and allow customers to use existing in-store Borders Search computers for special ordering. In addition, operating its own Web site will "allow the company to enable key partnerships that will build incremental revenues and margins and facilitate other technology and cross-channel opportunities."

Superstores

Borders is working on a new store prototype, the first of which should open early next year. Elements of the new store design, which aims to "bring together destination businesses, technology and experiential elements," will be adapted to existing stores.

Borders will add digital centers in stores that will offer products such as audiobooks, e-books and MP3 players as well as services such as downloading and personal publishing. Digital downloading will be available both online and in stores. Borders is talking with potential partners about digital offerings.

The company will designate "destination businesses" in lifestyle and other categories. Borders plans to feature local and regional titles "on a store-by-store basis." In all stores, the company is "maximizing key items, impulse items, feature tables, end caps and queue lines" as well as "improving merchandising, assortment planning, replenishment and supply chain effectiveness."

The company will open several freestanding Paperchase stores in the U.S. this year. It called the Paperchase stationery company and Seattle's Best Coffee businesses "successful at driving same-store sales increases in their categories and . . . a solid return on investment."

Borders Rewards

Borders hopes to increase revenue through partnerships with other organizations as well as by using customer data to tailor promotions to individual members. The company will soon institute modifications "to improve the profitability" of the loyalty program, which has nearly 17 million members.

Publishing

"To distinguish the Borders brand and drive high margin sales," Borders has already begun negotiating to publish titles by "celebrities, undiscovered talents and others" that would be exclusive to Borders. The company imagines that it can make many of the titles bestsellers.

According to today's Wall Street Journal, Borders is talking with "heads of various Hollywood talent agencies." CEO George Jones, who once was president of worldwide licensing and studio stores at Warner Bros., told the paper, "There are a lot of great writers writing for motion pictures and TV. Why not take the concepts offered in good scripts and make them into a novel?"

Apparently the first fruit of these conversations is Slip and Fall, a thriller by TV writer Nick Santora that will be published on June 1.
 

Barnes & Noble today offered more information about results for the fourth quarter and full year. Earlier this month, it announced sales and other news (Shelf Awareness, March 5).

Preliminary net earnings in the fourth quarter ended February 3 rose 3% to $127 million and preliminary net earnings for the full year rose 3% to $150.8 million. It reaffirmed its prediction of a first quarter loss of eight to 12 cents a share.

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In the fourth quarter ended February 3, Borders sales rose 2.9% to $1.5 billion and the net loss was $73.6 million compared to net income of $119.1 million in the fourth quarter of 2005. For the full fiscal year, sales rose 0.8% to $4.06 billion and the net loss was $151.3 million compared to net income of $101 million in 2005.

Sales at U.S. superstores rose 2.3% to $960.3 million in the fourth quarter. Sales at stores open at least a year fell 2.8% in the quarter and fell 2.2% for the full year. The company opened 13 Borders stores during the year, ending with 499.

Waldenbooks sales dropped 8.3% to $286.4 million in the quarter and fell 10.9% to $663.9 million for the year. Sales at stores open at least a year fell 6.2% in the quarter and 7.5% for the year.

International sales in the quarter rose 22.5% to $249.6 million and for the full year rose 12.8% to $650 million. Measured in local currencies, sales at international stores open at least a year rose 0.3% in the quarter and 0.4% for the year. The company noted that international results were affected by "a challenging retail environment in the U.K., which improved somewhat in the fourth quarter." At the end of the fiscal year, the company had 68 stores outside the U.S., the majority in the U.K.

CEO George Jones commented, "Clearly our 2006 results were disappointing, as our company and the industry as a whole continued to face a challenging environment."

Borders announced that it will no longer issue guidance on future sales or earnings or comment on estimates made by analysts or others--an approach that some in business such as Warren Buffett have encouraged.

Nonetheless the company did describe 2007 as "a year of transforming and stabilizing--but not significantly improving--financial performance. Through execution of its strategic plan, management anticipates returning to earnings per share growth in 2008, and continued growth beyond that year."

The New England Independent Booksellers Association is moving its fall trade show forward by a day, so that it will now run Thursday-Saturday, September 27-29. The show will still be held in Providence, R.I.

Thursday's schedule will include some traditional Friday events: educational sessions, the industry lunch and children's dinner. Friday will include an author breakfast, the annual meeting, morning educational sessions and the trade show, which starts at 11 a.m. Saturday will be devoted to an author breakfast and the trade show.

In a letter to members, NEIBA executive director Steve Fischer noted that the change in days, based in part on surveys of last year's show attendees, will "accomplish two important goals: First, it will concentrate educational programming in the first day and a half. Second, it means much less educational time running simultaneously and competing with show exhibition hours."

Under the traditional schedule, the trade show was held the second and third day of the event. Now the show floor opens later in the morning on Friday, the second day. Fischer emphasized that exhibitors will be able to set up on Thursday afternoon and will have access to the trade show floor as early as 6 a.m. on Friday.

"We heard from booksellers and exhibitors about the overlap," Fischer told Shelf Awareness. "It sometimes seems like a good idea to have the floor open and hold educational sessions simultaneously, but from a practical point of view, they took away from each." He predicted that many attendees would be happy, too, not to have the show take place on Sunday.

Fischer added that the moveable feast is being replaced by a Friday author reception modeled on the one held at the two ABA Winter Institutes, where booksellers go from table to table and visit with authors and publishers.  

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On April 4, Barnes & Noble opens a new store in the Francis Scott Key Mall at 5500 Buckeystown Pike, Frederick, Md. 

