We're glad to be back.
While we were sleeping in and relaxing last week, the book world kept moving, and as a result, we have a longer issue than usual. Thankfully the week was quieter than the last week of August a year ago, when Katrina hit and Kepler's closed--temporarily, it turned out.
Cheers!
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Barnes & Noble reported last week that it has received a
subpoena from the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York
asking for documents about the company's stock option practices, Reuters
reported. The Securities and Exchange Commission is also conducting an
informal inquiry into the same issue. The SEC reportedly is looking
into some 80 other companies that may have illegally backdated stock
options for executives.
B&N has promised to cooperate with all inquiries and has retained independent counsel to look into the matter.
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Some college bookstores are moving off campus or opening branches off
campus. In Wilkes-Barre, Pa., the trend has a twist: two colleges are
closing their stores and will open a joint store downtown that will be
managed by Barnes & Noble College.
The new 20,000-sq.-ft. bookstore will serve both Wilkes University and
King's College and be an "academic superstore," as an announcement put
it. The store will have a "full selection of general trade books" and a
local authors section as well as offer textbooks and other products and
services typical of a college store. The store will also serve Luzerne
County Community College.
The store should open in October. According to the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader,
the $2.04 million project is being funded by the schools, B&N, a
development corporation and Luzerne County, which provided a $1.2 million
low-interest business development loan.
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A
two-story Barnes & Noble set to open next month is the anchor of a
$170 million mixed-used project in the North Baltimore neighborhood of
Charles Village that includes dorms for Johns Hopkins University
students. The Baltimore Sun sheds some light on another example of a "college town" development.
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Barnes & Noble will open a store in Myrtle Beach, S.C., in March 2008 in the Market Commons at 1063 Howard Parkway. The day before the store opens, the current B&N at 1145 Seaboard Street in Myrtle Beach will close.
The Book Industry Study Group
appointed a new executive director, Michael Healy, who has been editorial director
of Nielsen Book Services. He'll be the keynote speaker at BISG's annual
meeting on Friday in New York City. Healy has more than 15 years of
publishing experience and has been involved in developing
and managing book industry standards, one of BISG's main tasks.
Healy replaces Jeff Abraham, who in January left to become president of Random House Distribution Services.
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Explore Booksellers & Bistro, Aspen, Colo., founded 29 years ago by
the late Katharine Thalberg, is for sale, and a group of employees is
hoping to buy the store, the Aspen Times reported.
Thalberg's husband, Bill Stirling, told the paper that the family
decided "with great sadness" to sell the store and property for $5.2
million, hoping "to keep it going as it is, to keep improving on the
concept that Katharine so brilliantly created."
Since Thalberg died in January, her daughter, Brooke Anderson, has run the store from her home in Washington, D.C.
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Low on atmosphere, high on smarts, the Gamblers Book Shop, the Las Vegas, Nev., gambling-book institution, is also for sale, Eye on Gambling
reported. Howard Schwartz, who has worked for the company since 1979
and took over as owner three years ago, said that "the economics of
this business is changing and I've been at it long enough. I want to
have more private time." Competition from Amazon.com, which sells
gambling books at a discount, and the availability of free information
about gambling on the Internet have made gambling-book retailing a
high-risk venture, Schwartz said. Still, he told Eye on Gambling that he has four prospective buyers.
Schwartz took ownership of the store three years ago when Edna Luckman,
the former owner died. She had founded the store with her husband,
John. Originally a mail-order operation called the Gamblers Book Club,
the company opened a retail location in 1964.
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The AP (via the Chicago Sun-Times)
looks at game plans of the two major sports instant book publishers,
Triumph Books, now owned by Random House, and Sports Publishing. Some
sports magazines, particularly Sports Illustrated, also publish
instant books. These publishers work with any winner, but probably
don't root for Florida teams, since their fans tend to buy
fewer copies of instant books than fans of teams elsewhere.
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Borders will open a 20,346-sq.-ft. store in Meriden,
Conn., next month. The store will be in the Westfield Shoppingtown
Meriden, at 470 Lewis Ave., at the intersection of Interstates 91 and
691. On September 23, Waldenbooks
will close its 3,300-sq.-ft. store in the same shopping center.
