The National Association of College Stores is holding a free Webcast
tomorrow, Thursday, from 2-3 p.m., EDT, to discuss the General
Accountability Office's report on textbook pricing. A representative
from the GAO and NACS's director of government relations are among the
speakers. For more information, go to NACS's
Web site.
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The Arizona Republic
profiled the Poisoned Pen Bookstore, which has stores in Scottsdale and
Phoenix. Owner Barbara Peters told the paper that she wanted to open a
"little" bookstore but "it got away from me and turned into a big
bookstore."
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Barnes & Noble will open stores in two shopping centers that are
under construction. One is in Center Valley, Pa., near Allentown, in
the Promenade Shops at Saucon Valley on Center Valley Parkway. The
store should open in October 2006.
The other store is in Fairview Heights, Ill., east of St. Louis, Mo.,
in the Shoppes at St. Clair Square at Route 13 and Highway 159. This
store is scheduled to open in March 2007.
Both stores will stock nearly 200,000 book, music, DVD and magazine titles and have cafes.
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Larry Portzline, the creator of bookstore tourism, has a new project in the
works: a flash mob event to celebrate independent bookstores and honor
Banned Books Week. If all goes well, at 2 p.m. ET on Saturday, October
1, groups of people will converge on independents and read aloud from
their favorite or random books for two minutes. For more information,
check out the mob project's
Web site.
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Ottakar's top management has raised its bid to buy the firm to 4 pounds
per share, up from their original 3.50 pounds offer, the
BBC reported.
The new bid was seen as a preemptive move against HMV, which owns
Waterstone's, and has expressed interest in Ottakar's but has not yet
made a formal offer.
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Labyrinth Books opened in the former location of Book Haven in New
Haven, Conn., on August 22, but long before then, it contacted
professors who ordered books through Book Haven, according to the
Yale Daily News. The effort has resulted in the store handling some 300 course lists this semester.
Owner Dorothea von Moltke, who also owns the Labyrinth near Columbia,
told the paper that "a first-class university should have a very
serious, hand-picked store, so we thought this was a perfect
opportunity."
Unlike the old Book Haven or main competitor Yale Bookstore, owned by
Barnes & Noble, the store requires students to give course lists or
the name of a course to an employee who retrieves the books. The reason for von Moltke's strategy: "We have
fewer lost lambs that way," she said.
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Nebraska Book Company, which operates more than 112 college bookstores,
last month bought Anders Bookstore in Auburn, Ala., home of Auburn
University. Founded in Montgomery in 1951 to serve school children, the
store moved to Auburn in 1966 after the state began to fund textbooks.
Manager Ron Anders Jr., whose grandfather founded the store, told the
Auburn Plainsman
that the only change will be "greater resources for the students. We
will have better service, especially for our football customers."
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Chapter 11, the Atlanta, Ga., area bookselling company, closed its
Lawrenceville location after almost three years in business. Chapter 11
continues to operate 14 stores.
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After three years of cuts and restructuring following the purchase of
Chapters, Indigo is back in "growth mode," planning to open three
Indigo superstores in Ottawa, Windsor and Montreal and three Coles
"boutique" stores in Toronto, Uxbridge, Ont., and Whitehorse, Yukon,
CBC reported.
Sales at the company, Canada's largest bookseller, rose 5.3% to C$164.2
million (about US$137.9 million) during the quarter ended July 2. At
the same time the net loss declined 26.4% to C$8.1 million (US$6.8
million).
Among the prescriptions for solid growth: shops in hospital lobbies.
CEO Heather Reisman was most positive about a test in which the company
opened an Indigospirit shop in June in Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto.
Sales have been so healthy that the company is negotiating with other
hospitals to open similar shops, which in addition to books, sell
flowers, baby gifts and toothpaste.
Reisman's diagnosis, according to the
Globe and Mail: "This is a concept meant for captive markets. We'll go slowly, but we think it has real potential."
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In another story about unusual markets, yesterday's
New York Times noted that Little, Brown will ship free copies of Anita Shreve's
A Wedding in December, to be published October 10, to more than 100 B&B's around the country. The protagonist in the story is an innkeeper.