Christian retailer Living Oasis has closed another store, with it slashing its number of branches from 19 to four in just over four months.
The Cheltenham, Gloucestershire branch was closed on Friday with two days’ notice given to its four staff. The closure follows the demise of the Chester, Weston-Super-Mare, Worthing and Nottingham branches, which were all announced within a month.
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Amazon.co.uk is creating 900 jobs by opening its seventh fulfilment centre in Rugeley, Staffordshire.
The 700,000 square foot centre will begin fulfilling orders from September and aims to employ more than 900 permanent and temporary workers before the end of 2012. Later this year, Amazon also plans to open a one million square foot fulfilment centre in Dunfermline as well as a new customer service centre in Ediburgh, which will open in August.
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The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has announced it is to investigate Amazon’s acquisition of The Book Depository.
The official body has issued an “invitation to comment” notice asking for written representations about “any competition or public interest issues” with Amazon’s move to acquire the UK-based online book retailer, which was announced yesterday. A spokesman for the OFT said the invitation “effectively starts our merger enquiry”.
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The Australian Booksellers Association (ABA) is to ask the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) to investigate after Pearson reached a deal to acquire the REDgroup online businesses.
Pearson said yesterday (4th July) it had liaised with REDgroup administrators Ferrier Hodgson to acquire the failed book chain's Borders and Angus & Robertson websites from 28th July, including their online and app-based bookstores.
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The London Magazine has launched a competition for readers to nominate their favourite bookshop, highlighting indies including Daunts.
As part of the publication's The Great Little Shop Awards, this month the magazine is asking readers to nominate their favourite bookshop. Entrants, who can vote online, will be in with the chance to win a set of 50 classic hardbacks from Everyman's Library, selected by m.d. David Campbell.
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University lecturers posting course notes online are "harming" academic booksellers, and the posts can also deter students from reading around the subject, the chairman of the Booksellers Association's Academic, Professional & Specialist Bookselling Group (APSBG) group has said.
Iain Finlayson's remarks were made after it was revealed that The Bookshop at Queen's, which serves students at the Queen's University Belfast, will close after 53 years of trading, citing online sharing of notes as one of the reasons for its financial demise.
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Christian book chain Living Oasis has announced its third store closure in just over a week, with Weston-super-Mare the latest branch to cease trading.
Ray George, head of the Nationwide Christian Trust, which owns the chain, said the shop will close “within two weeks”, making two staff redundant.
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James Daunt's tenure at the helm of Waterstone's is likely to be about "revolution not evolution" as he begins his leadership of the company, according to a source close to the situation.
The new m.d. of the high-street bookseller took control of Waterstone's on Wednesday (29th June), as previous m.d. Dominic Myers exited the company. On the same day, the HMV Group announced the official completion of the sale of the chain to Russian billionaire Alexander Mamut's A&NN Group.
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Waterstone’s today begins its first day under the ownership of Russian billionaire Alexander Mamut’s A&NN Group as previous m.d Dominic Myers officially leaves the bookseller.
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A Belfast academic bookshop has decided to shut its doors after 53 years trading, blaming competition from the internet for declining sales over the last five years.
The Bookshop at Queen’s on University Road in Belfast, Northern Ireland, serves students at the Queen’s University Belfast and has set a provisional date of 31st August to close.
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Angus & Robertson has announced 42 store closures across Australia and has sacked more than 500 staff.
The announcement was made on administrator Ferrier Hodgson’s website as the company continues to negotiate to sell 19 bookstores.
The chain, owned by REDgroup, will lose 116 full-time staff, 47 part-time staff and 266 casual staff, plus 90 from the REDgroup headquarters and warehouse, the Sun Herald reports.
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More retailers than last year have signed up to take part in Independent Booksellers Week.
Today (15th June) the Booksellers Association, which is co-ordinating the event, confirmed 262 indies across the UK had agreed to hold events starting from this Saturday until 25th June to help publicise their businesses and form closer links with authors and publishers.
Last year, 251 took part.
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Avon has announced a three-book exclusive deal with Sainsbury's starting from next month. Trisha Ashley's novel Sowing Secrets and Beverly Barton's Amnesia will sell exclusively in Sainsbury's physical and online stores from July and The Perfect Christmas by Georgie Carter will be available from September. All three books are published by Avon, a division of HarperCollins, which credits the supermarket with a “clearly defined focus on sourcing great seasonal products for their customers.”
