After a Supreme Court ruling last year "upended" the longtime practice of not allowing manufacturers or suppliers to punish retailers who discount their products more than the suppliers like, some manufacturers "are embracing broad new legal powers that amount to a type of price-fixing--enabling them to set minimum prices on their products and force retailers to refrain from discounting," according to today's Wall Street Journal.
The suppliers who prefer this approach tend to have high-end products whose image they want to protect. Consumer advocates and discount retailers are unhappy. Some state attorneys general have written Congress asking for new laws to address the matter.
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A DVD set of the first season of Gossip Girl, which goes on sale this week, includes an audio version of the novel by Cecily von Ziegesar on which the TV series is based and can be transferred to an iPod. The New York Times reported that publisher Hachette hopes to invigorate sales of the audio, narrated by Christina Ricci. The 12 books in the series have sold 5.6 million copies; the three audio versions, based on the first three books, have never sold more than 1,000 copies a year.
Audiobooks' single-largest market has been drivers, which doesn't translate well to young adults. As Anthony Goff, publisher of Hachette Audio and Digital Media, told the Times, "The teen and the late-teen market has been a really tough market for us."
Donald Katz, founder and CEO of Audible.com, aims to reach that market by promoting audiobooks "as an educational alternative to music on iPods and iPhones," which could make iPods into "storytellers and learning machines."
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Sadly we have to report that Transitions Bookplace & Cafe in Chicago, Ill., closed on Friday, according to the Chicago Tribune. We noted in Thursday's issue that negotiations were taking place in an effort to save the spiritual store, which had just turned 20.
Owners Gayle Seminara-Mandel and Howard Mandel told the paper that they decided to close because they could no longer pay rent and meet payroll.
Seminara-Mandel told the paper that she "realized Transitions was in trouble when she started seeing $10 Buddhas for sale at Target." In addition, "the readers went away."
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The Corner Shelf, Culpeper, Va., will switch from a bricks-and-mortar to online-only bookstore in September, according to the Free Lance-Star.
"The
Corner Shelf is not closing. We're just changing our format," said
Gordon Dickerson, the 87-year-old owner who has operated the bookshop
with his daughter, Faith, for more than three decades.
"We're
not real happy about making this change," Dickerson told the paper, which reported that "a sour economy,
mega-bookstores in neighboring towns and Internet retailers such as
Amazon.com have finally caught up with the Corner Shelf."
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Got books? In Australia, the Sydney Morning Herald
asked, "Should books be stored? Or should they be shared, divested and
ditched in favour of clean, open shelves with room for a knick knack or
two?" A few noteworthy alternatives were on display.
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Michael von Glahn is the new editor of the National Association of College Stores's College Store magazine. He joined NACS's publications department in June 2007 as assistant editor, working on the magazine and Campus Marketplace, the weekly newsletter. He earlier was an editor and writer at several consumer magazines, copy editor of business publications and a freelance writer. He replaces Keith Galestock, who left recently after 10 years as College Store editor.