The Class Had It Right

Some of our readers may remember a conversation in class about the book industry's plan to swamp the market during the holiday season with big name authors, hot-topic books, and promotion. As I remember the discussion, we decided it would not work. Well, we were right!!! Check out the following, courtesy of Publishers Lunch:

More Bad Holiday News
Two of the three big chains reported bad sales for the nine-week stretch through December 30: Barnes & Noble termed it "somewhat disappointing sales for the season in a highly promotional and competitive environment," with comparable store sales slipping 0.1 percent at the superstores at $1.1 billion overall (putting them down 0.3 percent on a comp basis for the 48-week period, at $4.1 billion). BN.com sales rose 2.7 percent to $108.5 million for the holidays, but are still down 2.4 percent from a year ago for 48 weeks, at $376 million. B. Dalton, an increasingly small part of the company overall, did just $28.4 million in sales during the holidays, and $94 million for the nearly completed year. Same-store sales suffered more at Books-a-Million, down 2.1 percent, at $124.5 million for the holidays. BAM's comp-store decline for the 48 weeks of the fiscal year is similar to BN's, at 0.4 percent. CEO Sandra Cochran says in the release, "Sales for the holiday season were below expectations as we confronted a quiet media environment and strong comparable sales in the prior year. The absence of a major movie tie-in affected both traffic and sales. A strong lineup in fiction performed well but could not offset the performance of the media-related titles in fiscal 2006."