Online retailer Amazon.com opened a brick-and-mortar bookshop, Amazon Books, on November 3, 2015 in Seattle’s University Village. Amazon’s corporate headquarters is located in the same city.

The store has 5,500 square feet of retail space and another 2,000 for storage, and stocks between 5,000 and 6,000 titles, mostly Amazon bestsellers and books rated highly by website customers, an approach Amazon Books vice president Jennifer Cast calls “Data with a heart… ...Read More

San Francisco specialty bookshop Borderlands Books is going out of business. The store will close its doors no later than March 31, 2015, but may close earlier, depending on how quickly the inventory can be sold. Owner Alan Beatts explains:

The recent change in San Francisco minimum wage law will prevent the store from being financially viable no later than July of 2018 (at which point our payroll will have ...Read More

During a discussion in the French National Assembly about prohibiting free shipping by Amazon in order to preserve the competitiveness of bookstores, a counter-proposal to grant a tax reduction to non-DRM or proprietary e-books was introduced. Isabelle Attard, the French deputy and member of the Europe Ecology Green Party who suggested the idea, made the distinction between the right to possess a digital e-book file and the right to read ...Read More

Tom Doherty Associates, publisher of Tor and Forge Books, has announced that it will launch an online store to sell DRM-free e-books directly to readers. Opening summer 2012, the Tor/Forge DRM-Free E-book Store will be hosted at www.tor.com. It will sell all Tor, Forge, Starscape, Tor Teen, and Orb e-book titles, and plans to eventually offer titles from other publishers as well. ...Read More

Esteemed Minneapolis, MN bookstore DreamHaven announced that they are closing their retail location at the end  of January 2012.  In a note sent to the DreamHaven Catalog email list, owner Greg Ketter described the situation:

“It’s been a tough decision but in-store business has all but disappeared. Mail order shouldn’t change too much because of this but there definitely will be changes — different phone number, different hours, more used ...Read More

Borders will not emerge from bankruptcy successfully, but will instead be liquidated.

With no bidders interested in keeping the bookstore chain as a going concern, Borders chose to cancel the planned July 19 auction, and instead announced plans to submit a liquidation plan from Hilco and Gordon Brothers to the bankruptcy court for approval. Assuming approval goes smoothly, liquidation is set to begin July 22, 2011. The company’s remaining 399 ...Read More

Borders Bookstore announced on Sunday, January 30 that it would delay January payments to some landlords and vendors (including major publishers) for the second month in a row, causing speculation that the company may have to file for bankruptcy. According to a company statement, the payment delay “is intended to help the company maintain liquidity while it seeks to complete a refinancing or restructuring” of existing credit and obligations. Borders ...Read More

Borders Group, Inc. has announced it will be delaying payments to some vendors — including major publishers — while they try to refinance their considerable debt. This follows a warning on December 9, 2010 that the company might have a “liquidity shortfall” in early 2011. They will likely attempt to “restructure their payment arrangements” regarding money owed to publishers and other vendors.

The company’s share price fell by more than ...Read More

Amazon has made some Nielsen Bookscan data available free to authors via their Author Central program. Authors who sign up for the free program can see geographic weekly sales data for their print books.

Amazon vice president Russ Grandinetti said, “Authors are an important community for us … We’re really happy to make it easy and free for them to see geographical BookScan data updated weekly, as well as historical ...Read More