This month Borders is also opening a 20,000-sq.-ft. store in Vacaville,
Calif., in the Nut Tree Village, at 1641-C E. Monte Vista Ave. Before
its closing 10 years ago, the Nut Tree, 400-acre ranch with a
restaurant and miniature train, drew more than three million people a
year. It is being rebuilt as an 80-acre mixed-used development.
Borders's 20,000-sq.-ft. store on the fourth floor of the San Francisco Centre at 845 Market St. will open at the end of the month. The store will operate a newsstand in the mall's concourse next to the Powell Street BART station.
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Although Cody's Books on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, Calif., is gone,
there are still many delightful, interesting bookstores in the Bay
Area, and the Berkeley Daily Planet lists and comments on them.
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Bookselling This Week
profiles Oblong Books & Music, Millerton, N.Y., which has helped
open a hiking-walking-bike trail on part of the old New York &
Harlem Railroad. Owner Dick Hermans is starting his second term as
chairman of the Harlem Valley Rail Trail Association. Together with
several publishers, the First Annual Great Oblong Tote Auction, a
silent auction, will be held to raise money to help the association extend the trail.
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Not again. Tim Waterstone plans to make his
seventh attempt to buy the eponymous U.K. bookselling chain he founded
in 1982, according to the Scotsman.
He reportedly has "investors in place and is poised to move this
autumn." In May, his last attempt to buy the HMV subsidiary, which
recently bought Ottakar's, failed. Since first selling the company,
Waterstone was successful once in buying the company, which he did in a
buyout that brought it to . . . HMV.
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Ron Powers has been named v-p of
sales and client services at Lightning Source, the Ingram Industries
book and e-book manufacturing and distribution subsidiary. He was most recently
v-p of product management and merchandise at Ingram Book Group, where
he worked with trade, professional and educational publishers. Earlier
Powers was v-p of the publishing group at CRC Press and editorial
director of the professional book group at McGraw-Hill.
David Taylor, senior v-p of global sales at Lightning Source, said that
Powers "has a proven record in planning and executing inventory
management strategies, as well as successfully developing key business
relationships with publishers and suppliers."
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Sara Bogush has joined Morrow and Avon as online
marketing manager. She was formerly an online marketing associate at
Doubleday Broadway, where she worked on campaigns for Dan Brown, John
Grisham and Bill Bryson, among other authors, and worked with AOL,
MSNBC and Myspace.
Kristine Macrides has been promoted to associate director of marketing
for Avon, Harper paperbacks, Avon Trade and HarperLuxe. She was
formerly manager of sales, distributor sales group. Earlier she was a
sales assistant for Morrow's national accounts reps.
From a story in the Albuquerque Tribune about employees who work for one company for many years:
"After dealing with some of her customers at Page One bookstore for
years, manager Paula Parker has another word for them: friends.
"She says it's a transformation made possible by having the time to
develop relationships with them over her two dozen years with the
company.
"Without those years, 'you miss making friends that last,' she says.
"It's a level of commitment she sees missing in younger workers of today.
"Parker, 49, isn't sure why. She guesses it could be that they were
given too much, too easily, and now expect too much, too fast.
"In her years at Page One, other careers flashed as possibilities.
"In 1986, Parker sold half of her pen-and-ink drawings at a solo art
show. 'I was very proud of that,' she says, but didn't pursue her art
further, and draws little today.
"In the meantime, she found joy in working with elderly customers.
" 'They bring something out in me,' she says. 'Maybe I missed my calling, which is what some of the guys here tell me.'
"But she's a lover of books, and has a simple explanation for why she keeps coming back: 'I just like what I do.' "
This morning on the Early Show: Brooke De Lench, author of Home Team Advantage: The Critical Role of Mothers in Youth Sports (Collins, $14.95, 0060881631).
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Today on WAMU's Diane Rehm Show: Alfie Kohn, author of The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing (Da Capo, $24, 0738210854).
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Today NPR's All Things Considered faces off with David Shenk, author of The Immortal Game: A History of Chess, or How 32 Carved Pieces on a Board Illuminated Our Understanding of War, Art, Science and the Human Brain (Doubleday, $26, 0385510101).
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Tonight on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, a repeat of an appearance by Frederick Lane, author of The Decency Wars: The Campaign to Cleanse American Culture (Prometheus, $28, 1591024277).
