Dawson Books has begun consulting with employees after announcing major head office departments will move to Bertram’s site in Norwich.
Dawson recently merged with the Norwich-based book wholesaler after Bertrams’ parent company Smith News bought it for £20m.
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Amazon.co.uk has launched a Kindle Daily Deal promotion, selling one chosen title a day at a heavily discounted price.
It began its promotion today (14th November) with Where the Shadows Lie by Michael Ridpath (Corvus)– selling the e-book for 75% less than it did yesterday at £0.99.
The offer, advertised on the Kindle store of the bookseller’s website, begins at midnight each day and ends at 23.59, featuring a digital countdown clock underneath the daily title.
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Foyles opened its new branch in the Westfield Stratford City shopping centre this week, placing the focus on children’s literature and attracting families.
The 5,000 square foot store located on the ground floor of the centre officially opened for its first day of trade yesterday (9th November), welcoming shoppers through the door with a floor-to-ceiling pillar made out of books.
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Lagardère Publishing has reported a net sale decrease of 2.5% on a like-for-like basis in its third quarter, attributing the drop to weaker sales in English-speaking countries and the "impact of e-books".
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UK retail sale values sank 0.6% in October compared to last year, with the British Retail Consortium warning sales were "worryingly weak" in the approach to Christmas.
In October last year, sales values had risen by 0.8%. On a total basis sales were up by 1.5% in October this year, but in the same month last year sales had risen by 2.4%.
The BRC warned book sales remained "very tough and well below their year-earlier level".
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World Book Day is set for a 2012 revamp, with new management, branding and digital promotional ideas hoping to achieve more than one million book token redemptions.
WBD will return on 1st March 2012—led by children’s marketing specialist Kirsten Grant as its new director and Penguin’s Joanna Prior as chair—with a new push after what Prior described as a “loss of energy for redemptions” which were not getting children “excited enough”.
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The International Publishers Association has called for the immediate release of its Freedom to Publish prizewinner in Istanbul following his incarceration by the Turkish authorities.
Ragip Zarakolu, the current chairman of the Turkish Publishers Association’s Freedom to Publish committee and owner of the publisher Belge was arrested in Istanbul on Friday (28th October) and has been remanded in custody today following a 28-hour-long hearing.
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Amazon has begun its UK festive promotion today (31st October), opening a Christmas store and revealing Steve Jobs’s biography is one of customers’ most wished-for items.
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Foyles' seventh branch in Westfield Stratford City shopping centre is due to open on 10th November.
The shopping centre site, situated near the London Olympic Stadium, opened in September but Foyles delayed its own opening until next week until the relevant building work was completed.
The store is located on the lower ground floor, next to Waitrose.
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Ebury Press has signed Anne Berry’s third novel The Adoption, a multi-generational story about adoption and identity, with the author moving from HarperCollins imprint Blue Door.
Ebury editorial director for fiction Gillian Green bought British Commonwealth rights from agent Judith Murdoch for an undisclosed sum. Ebury will publish in original trade paperback in June 2012, with the paperback to follow in 2013.
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The co-owner of the Big Green Bookshop has launched his own publishing company and is set to release his first book with author Greg Stekelman.
Simon Key, co-owner of the independent bookshop based in Wood Green, London, has named the company Timeline Books. It will publish London Tales, an illustrated work about the city, next month. Creator Stekelman is the author of The Man Who Fell Asleep (The Friday Project).
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The Times Cheltenham Literature Festival is celebrating its largest number of ticket sales since the event began 62 years ago.
The festival sold 125,000 tickets this year, an increase of 10,000 last year, which was double the amount sold in 2005. Highlights from the 2011 programme included Joanna Lumley, Jarvis Cocker, Carol Ann Duffy, Ed Balls, Jonathan Sacks, A S Byatt, Claire Tomalin, Terry Wogan and Jeffrey Archer.
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The six shortlisted books competing to win 2012’s $50,000 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature have been unveiled.
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Amazon customers can now have their purchases sent to lockers in London, instead of to their homes and offices.
The company has lockers in Seattle and New York as well as the metropolitan area of London. Customers can choose to have their purchase sent to a locker instead of delivered to their homes by clicking on the ‘Search for an Amazon Locker location’ button during the checkout process.
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Virgin Books has acquired actor and 1970s heartthrob David Essex's autobiography.
The as-yet-untitled book will be published in March 2012 and will chart Essex's career spanning four decades as a drummer, singer, theatre star, film actor and recently as "EastEnders" character Eddie Moon.
Virgin Books has world rights in all languages and the book was signed by Virgin Books editorial director Lorna Russell.
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Educational publishers have been accused of not providing enough support to help independent bookshops stay on the high street, as owners call for more discounts.
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W H Smith has trained 6,000 staff, installed working units into stores and readied television and press advertising following its new "long-term" partnership with Kobo.
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Bertrams' sales and operating profit has dropped marginally in the last year while the book wholesaler said its merger with Dawson Books will increase revenues by a third.
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Bath independent bookseller Mr B’s Emporium of Reading Delights has launched a new website, which it hopes will reach a broader audience.
The Bath-based retailer, who won Bookseller of the Year at The Bookseller Industry Awards 2011, has handpicked all the titles to sell through the site and created lists of recommendations for readers.
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Dawson Books staff will have to wait longer to hear how they will be affected by the merger of their company with book wholesaler Bertrams, which was finalised last month.
Any details about Dawson staff transferring to Norwich where Bertrams is based, or any employees who might be subject to redundancy consultations, has been put on hold for between two-three weeks while proposals are finalised, a Dawson spokesperson told The Bookseller.
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Fantasy children’s author Catherine Fisher will be officially named Wales’ first Young People’s Poet Laureate later today (18th October).
The Newport writer will be given the title by Literature Wales, which was established in April this year when the authors' society Academi joined forces with the north Wales writing centre, Tŷ Newydd. The ceremony will take place in Cardiff's Literature Lounge, presented by Welsh singer Charlotte Church.
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At least 22 independent bookshops are currently for sale in the UK, with the recession, the climate of the bookselling market and the refusal of banks to lend money all being cited as causes for fewer properties exchanging hands.
The bookshops on sale range in price from £10,000 for a book and card shop in Preston to £175,000 for a bookshop in North Yorkshire.
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Gardners Books has partnered with US company Baker & Taylor to use Blio, a free reading application.
The deal will allow Gardners Books' nearly 1,000 e-book publishers to reach customers around the world via Blio, which Baker & Taylor says is forecasted to be pre-installed on millions of consumer reading devices worldwide.
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Amazon.com has announced its seventh imprint, a science fiction, fantasy and horror brand called 47North, which has launched with 15 books.
The imprint name is based on the latitude co-ordinates of Seattle, where Amazon was founded. The launch list includes e-book star Stephen Leather's new series Nightingale, which launches in March 2012 with supernatural cop thrillers Nightfall, Midnight and Nightmare.
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Foyles will close its One New Change branch when its lease expires in April 2012 to "free up resources" for its forthcoming Stratford branch and recently opened Bristol shop.
The booksellers at Foyles One New Change will be redeployed within the company. Rebecca Hart, formerly a buyer for Royal Festival Hall and St Pancras branches, will now become the manager of the new Foyles Stratford shop.
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