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Mary McCarthy, who resigned last week as v-p and COO of the Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops, Milwaukee, Wis., may be reached at marymccarthy1230@yahoo.com.

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Congratulations to Gene Ambaum of Unshelved, named by Library Journal as one of its 2007 Movers & Shakers. Besides his great artwork, Gene is, as a colleague put it, "an outstanding teen librarian, beloved by patrons and coworkers, who brings a freshness to everything we do."

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Effective early next month, Sue Miller is joining Chelsea Green Publishing Co. as New England and Mid-Atlantic sales manager. She replaces Allison Lennox, who is joining the company’s marketing department to book and publicize author events and tours.

Miller spent five years at Prentice Hall as a higher education sales rep and during 13 years with Random House was a national accounts manager, regional sales manager and field rep. Most recently, she volunteered in Sri Lanka to help in tsunami relief, working for International Humanitarian Assistance and Habitat for Humanity. She won the 2005 Humanitarian/Patron Award for her service by the Sri Jinananda Children's Home.

In a statement, Chelsea Green publisher Margo Baldwin said that Miller's "sterling reputation, plus her experience in the trade and abroad, make her the ideal fit to support our key customers in the Eastern United States."

 

Today the Ellen DeGeneres Show's lineup includes Lee and Bob Woodruff, authors of the memoir In an Instant: A Family's Journey of Love and Healing (Random House, $25.95, 9781400066674/1400066670).

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Today the Rachael Ray Show hears from Dennie Hughes, USA Weekend "RelationTips" columnist and author of Dateworthy (Rodale Books, $14.95, 9781594860751/1594860750).

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Today on NPR's On Point: Steven Drobny, author of Inside the House of Money: Top Hedge Fund Traders on Profiting in the Global Markets (Wiley, $29.95, 9780471794479/0471794473).

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Today on KCRW's Bookworm: Colum McCann, author of Zoli (Random House, $24.95, 9781400063727/1400063728). As the show describes it: "Zoli, a Romani poet, is the latest heroine in Colum McCann's ongoing quest to understand the function of art. Gypsy women are not supposed to be taught to read and write. What's more, because Zoli's poetry is thought to betray her people, they exile her. Can an artist, as a rebel, have a home? Further, does art have a home?"

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Tomorrow on Fox & Friends: hotelier Jonathan M. Tisch discusses his new book, Chocolates on the Pillow Aren't Enough: Reinventing the Customer Experience (Wiley, $26.95, 9780470043554/0470043555).

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Tomorrow on the Charlie Rose Show: actor Kirk Douglas promotes Let's Face It: 90 Years of Living, Loving, and Learning (Wiley, $22.95, 9780470084694/0470084693).

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Tomorrow the Tonight Show with Jay Leno scores an appearance with former NFL star and sports commentator Terry Bradshaw, author of Keep it Simple (Pocket, $7.99, 9780743417310/0743417313) and It's Only a Game (Pocket, $7.99, 9780743417297/0743417291).

Book TV airs on C-Span 2 from 8 a.m. Saturday to 8 a.m. Monday and focuses on political and historical books as well as the book industry. The following are highlights for this coming weekend. For more information, go to Book TV's Web site.

Saturday, March 24

6 p.m. Encore Booknotes. In a segment first aired in 1993, Peter Skerry, professor of political science at Boston College and a fellow at the Brookings Institution, talked about his book Mexican-Americans: The Ambivalent Minority (Harvard University Press, $15.95, 9780674572621/0674572629).

9 p.m. After Words. John Lehman, former Secretary of the Navy and member of the 9/11 Commission and currently chairman of J.F. Lehman & Company, a private equity firm, interviews Fred Charles Iklé, author of Annihilation from Within: The Ultimate Threat to Nations (Columbia University Press, $24.50, 9780231139526/0231139527), about the security threats posed by the rapid advancement and spread of technology. Iklé served as undersecretary of defense for policy during the Reagan administration and as director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency under presidents Nixon and Ford. He is currently a distinguished scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a member of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board. (Re-airs Sunday at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m.)

Sunday, March 25

8 p.m. History on Book TV. Zachary Karabell discusses his book Peace Be Upon You: The Story of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish Coexistence (Knopf, $26.95, 9781400043682/1400043689), in which he argues that during the past 14 centuries the different faiths have found common ground, from peaceful debate among scholars in the courts of the caliphs in Baghdad to medieval Spain where Jewish sages, Muslim philosophers and Christian monks translated the meaning of God together.

Tamar Yellin, author of The Genizah at the House of Shepher (Toby Press), is the first recipient of the $100,000 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, administered by the Jewish Book Council and the largest-ever Jewish literary prize.

Runners up Amir Gutfreund, author of Our Holocaust, translated by Jessica Cohen (Toby Press), and Michael Lavigne, author of Not Me (Random House), each receive a $7,500 Choice Award.

One of the judges, Rebecca Goldstein, novelist, professor of philosophy and a fellow at Harvard's Radcliffe Institute, said, "Yellin combines formidable Jewish scholarship with soaring lyricism. And, if scholarship and lyricism aren't enough, she also displays a wonderfully quirky sense of humor. This is a writer who can do it all, bring history lovingly into the present and conjure an art of beauty and light out of the ardors of scholarship."

The prize was established by Sami Rohr's children and grandchildren to celebrate his 80th birthday and to honor his love of Jewish writing. The annual award will recognize "the unique role of contemporary writers in the transmission and examination of Jewish values, and is intended to encourage and promote outstanding writing of Jewish interest."