BTW News Briefs

March 20, 2008

Borders, Strapped for Cash, Up for Sale?

Borders Group may put itself up for sale and has lined up $42.5 million in loans to help continue operations, according to the Associated Press. The second-largest bookstore chain in the U.S. is examining a range of possibilities, including selling part of the company or some of the company's divisions, said the AP, which noted that Borders has lost book sales to both to online companies and to Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

Borders said the financing commitment comes from investment funds affiliated with Pershing Square Capital Management LP, a major shareholder in Borders, and includes an offer to buy the company.

After delaying the posting of fourth-quarter earnings, the company reported net income of $64.7 million, or $1.10 a share, compared with a loss of $73.6 million, or $1.22, over the same period last year. Revenue dropped 2 percent to $1.35 billion, from $1.37 billion. Borders' quarterly dividends have been suspended.

News of the company's financial situation caused Borders stock to plunge $1.82, or 26 percent, to $5.28 at 10:35 a.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading, the biggest decline since the company went public in 1995, according to Bloomberg.com.

Bloomburg.com also reported that, in a conference call with investors, Barnes & Noble's Chief Financial Officer Joseph Lombardi said the company planned to take a "good look" at Borders.

Roy Schonfeld Named PW's Rep of the Year

On Friday, March 14, Publishers Weekly announced that Roy Schonfeld of Abraham Associates, Inc. had been named its Sales Rep of the Year.

Schonfeld, who has been a sales rep for 15 years, all of them with Abraham Associates, services bookstores in the Midwest. He is also a member of the board of directors of the Great Lakes Booksellers Association. Prior to becoming a rep, Schonfield worked for 12 years as a book buyer at two different Ohio bookstores.

Schonfeld told PW: "I'm very honored to have this recognition of my work by booksellers. It's especially heartening to get this news after driving around throughout this incredible hard winter -- I seem to have hit every storm in Michigan and Ohio. But, I enjoy traveling around, meeting these booksellers, and having friendships with them."

Earlier in the week, PW had named Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena, California, as its Bookseller of the Year. (See related story.)

Vroman's and Schonfield will be honored at PW's 16th annual award ceremony at this year's BookExpo America in Los Angeles.

Lambda Literary Awards Finalists Announced

The 107 finalists were chosen by a jury of judges who come from all walks of literary life: journalists, authors, booksellers, librarians, playwrights, and illustrators. The complete list of finalists is available at www.lambdaliterary.org/.

Publishing Triangle Announces 20th Annual Awards Finalists

The 20th Annual Triangle Awards, honoring the best lesbian and gay fiction, nonfiction, and poetry published in 2007, will be presented on April 28 at the Tishman Auditorium of the New School for Social Research in New York City. The ceremony is free and open to the public, with a reception to follow.

Katherine V. Forrest is the 2008 recipient of the Publishing Triangle's Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement. Forrest has written 15 works of fiction, including her eight-volume Kate Delafield mystery series -- the latest, Hancock Park won the Lambda Literary Award for Best Mystery, as did two of the earlier volumes in the series. In 2005, she won the Lambda for Science Fiction/Fantasy for Daughters of an Emerald Dusk. The Bill Whitehead Award is given to a woman in even-numbered years and a man in odd years, and the winner receives $3,000.

For a complete list of the award finalists and information about the ceremony, go to www.publishingtriangle.org.

ABFFE Welcomes Betsy Burton to Board

On Wednesday, March 19, the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression (ABFFE) board of directors announced that it had selected Betsy Burton of The King's English Bookshop, Salt Lake City, Utah, to fill the unexpired term of Jack Buckley of Ninth Street Book Shop, Wilmington, Delaware. Buckley resigned because of an increase in his workload as a member of the Wilmington school board.

Burton, a bookseller for more than 30 years, is the co-owner and co-founder of The King's English Bookshop, which opened in 1977. She has long been active in free speech fights and is currently a plaintiff in ABFFE's challenge to a Utah law that censors the Internet. Active on numerous boards in the book business and in her community, Burton co-founded and is board chair of Local First Utah, and is on the boards of two national organizations whose member-networks are composed of independent businesses -- BALLE (Business Alliance for Local Living Economies) and AMIBA (American Independent Business Alliance). She is the author of The King's English: Adventures of an Independent Bookseller (Gibbs Smith), which was published in 2005.

BISG to Hold 5th Making Information Pay Conference

The Book Industry Study Group will be holding its fifth annual Making Information Pay conference on May 9 at the McGraw-Hill Auditorium in New York City. The conference will focus on the role of experimentation in an evolving publishing industry, as well as the loci and effects of this experimentation.

A presentation about the Espresso Book Machine by Todd Anderson from the University of Alberta bookstore might prove particularly interesting to booksellers, noted BISG Executive Director Michael Healey. Learn more about the conference on the BISG website, www.bisg.org.

Topics: News - Bookselling, Awards,