Print publishing death watch

[dimethylsea]

[GeneChing]

Drake, I'm not into stickies. Some of the other mods here are, but for me, if you can't keep your topic ttt, then it's not worth it. Besides, I have the announcements for all the commercial biz part. It's not that hard to ttt whatever you want to promote. Just bait uki and he'll help you.

Laredo could be largest US city without bookstore
By PAUL J. WEBER (AP) – 2 days ago

LAREDO, Texas — The final chapter has been written for the lone bookstore on the streets of Laredo.

With a population of nearly a quarter-million people, this city could soon be the largest in the nation without a single bookseller.

The situation is so grim that schoolchildren have pleaded for a reprieve from next month's planned shutdown of the B. Dalton bookstore. After that, the nearest store will be 150 miles away in San Antonio.

The B. Dalton store was never a community destination with comfy couches and an espresso bar, but its closing will create a literary void in a city with a high illiteracy rate. Industry analysts and book associations could not name a larger American city without a single bookseller.

"Corporate America considers Laredo kind of the backwater," said the city's most prolific author, Jerry Thompson, a professor at Texas A&M University International who has written more than 20 books.

Since the closing was announced, book lovers in Laredo have flocked to the small store located between City Trendz ("Laredo's No. 1 Underground Hip Hop Shop") and a store that offers $4 indoor go-kart rides to stock up on their favorite titles.

Schoolchildren even wrote letters to the parent company, Barnes & Noble, begging for the store to stay open.

"Without that store, my life would be so sad and boring," wrote a fifth-grader named Bryanna Salinas, who signed her name with a heart.

The Laredo store is among 49 remaining B. Daltons nationwide that Barnes & Noble will close by next year.

The company believes a bookstore is viable in Laredo and has identified a location for a large-format Barnes & Noble, but the space will not be available for at least 18 months, said David Deason, Barnes & Noble vice president of development.

In the meantime, without a single independent bookseller, Laredo may be in a league of its own among big cities.

Though an independent bookstore is the only one of its kind in Newark, N.J., a city of nearly 288,000, big chains are nearby in the suburbs or New York City. Laredo is surrounded by nothing more than rural ranching towns on its side of the border.

"We suffer, but we don't suffer to the extent that a Laredo would," said Wilma Grey, director of the Newark Public Library.

Some worry that the closing could send a message that books and reading are not priorities in Laredo, a hot, steamy city of 230,000 that is choked by smog from trucks lining up at the border, which is home to the nation's biggest entry point for trucks and trains.

Nearly half of the population of Webb County, which includes Laredo, lacks basic literacy skills, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Fewer than 1 in 5 city residents has a college degree. And about 30 percent of the city lives below the poverty level, according to the 2000 census.

Laredo residents can still purchase books online, but civic leaders fear that without a bookstore, many residents will not have the opportunity to buy books.

Many also feel that the stigma of not having a bookstore hurts Laredo's reputation.

Outsiders, even other Texans, do not always distinguish between "los dos Laredos," the relatively peaceful city in Texas, and Nuevo Laredo, across the border in Mexico, which has been wracked by drug-war violence.

But some bookstore supporters are undaunted.

Maria Soliz, Laredo Public Library director, is leading the charge to get a bookstore back. The city's library system was already planning to open two more branches over the next two years to meet demand. That's in addition to the two-story main library painted in bold, Mexican-inspired colors that serves about 400,000 visitors annually.

"It's not reflective of the city that they're closing," Soliz said. "I know this city can support a bookstore."

Deason said the Laredo store is profitable, but its profits are not significant when factoring in the expenses of running a chain that's being phased out.

Some people also question the city's priorities. As Elaine Perry walked out of the bookstore earlier this month with a heavy bag of hardcovers, she criticized a recent proposal to build an indoor snow park.

"A snowboarding park in Laredo," Perry said. "Have you ever heard of anything so stupid?"

