Posts Tagged ‘ Book Industry News ’
Chain bookshops and book clubs were the biggest retail losers in 2009, with value and volume sales declining, according to data by Book Marketing Limited.
At this week’s Books and the Consumer conference, BML research director Steve Bohme said the big winners in 2009 were bargain book chains. Volume sales in the sector increased by 11% year on year and by 4% in value terms. Bargain bookshops now have a volume… Continue reading
Publishers and retailers should work together against excess discounting, in a bid to improve the perceived value of books, delegates at this week’s ASP (academic, professional and specialist booksellers) conference heard yesterday (10th March).
The 39th annual conference, which kicked off yesterday afternoon (10th March) and is being held in cloudy Bournemouth, heard a similar request made by a number of speakers. The keynote speech, made by outgoing chairman… Continue reading
The UK online payments market will experience unprecedented growth in 2010, as the total volume of transactions is expected to exceed 20 billion and the size of a typical online payment continues to fall, hitting just £70 by December 2010… Continue reading
At least three major publishers are contributing to relief efforts in Haiti following last week’s devestating earthquake. Random has donated $100,000; Bertelsmann has donated 100,000 euros; and News Corp., which owns HarperCollins, has donated $250,000. And Simon & Schuster is authorizing digital resellers—including Audible.com, Cateeslanguageworld.com, Pimsleuraudio.com, and Pimsleurmethod.com—to give away its Haitian Creole program free, from now until March 31… Continue reading
Emporium has just moved into a large warehouse during the new year period to cope with the consistently high retail sales. “Our retail sales have sky-rocketed with consistent, positive growth over the last 12 months” said Ricardo, Emporium’s General Manager. The move to the large warehouse will make our processes even more efficient coupled with our state of the art supply chain management applications… Continue reading
Hackers from the US and Israel say they have broken copyright protections built in to Amazon’s Kindle for PC, a feat that allows ebooks stored on the application to work with other devices.
The hack began as an open challenge in this (translated) forum for participants to come up with a way to make ebooks published in Amazon’s proprietary format display on competing readers… Continue reading | 1 Comment
A recent entry told of a British family’s shock when they discovered a first edition of Charles Darwin’s “The Origin of Species” on a shelf in their guest toilet.
According to Reuters; the book, which had been kept in a bathroom bookcase in England for years, fetched 103,250 pounds ($171,000) at auction on Tuesday, around twice its pre-sale estimate… Continue reading
Borders are holding emergency talks to secure their future.
Store bosses are concerned the firm do not have enough cash to make it through the key Christmas trading season. They are suffering because of rising competition from supermarkets and online book sellers. The group, who also run the Books Etc brand, are said to be in discussions with firms including Waterstone’s parent HMV as fears mount… Continue reading | 2 Comments
A first edition copy of Charles Darwin’s seminal “On the Origin of Species” will be sold this week after it was found in a family’s toilet in southern Britain, an auction house said Sunday.
The book, which was first printed in 1859, was bought by a family for just a few shillings… Continue reading
Chinese writer Su Tong has won Asia’s top literary prize with a bleak novel about a disgraced Communist Party official’s attempts to rebuild his life, trumping a clutch of Indian writers on the shortlist.
Su’s novel, “The Boat to Redemption” is about a womanizing Party official who castrates himself after being banished to a river barge… Continue reading | 3 Comments
