Last-minute shoppers may compensate for the weekend's unwelcome--at least from a retail perspective--White Christmas blizzard on the East Coast. The bad weather wasn’t enough to prompt the National Retail Federation to revise its forecast for a 1% drop in holiday sales, according to Bloomberg. "Some retailers may extend promotions into Monday and Tuesday to attract shoppers they had hoped to get during the last weekend before Christmas," observed Ellen Davis, an NRF spokeswoman.
New York's Strand bookstore was setting a record sales pace on Saturday until the storm intensified. Co-owner Nancy Bass Wyden told Bloomberg that the Strand "had about $125,000 in sales that day, compared with about $137,000 on the Saturday before Christmas last year."
The New York Times reported that Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst for the market research firm NPD Group, called the storm "the bad news," but added that the "good news is it is only one day and most stores will get it back over the week or online." He cautioned, however, that the "biggest losers from the blizzard were probably regional retailers and local merchants... which he estimated could lose up to 2% of sales."
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The welcome mat is not out for Google in France. On Friday, a French court found the company "guilty of copyright infringement for scanning books and putting extracts online without a French publisher's consent, a ruling that could hinder the Internet giant's drive to create a global online library," the Wall Street Journal reported, noting that the "court ordered the company to pay €300,000 ($430,000) to French publisher La Martinière and to remove online extracts of its books." Google said it would appeal the ruling but abide by it for now.
La Martinière, the French Publishers' Association and authors' groups SGDL "had argued that Google was exploiting that heritage, and called scanning an act of reproduction," according to Reuters (via the New York Times).
"Even if we can't undo the process of digitalization, this means they cannot use any of the digitized material any more," said Yann Colin, a lawyer for La Martinière.
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Cool idea of the day. Mrs. Nelson's Toy and Book Shop, LaVerne, Calif., winner of the 2009 Lucile Micheels Pannell Award in the children's specialty store category, has begun its first annual Book Awards.
"What books did you love in 2009?" general manager Andrea Vuleta and her team have asked their customers. Citing the Newbery and Caldecott Awards, which are chosen by adults, they suggest it's time to go to the source and ask families what books they've enjoyed this year. "Since we are actually in the business of selling books to kids or for kids, we decided to take a new look at this type of award by creating our own version--nominated and voted on by our readers and customers." Readers can nominate their favorites now through December 31 in three categories: picture book; children's novel (up to age 12); and young adult novel. They can then cast their votes between January 1-31 for the top three in each category.
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The impending closure of Barnes & Noble's B. Dalton division stores nationwide continues to have a newsworthy ripple effect on communities just becoming aware of their imminent bookshop void.
In Belmont, Mass., the Charlesbank Bookshop will shut down January 16, and the the Boston Globe reported that "some residents fought to save the store. They asked Barnes & Noble, which leases its Leonard Street space between a Starbucks and a Bruegger's, to delay the closing for a year and give them a chance to patronize the store more to try to increase sales."
Laredo, Tex., will have no bookstore when the B. Dalton closes there (Shelf Awareness, December 17, 2009), and a save-the-bookstore committee has been hastily organized, according to the Wall Street Journal.
"Maybe someone will give us a try," said Xochitl Mora Garcia, Laredo's public-information officer. "There's a huge, huge community of readers here."
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Calling blogs "the poster children of online media," BookNet Canada explored the book trade blogging world and praised Words Worth Books, Waterloo, Ontario, for the way each of its four active blogs--How to Furnish a Room, Words Worth Books Book Club, Raymond Chandler Drank Here and Edge of Seventeen--"serves a particular niche. Instead of trying to do too much with one blog, they've broken it down to serve everyone better."
Other notable factors contributing to Words Worth's blogging success were frequent updates, an open comments section to foster conversation and a personal touch: "Pictures of the employees appear frequently and personal contact information is provided--readers are even encouraged to e-mail and ask for specific recommendations." The environment also lends itself to "digital hand selling: These blogs are a great example of how an indie bookstore can do what they do best while shifting with technology and the way their customers shop," according to BookNet Canada.
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Publishing veteran Robert B. Wyatt's distinguished career included work as an editorial director at Avon Books and Delacorte Books for Young Readers, editor-in-chief of the mass market division of Ballantine Books, as well as the establishment of his own imprint for St. Martin’s Press during the 1990s. Now he has revived A Wyatt Book Inc. to self-publish a pair of hiw own bookseller-themed works of fiction, Jam & the Box and The Fluffys & the Box, through Ingram's Lightning Source POD program.
Wyatt, who has also been volunteering recently at the Golden Notebook bookstore, Woodstock, N.Y., is chronicling his bookish adventures, past and present, on the Bob & the Boxes website.
Describing his new venture in third person, Wyatt wrote: "In the midst of book publishing a decade or so ago, he would have frowned upon anyone who published his own work and would have been surprised that he would do so himself. That was a different time for book publication. Now, book publishing is inching its way toward being the joyous enterprise it once was: there are new ways of doing it.... Wyatt is having fun working on a book from its first word: 'Jamison,' to its last--and best--word: 'happiness.'"
"I just want to have a good time making books one way or another," he told the Woodstock Times.
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Book trailer of the day: Incarceron by Catherine Fisher (Dial).
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Where's Waldo? Found! By 50 million children.
The Where's Waldo? book series has reached the 50 million-copy sales mark worldwide, Candlewick Press and Classic Media have said. In addition, the Where's Waldo? The Fantastic Journey game, created by Ludia Inc., for iPhone and iPod Touch hit the #1 app spot in the U.S. and Canada within 48 hours of its launch on December 9 and remains among the top 10 apps and is #1 in games. First published in 1987, Where's Waldo? is now sold in more than 30 countries and in 25 languages. Waldo fans can join the search online at FindWaldo.com.
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Effective immediately, Brant Janeway has been named marketing director of Macmillan Audio. Most recently he worked in advertising sales for TheDailyBeast.com and earlier was director of advertising at Bantam Dell and director of marketing and publicity for Plume Books and Hudson Street Press. He began his publishing career in publicity at Random House.