Book News Round-up, February 4, 2013

Some book-related news I’ve come across since last week’s update:

B&N — THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING BOOKSTORE: We all know about the tragic demise of Borders in 2011. Readers just aren’t buying as many books from brick-and-mortar stores as they used to, Borders failed to capitalize on the growing eBook trend until it was far too late, and by all accounts, it was mismanaged. Borders’ failure obviously took a little pressure off its competitors like Barnes & Noble and Books-A-Million (BAM!). But fast-forward eighteen months, and it’s clear that at least Barnes & Noble isn’t doing so hot either. According to this recent news article, in 2008 B&N had 726 stores. It now has 689. In ten years, it plans to have only 450-500 stores. That’s a huge shrinkage, and frankly, I’ll be surprised if there are still 450 B&N stores around the country. (Just as an aside, BAM! has about 250 stores currently; no idea if they plan a similar downsizing.)

STEPHEN KING INTERVIEW ON HIS NEW BOOK: By now, you’ve probably already heard that King plans to release a sequel to one of his best-known and most beloved books, THE SHINING. I never thought this would happen, and am just the teensiest bit skeptical of the project — THE SHINING is one of my favorite horror novels and one of the very few books I’ve ever read that genuinely scared me — but I’m looking forward to the sequel, DOCTOR SLEEP. Here is a nice long interview that focuses on the question of why King has decided to write this sequel now, 36 years after the original.

Book News Round-up, January 28, 2013

Some book-related news I’ve come across since last week’s update:

BARNES & NOBLE ISN’T DOING SO HOT: Probably not exactly the news of the century, and frankly, it’s not a huge surprise. We all know that Borders’ collapse gave its competitors Barnes & Noble and Books-A-Million some breathing room, but that’s probably not enough in the long-term. Stores that sell consumable media — like Best Buy and B&N — as well as brick-and-mortar stores that sell stuff that’s available cheaper online aren’t doing so hot these days. Apparently B&N’s Christmas sales weren’t great and its Nook business is slowly being overtaken by a combination of Kindles and iPads. Dedicated eReaders, I’ve read, are slowly but surely being squeezed out by various kinds of tablets. I only have a Kindle 3 myself, enjoy it very much, and have no plans to purchase a tablet PC any time soon, but I’m apparently in the minority. We’ll see where this goes, but expect a round of B&N store closures by next spring at the latest if this year’s sales continue their decline. Of course, all this begs the question: where exactly do people go to browse for books and discover new ones if they can’t examine store shelves full of them? This is a problem that Amazon has not yet figured out how to solve.

INTERVIEWS WITH IAIN M. BANKS: If you enjoy space opera and/or transhumanist SF, then you really should give Iain M. Banks’ Culture series a try. It’s been a long-time favorite of mine, though it does require some careful thought, as these aren’t what I typically think of as ‘easy” reads. Imagine a kind of post-scarcity interplanetary utopian society run by a coalition of extremely powerful artificial intelligences and you’ll picture something close to the eponymous Culture (that quick description glosses over all the most fun elements of the setting, but it’s a start. Last year, Banks came out with a new Culture novel, THE HYDROGEN SONATA, and has been interviewed about that novel, his views on utopia, technology, and many other issues. Here is one very recent interview with Banks, and here’s a second from last November that I just happened upon.

20 HEROIC (FICTIONAL) LIBRARIANS: It’s probably no surprise that I love libraries almost as much as I love books. I’ve spent a good chunk of my life in various libraries, after all, and I regularly consult with librarians for my academic research. But as much as I like real-life librarians, I love the fictional heroic, super-heroic, and magical kind of librarian even more. Here’s a great list with illustrations and descriptions of twenty fictional badass librarians.

Book Industry Updates

I haven’t blogged about the state of the book industry (my catch-all term for the business of writing, publishing, and selling books in physical and electronic media) recently, so here are a few interesting recent updates.

First, we have some small movement in the growing effort to recognize that, yes, Virginia, eBook sales are real. They really do happen. Even for self-published authors. Joe Konrath has written about the silliness of the New York Times‘ addition of eBook sales to their bestseller lists, and how wildly accurate those are. The otherwise respectable Wall Street Journal will now start posting eBook sales on their bestseller lists. They claim they have the cooperation of Amazon, B&N, Google, and Apple and will have exclusive content. Should be interesting to see how the WSJ lists pan out.

Second, back in August, I last posted about Books-A-Million (BAM), and wondered if they would be able to succeed where Borders had failed. There, I mentioned that they were planning to expand into some of the old Borders locations, mainly in the Northeast. That expansion has and is continuing to happen. Next month, BAM will open a total of 41 new locations. Wow. Good for them. Should be interesting to see how BAM fares in the long run, especially in these new locations.

And third, it appears that Barnes and Noble (B&N) may be beginning a quiet drawdown of its store locations (read about it here and here). I don’t want to make too much of this, as it’s just a handful of stores so far, and reportedly B&N engages in long-term (10-15 year) leases, many of which are now, or soon will be, up for renewal. It’s simply a sound business practice to close unprofitable locations. But this is something we’ll have to keep our eyes on. If we see dozens of B&N stores closing in the next year, despite the demise of its biggest brick-and-mortar rival, we might reasonably start wondering how long B&N has left.

The state of the book retail industry

I’m back blogging, folks. The travails of completing a dissertation have drained me of any interest I might have in blogging or doing much creative writing over the last couple months. I’m not done with the dissertation, not by a long shot, though I still hope to defend next Spring, but life goes on and I hope to resume regular blogging and book reviews. I have a few reviews lined up over the next few weeks, and some interesting book-related news pieces I’ll relate as well (been saving those up).

Let me start with a news item and the rest will follow in the days to come: Borders, as we all know (I last blogged about it at the end of April), has been in serious trouble for at least the last year, though it’s been in slow decline for the last few. It entered Chapter 11 a few months ago, and has not yet been able to produce a plan to bring it out of its apparent death spiral. Well, I suspect that it’s going to bite the dust, and sooner rather than later. The latest and greatest deal to save Borders fell through and it looks like it’s facing liquidation next week. This does not bode well for the remaining 399 Borders stores or their employees.

Keep in mind that Barnes & Noble, the only other big book retail chain in the U.S., is also not doing terribly well, though it’s managed to survive better than Borders because it jumped into online book retail on its own fairly early on, and its eBook/eReader business is still pretty viable as the biggest competitor to Amazon. A billionaire businessman (wouldn’t we all like to be described that way?) by the name of John C. Malone has expressed an interest in B&N, and is purportedly interested in taking the company private. There’s been a lot of discussion as to why Malone, a demonstrably smart guy, would want to spend $1 Billion on a company in a dying industry, with most speculating that he’s primarily interested in the eBook side of the company. Should be interesting to see if this deal ends up going through.

Update on Barnes & Noble

Well, we’re all aware of Borders’ very public bankruptcy and partial meltdown — I’m still waiting for word of additional store closures later this year — but there have also been some interesting recent developments with Borders’ biggest brick-and-mortar competitor, Barnes & Noble.

Liberty Media, a big firm that owns QVC and is heavily invested in Sirius XM, among other companies, has offered to buy Barnes & Noble for about $969 million, a decent premium over what the stock was trading at when the offer as made. That would actually be an interesting partnership though as this analysis points out, Liberty Media is probably much more interested in BN.com and especially the Nook than in operating brick-and-mortar bookstores.

As a follow-up, here’s an interesting little potted history of Barnes & Noble, from its origins in the 1970s to the present. No deep analysis here, but it’s a nice little overview.