The blizzard that shut down much of Colorado the past two days led
to the closing of the Tattered Cover's Highlands Ranch store and
reduced staff and hours at the Lower Downtown and Lowenstein Theatre
locations, the Denver Post
reported. The LoDo store drew "a fair number of travelers stranded in
downtown hotels," but overall sales during this key shopping season
were below normal. Owner Joyce Meskis told the paper, "When you have to
close for a few days because of a storm like this, you tend to not make
that up."
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A little more news about the seventh and final book in the Harry Potter series is trickling out. Yesterday on her Web site,
via a kind of treasure hunt, J.K. Rowling revealed that the title of the tome is Harry Potter and the
Deathly Hallows. In the runup to publication, there is much more to be unveiled. Scholastic emphasized that the manuscript has not been
delivered, there is no pub date and an ISBN hasn't been
assigned (incidentally it will be a magical ISBN-13). Artwork
(left) is available from Scholastic for promotional purposes.
Still,
some retailers are already jumping on the Harry bandwagon. Barnes &
Noble and Borders are allowing customers to sign up
for e-mail notification of when they can reserve copies online, and
Borders customers may place reservations in stores.
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Bookselling This Week
celebrates the 30th anniversary of the Tudor Book Shop and Café
in Kingston, Pa., which has grown to a 4,800-sq.-ft. store from 144
square feet. The stores is owned by sisters Barbara Shaffer and Lynn
Gonchar.
BTW also sailed to Nantucket for a story about Nantucket Bookworks, founded in 1972 and owned since 2000 by Wendy Hudson. "August is our December," she told BTW. "Christmas is more like our June."
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At the end of January, Borders is relocating its Boulder, Colo., store from 1600 Pearl Street to a 23,129-sq.-ft. site at Twenty Ninth Street, which the company described as "Boulder's new premier retail district."
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In March, Borders is opening a 22,169-sq.-ft. store in Fort Myers, Fla., in the Gulf Coast Town Center, a new 1.8 million-sq.-ft. regional shopping, dining and entertainment center.
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Sterling Publishing and Hollan Publishing have signed a joint venture agreement whereby Hollan will publish at least 25 "high-end, illustrated romantic lifestyle books" in a variety of nonfiction categories. Eight to ten of the titles will be published under the Ravenous imprint and be photographic books on sexuality and lovemaking. The first 10 of the joint venture titles will appear on the fall 2007 list.Hollan's principals are Holly Schmidt, co-founder and publisher of Fair Winds Press, and more recently of Quiver, both of which are owned by the Quarto Group, and Allan Penn, a photographer whose work has appeared in a variety of galleries, magazines and more than 200 books.