Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Publisher's Weekly News Roundup

A new law could impact the price of books as well as what can be shipped to libraries. Does this mean prices will go up even more? Could libraries, schools, and bookstores try to recoup their expenses by charging a Lead Testing Fee?

A new kid on the comic block looks to diversify. Sounds fun to me, but I'd really like that Singapore investor to invest in my bank account right now.

This bookstore at the University of Texas was doomed to failure. Even a graduate of a small, state university knows the heaviest foot-traffic is in the center of campus.

Some company is paying another company to distribute e-books. Welcome to to three years ago. Meanwhile, iTunes had some issue with their e-book applications. Oops.

I'll predict it here and now. Borders and Barnes & Noble will merge in the next two years. Don't believe me? Read between the lines on some of these articles.

Want to read about a narcoleptic detective? Then check out The Little Sleep by Paul Tremblay.

No? Then check out a more positive story as my previous employer (Books-A-Million) had decent numbers compared to competitors Borders and Barnes & Noble. Seems to point toward me previous prediction coming true.

Nope, I'm still not done with the Borders and Barnes & Noble merger. You can check this out to see more details behind my theory. Looks like Borders has some work cut out for them.

And I'll wrap up with an interesting link between genealogy and publishing. I knew fiction sold well, but who knew that fiction masquerading as non-fiction could cause such a stir.

2 comments:

cinda1212 said...

Merge? They're like Burger King and McDs. Some people love one and hate the other. I much prefer Borders. The Barnes by my is crap. They're architecture section is ONE SHELF and it's almost all books about FLW. Lame. And there's no music and movies.
But other than that, they're really not that different. It's not like they serve different menus or anything.

Neil Richard said...

True, they are like Burger King and McDonalds or Coke and Pepsi. But I think the potential is there. Fiction book sales are up, but overall sales are down. People want to escape, but there's only so many books they can afford right now. Thus my theory that they will merge. Granted, it might be a bit more than my Post Office theory (that the Post Office would become bankrupt and FedEx or UPS would take over standard mail delivery), but that one is proving to be closer to reality than anyone thought.