August Store Sales Up

Bookstore sales, which posted their first increase of 2007 in July, rose 9.3%, to $2.29 billion in August, according to estimates from the Census Bureau. Sales for the first eight months of the year were still down 0.7%, to $10.80 billion. For the entire retail segment, sales were up 4.0% both for August as well as the first eight months of 2007.

Barnes & Noble has signed an agreement with the mobile commerce service provider Digby to sell books, CDs and DVDs via BlackBerry-compatible devices. Under the deal, B&N is the exclusive merchant for books, music and DVDs through the Digby storefront. BlackBerry users who click on “books” will see several hundred titles, and the full B&N title database is also accessible. Sale terms are the same as on B&N.com.

Less than 24 hours after Anne Enright was named the winner of this year’s Man Booker Prize for Fiction for her Irish family saga, The Gathering, her U.S. publisher, Grove Atlantic, went back to press for 75,000 copies, bringing the total in-print figure to 95,000. In the U.K., Jonathan Cape ordered a new printing of 50,000.

Claudia Remley has been named v-p for new business development at Cooper Sqaure, the joint-venture publishing operation formed by NBN and a private equity group. Remley succeeds Peter DeAngelo, who helped arrange Cooper Square’s acquisitions of T&N Children’s Publishing and Northland. Before joining Cooper, Remley held a number of executive positions with Simon & Schuster, Scholastic and HarperCollins.

Revenue at McGraw-Hill Education rose 9.9% in the third quarter ended September 30, to $1.17 billion, and operating profit increased 16.1%, to $411.1 million. Revenue in the school group rose 11.2%, to $670.8 million, while sales in the higher education, professional and international group increased 8.1%, to $505.1 million. For the school group, a strong showing in several adoption states offset a flat performance in open states and helped the publisher overcome a soft supplemental market.

In the higher education, professional and international group, sales of MHE’s business and economic imprints were up solidly; sales of digital products also increased. Internationally, school sales were strong in Canada and Spain, while higher education revenue was up in Europe, Asia and India.

Borders will open its first freestanding Paperchase outlet in Boston later this month. The 1,525-sq.-ft. store will stock greeting cards, stationery, diaries and other items that feature designs developed by the London-based Paperchase. Borders plans to open five to eight more stand-alone outlets by the end of fiscal 2008. It acquired Paperchase in 2004 and since then has opened Paperchase shops in more than 300 of its U.S. superstores.

David Naggar, president of the Random House Audio & Diversified Publishing Group, president of the Random House Information Group, and president of Fodor’s Travel, will step down from those duties before the end of 2007. Until a successor is appointed publishers and executives who had reported to Naggar will report to Jenny Frost, president and publisher of the Crown Publishing Group.

Walter Lorraine will retire at the end of the year, following a 55-year career in children’s books with Houghton Mifflin. He joined the company after graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design, and rose to run the children’s trade division for many years before becoming publisher of his own imprint.