Earlier today, I blogged Mike Shatzkin’s post that bookstores may be going away and it might be a good idea for publishers to do more to keep them around. In that post, Shatzkin mentioned a statistic that 40% of all UK “high street” shops might have gone away within 5 years. I came across a possible example of that sort of thing today on PaidContent. It seems that the largest European plastic-box video game retailer, Game Group, is in financial trouble. It has closed 277, almost half, of its 609 UK and Ireland stores, and has called in administrators...

What will the publishing industry look like if all physical bookstores go the way of Borders? Publishing-industry observer Mike Shatzkin doesn’t know, but he thinks publishers shouldn’t want to find out for as long as possible. Some publishers report that the growth rate of e-book sales seems to be tapering off, However, other publishers report that their own e-book growth rate continues. And as more e-books sell, physical book sales go by the wayside—and with them go the bookstores that are selling them. UK analysts, as reported in the Guardian, predict a 40% decline in all “high street” brick-and-mortar...

On The Bookseller’s blog, Ed Handyside of UK publisher Myrmidon Books complains that the price of a standard paperback in the UK has not risen with inflation—six years ago it was £7.99, and today it is still £7.99 (US$10.52). Since the publisher’s recommended retail price is printed on the cover of the book, this means that booksellers cannot raise prices to account for inflation—so they take their margin out of the publishers’, writers’, and agents’ share instead. Handyside writes: Book prices must be allowed to rise organically and incrementally. Booksellers themselves must be allowed and...

Another bookstore chain is biting the dust—this one a small regional chain with ten locations in Maine. Mr. Paperback has been around for over 50 years, but is closing its doors by the end of April. The store’s sister company, a magazine and newspaper distributor called Magazines Inc., is being bought out. Mr. Paperback’s 80 employees and Magazines Inc.’s 40 employees will be laid off. [Co-owner Penny] Robichaud said changes in the book industry and finances were the reasons for closing. “It’s due to gas prices and a changing industry — Amazon, the...

That's the take from this Toronto Star article: Mixed feelings about the loss of a bookstore at Ryerson University and the sequestering of its books, by the students... though not by the article's author. "Poor books. Snubbed yet again, this time by a university, an institution of learning." The article describes the closure of one campus bookstore, causing confusion by students who walked into the building to find it being repurposed as classroom and office space.  Some of the books were moved to the other campus bookstore; the remainder were put into a storage room, and some will be returned to the...

Amazon has been racking up a reputation as “the enemy” in publishing circles. That has led to a sort of “with us or against us” mentality in which any formerly respected person who is seen to work with Amazon in any capacity whatsoever suddenly gets tarred with that brush. It happened with Larry Kirshbaum, the long-time publishing-industry exec and agent who Amazon tapped to run its publishing subsidiary, who Mike Shatzkin says “has gone from one of the most well-liked people in publishing to the one of the most reviled.” And PaidContent’s Laura Hazard Owen reports it seems...

Publishers Weekly reports that the American Booksellers Association has become the latest bookstore entity to join the boycott of books produced by Amazon’s publishing arm. Indeed, the ABA’s for-profit subsidiary, IndieCommerce, has begun removing those titles from its database. IndieCommerce director Matt Supko wrote in an email announcement that the move was in response to Amazon’s policy of “locking in e-book exclusives which other retailers are not allowed to sell.” IndieCommerce has adopted a new policy of listing only “titles that are made available to retailers for sale in all available formats”. Individual bookstores can still choose to carry...

Remember that Amazon retail store rumor from a few days ago? Well, Good E-Reader has heard more from anonymous “Amazon sources close to the situation.” According to their sources, Amazon is going to roll out a retail store in Seattle within the next few months to test the waters and see if a chain of such stores could be profitable. “They intend on going with the small boutique route with the main emphasis on books from their growing line of Amazon Exclusives and selling their e-readers and tablets,” Good E-Reader’s Michael Kozlowski writes. As a small boutique,...

Canadian bookstore chain Indigo has added its voice to Barnes & Noble and Books a Million in stating that it will not carry books published by Amazon’s publishing imprint, the Globe and Mail reports. Indigo issued the standard statement decrying Amazon’s predatory tactics and congratulating Barnes & Noble for “taking a leadership stance on the matter.” Not too surprising, especially given that Indigo was the creator of Kobo, one of the only serious e-book competitors Amazon has. The Globe and Mail article characterizes this as a “setback” for Amazon, and quotes the Wall Street Journal that this is “sending...

In my email this morning, I received a notice from Quora that I had been invited to submit an answer for the following question: Are there any services or business models in which one can trade paperback or hardcover books for digital books, without having to pay full price again? After typing my answer, I thought it was interesting enough to repost here: Not that I've ever heard of—or no model that is legitimate under copyright law, anyway. The idea has been suggested by a number of people as something that publishers should...

PaidContent reports that the US’s second-largest bookstore chain, Books a Million, is following in the footsteps of Barnes & Noble and proclaiming it will not stock Amazon-published titles in its brick-and-mortar stores. It’s not clear whether, like Barnes & Noble, they will sell the titles online. Books a Million sells a version of the Nook as its own e-reader. There’s a Books a Million store in Joplin, Missouri, and I stopped by it a few months ago. I wasn’t particularly impressed. Unlike Barnes & Noble, the store does not offer free wifi for its customers—you have to pay for...

Don’t tell my Nook, my achey breaky Nook… Billy Ray Cyrus, singer of a particularly overplayed country song and father of Miley “Hannah Montana” Cyrus, has landed a book deal with Amazon’s publishing arm for his memoirs, GalleyCat reports. Publication date is expected to be spring 2013 in both hardcover and e-book editions. The deal was brokered by Trident Media CEO Dan Strone, who also arranged the $800,000 deal for Penny Marshall’s memoirs. As that anonymous publishing insider lamented a few weeks ago, Amazon is lining up some pretty big names for its publishing arm. What with...