April Store Sales Off
Bookstore sales fell 4.3% in April, to $937 million. Following a strong January, bookstore sales have declined for three straight months and were off 0.2%, to $5.17 billion, for the first four months of 2006. Sales for the entire retail segment were up 5.9% in April, and 7% for the year to date.
HM Goes Free Freight
Beginning October 1, Houghton Mifflin will offer free freight on book shipments of at least 10 units and implement a new discount schedule. Under the new terms, retailers will receive a 46% discount on orders of 10 or more units shipped on a returnable basis, while nonreturnable discounts will range from 46% to 52%. Returnable orders sent to a retailer's distribution center qualify for a 48% discount or a discount ranging from 48% to 54% on nonreturnable orders.
AMS Deregisters Its Stocks
Advanced Marketing Services has notified the SEC that it will terminate the registration of its common stock, something that should take effect in 90 days. The move will eliminate the need to report financial results on a quarterly and annual basis, and is expected to reduce costs by lowering legal, accounting and administrative expenses. AMS said it intended to file all required reports up until June 14, 2006. The company has still not filed its year-end report for fiscal 2004, although AMS said it believes the audit is near completion.
Hall Crowned Poet Laureate
New Hampshire-based poet Donald Hall was named Poet Laureate of the United States. Succeeding Ted Kooser in the one-year post, Hall has long been published by Houghton Mifflin, which recently released the author's 15th book of poetry, White Apples and the Taste of Stone: Selected Poems 1946—2006.
Carswell Now Chronicle Publisher
After 12 years with the San Francisco—based Chronicle Books, Christine Carswell is taking over the top spot of the West Coast house. Carswell, who will be assuming the role of publisher, is taking over for Jack Jensen. Jensen, currently the house's president and publisher, will retain the title of president; he will continue to focus on long-range planning. Before joining Chronicle, Carswell was executive editor at Ten Speed Press.
Libris Winners
Stephen Lewis's Race Against Time, published by Anansi (distributed in the U.S. by PGW), won the Libris nonfiction Book of the Year prize, and Joseph Boyden's Three Day Road, by Viking Canada (put out by Viking in the U.S.), won the award for best novel. The Libris winners were announced at BookExpo Canada, which concluded last week.
New Lee Charges
Gordon Lee, a comics retailer in Rome, Ga., continues to face legal trouble after selling a supposedly racy title to minors in 2004. The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, which is defending Lee, is now responding to a filing against Lee by local prosecutors. The new charges are in response to the CBLDF's motion to dismiss the case.
Lee faces two misdemeanor counts of distributing materials harmful to minors.
Correction
On page S9 of our Canadian Supplement (PW, May 29), an editorial miscommunication resulted in two paragraphs about the publisher McClelland & Stewart appearing without attribution—the first about fiction publisher Ellen Seligman and the second about Douglas Gibson's successful M&S imprint. Both paragraphs appeared verbatim in the January Quill & Quire. PW regrets the error.