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Irish book chain and stationers Eason has launched a daily offers site, EasonOffers.com, with the website offering a large discount on one item at a time each day, with free delivery to anywhere in Ireland.
Books offered so far include JFK in Ireland by Ryan Tubridy (Lyons Press) and a box-set of the Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson (Quercus).
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Tesco has revealed overall UK non-food growth is "still negative" in its first quarter results this morning (14th June).
The supermarket chain has seen its like-for-like sales excluding petrol increase by 1% in the UK in the 13 weeks to 28th May 2011. Like-for-like sales have increased by 3.4% including petrol and total UK growth was 7% including petrol and 4.9% excluding it.
Overall group sales including petrol have hiked by 7.8% and excluding petrol sales by 6.7%.
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Foyles bookshop is to open its seventh branch near the site of the 2012 Olympics in the new Westfield Stratford City shopping centre.
The family-owned bookseller, which has its flagship store on Charing Cross Road, central London, will launch its latest shop in the Westfield Stratford City, dubbed "Europe's largest urban shopping centre" and due to open later this year.
The seventh Foyles will trade from over 5,000 square feet and be situated on the ground floor.
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An "iconic" London travel bookshop is being put up for sale after 32 years on the high street.
The Travel Bookshop, based in London’s Notting Hill area, has been run by its present owner, based in France, for the last 25 years. The shop's manager Saara Marchadour said staff were considering a management buy-out.
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Australian bookshop chains Borders and Angus & Robertson may have to close if buyers cannot be found, administrators have revealed.
According to a statement from Ferrier and Hodgson, the firm is "urgently seeking offers from potential buyers of all or part of the Angus & Robertson or Borders networks", the Sydney Morning Herald reports.
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Managing Waterstone's will be a challenge in the current market and its new Russian oligarch owner is not going to support the chain with a large chequebook, the chain's new m.d., James Daunt, has said.
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Waterstone's booksellers are relieved over the chain's acquisition by Alexander Mamut, with one saying: "The staff will be behind [new managing director James Daunt] 100%." Fears remained, however, over possible bookshop closures.
One bookseller said news of the deal was "gratefully received". "There is not total calm yet as everyone is still waiting to see what will happen. While Daunt is a confidence-booster about the future of the stores after a worrying few weeks, we still don't know what will happen when he comes in," he said.
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Titles from Frank Cottrell Boyce, Dick King Smith and Arlene Phillips are among the choices in Richard and Judy's second children's book club.
The selected titles are available from today in a 3 for 2 offer through W H Smith. The books are organised across three categories; Read Together, Read Yourself and Fluent Reader and the club is run in association with the reading charity Booktrust.
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Edmund de Waal, Maggie O’Farrell and Tony Parsons are among the authors
lined up to take part in Independent Booksellers Week. The week of events, in association with the Booksellers Association, will take place between 18-25th June and encourages independent retailers to publicise their businesses and form closer links with authors and publishers.
The safeguarding of Waterstone's future will secure the midlist of history and science writing, literary fiction and memoir, the m.d. of Faber has said. Stephen Page, writing in the Guardian, said if the Waterstone's acquisition by Alexander Mamut goes ahead, it would be "tremendous" news for readers and writers. He said: "Despite all the noise about e-books and online marketing, bookshops are still at the heart of creating audiences for books."
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Responses to Amazon.com's hire of Laurence Kirschbaum as publisher have varied from worried to fear of a "dampening" effect on competition among delegates at the BEA conference.
Word that started to spread Sunday night was confirmed first thing Monday morning with the announcement that Kirshbaum, former TimeWarner c.e.o.-turned-agent, would be heading up Amazon's publishing operation in New York.
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Beautiful Books has launched its own summer reading campaign, providing POS material and an extra 5% off the selected titles ordered by independent bookshops.
The four titles being promoted through the Go Against the Grain campaign, all from debut authors, are Flick by Abigail Tarttelin; A Clockwork Apple by Belinda Webb; We Did Porn by Zak Smith; and Dog Binary by Alex Macdonald. The campaign will run from mid-June through to the end of August.
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