TODAY'S NEWS

Slow Start for B&N; Reaches Tax Deal
by Jim Milliot
Total revenue at Barnes & Noble inched up 1.1% in the first quarter ended May 3, to $1.16 billion, and the retailer’s net loss increased to $2.2 million from $1.7 million in the comparable period last year. Sales through B&N’s stores increased 1.1%, to $1.0 billion, due entirely to contributions from new stores as sales for stores opened at least one year fell 1.5% in the quarter. Barnes & Noble.com, however, continued to show solid gains, with comp sales up 7.2%, to $99.6 million. Read on »

Riggio Says Time Is Right to End Returns
by Jim Milliot
In Barnes & Noble’s first quarter conference call, CEO Steve Riggio gave his firm backing to looking for ways to end the traditional returns practice and predicted that it could be possible to find a solution “in a year or two.” Riggio said B&N has always been open to finding alternate ways to deal with unsold books, calling the current practice “insane” and “expensive.” Changing the returns policy would lower costs for both publishers and B&N, Riggio said. He speculated that the given the current environment, publishers might be more receptive to seriously looking to change the returns model.

New Name for Doubleday Broadway
By Lynn Andriani
Beginning next Wednesday, Doubleday Broadway Publishing Group will be renamed The Doubleday Publishing Group. President and publisher Stephen Rubin explained that in recent years, Doubleday Broadway has expanded—it now includes Spiegel & Grau and Colorado-based Waterbrook Multnomah—and has grown out of the “Doubleday Broadway” name. “By simplifying our name... we are able to preserve the strong brand equity of the name ‘Doubleday,’ while ensuring that our publishing group maintains a clear, forward-thinking identity in the marketplace.” Read on »

More 'Dune' for Tor
by Matthew Thornton
Pat Lo Brutto at Tor has acquired three new “Dune” novels by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson with a significant seven figure advance to John Silbersack and Claire Roberts at Trident. The books’ titles are Jessica of Dune, Irulan of Dune and Leto of Dune. In a separate deal, Lo Brutto also bought an original epic science fiction trilogy, called Hellhole, also by Herbert and Anderson, for significant six figures. U.K. rights to both the new Dune novels and the Hellhole trilogy went to S&S UK in six-figure deals.

Herbert, the son of original Dune author Frank Herbert, and Anderson have had much success reviving the franchise for Tor; in recent years, New York Times bestsellers include Sandworms of Dune, Hunters of Dune and Dune: The Battle of Corrin. Herbert and Anderson are also co-producers of Paramount’s forthcoming remake of Dune, to be directed by Peter Berg (Hancock, Friday Night Lights).

Coffee House to Relocate
By Claire Kirch
Coffee House Press is on the move. Literally. After being advised by the new owners of their office building in Minneapolis’s trendy warehouse district that they and all the other tenants must leave by the end of June, the publisher is relocating to northeast Minneapolis. The 24-year-old literary nonprofit press, which was housed in its 3,000 sq. ft. office for the past 19 years, is moving its six employees and four interns to a 3,400-sq. ft. space in the Grain Belt Building, an old beer bottling plant that’s now owned and managed by the nonprofit organization Artspace. Read on »

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AUTHORS ON THE AIR

Authors on the Air: Apples & Oranges; The Bishop's Daughter; Bottled Water, Unwrapped
Today’s Good Morning America featured Marie Brenner, whose book is Apples & Oranges: My Brother and Me, Lost and Found (FS&G, $24), which PW found “courageously and affectingly plumbs the depths of often complex family and sibling relationships.” Read on »

PICTURE OF THE DAY

A Happy Ending With the "Sexerati"
Last Tuesday over 400 people came out to the Happy Ending Lounge to fete Mark A. Michaels and Patricia Johnson, authors of Tantra for Erotic Empowerment: The Key to Enriching Your Sexual Life (Llewellyn) and Tristan Taormino, author of Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships (Cleis). Pictured (l. to r) are Taormino, Michaels, and Johnson. Guests, who had been invited to "party with the sexerati," were lined up around the block as the event got underway. Submit your pictures here »

JOB OF THE DAY

PW VIRTUAL EDITION

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