Bookstore customers tend to be well educated and to have disposable income, said Michael Norris, an analyst with Simba Information. But that demographic is hardly what makes or breaks the business, he said.

A bookstore is "either the cultural center in its community, or it's a pile of books with a roof over it," Norris said.

The B. Dalton in Laredo certainly skews toward the latter. It has narrow aisles, no coffee for sale and not a single chair to sit and read.

City Trendz employee Seve Perez said much of the traffic at Mall del Norte comes from Mexico, both from Nuevo Laredo and deal-seeking shoppers bused in from the country's interior.

Standing behind a rack of sale T-shirts that read "Save Texas Rap," the 66-year-old said his bookish daughters will be crushed when the bookstore leaves.

Next door, Laredo resident Misti Saenz walked out of B. Dalton with a sack of nine romance novels for her teenage daughter. She was stocking up before the store closes Jan. 16.

"It's going to be a total bummer," Saenz said. "It made me wish I had shopped there more."

[Drake]

Is that a no, or a side assault at Uki?

[GeneChing]

...a price increase watch.

Some Publishers to Push Up Cover Prices in 2010
Dec 14, 2009
-By Lucia Moses

mw/photos/stylus/118085-NewYorkerM.jpg
Publishers may not have cracked the code on generating paid content from the Web, but several big titles are looking to wring more money from consumers the old-fashioned way: cover prices.

Condé Nast is raising cover prices on The New Yorker, Golf Digest and Teen Vogue in 2010, having already done so at Vanity Fair, Bon Appétit, Condé Nast Traveler and Lucky this fall (click here for a chart of some titles who have already or are planning to raise their cover prices).

Hearst is lifting the cover price of Good Housekeeping, Esquire and Veranda and is considering the same for Country Living and other titles. Wenner Media quietly raised prices on Men’s Journal and Rolling Stone in the fall. And Meredith is eyeing newsstand price increases at flagship Better Homes and Gardens and Ladies’ Home Journal, Family Circle and Traditional Home, while Rodale is looking at doing the same at its health/fitness titles.

“It kind of depends on the brand,” said John McCarthy, senior vp, customer marketing at Rodale. “If we’re seeing natural demand, we have the opportunity to be more aggressive with pricing.”

In other cases, publishers are passing on de facto price increases by cutting frequency and maintaining or raising subscription prices. Thus while Time Inc. is maintaining cover prices across its titles for 2010, Fortune subscribers will pay the same for seven fewer issues as the annual frequency drops to 18 from 25. Hearst’s Esquire and House Beautiful subscription prices will go up in 2010—Hearst didn’t say by how much—while the titles will publish one and two fewer issues, respectively.

This could bode ill for some. John Harrington, editor of The New Single Copy, said his research shows that in the first half of ’09, when single-copy sales plummeted, the success rate of titles that raised cover price, and sold more units, fell by more than half. While in the past, single-copy buyers have accepted price increases, he said, “The sharp downturn in sales has changed the conventional wisdom.”

However, buyers praised plans to increase cover prices, while pointing out that for the most part, those titles don’t have a big newsstand presence. “It’s probably a worthwhile test to see how elastic newsstand prices are, and it’s always a good sales story to tell,” said Barry Lowenthal, president, The Media Kitchen. “It plays into wantedness.”

Scott Daly, executive vp, executive media director, Dentsu America, said that he would look favorably on publishers that attempt cover price increases. “Although I have seen research that supports an opposing point of view, I wholeheartedly believe that consumers who are willing to pay more for content they covet ultimately make better customers for my clients,” he said.

Generally, publishers are being more timid than usual about price hikes, given shaky consumer confidence and a 12 percent drop in single-copy sales in the first half of ’09, when a wholesaler disruption caused many outlets to be without magazines for weeks.

Stephanie Laco, senior vp, retail services at wholesaler giant Source Interlink, said she sees fewer publishers experimenting with price. “I think people are questioning whether the consumers are going to pay,” she said. Publishers selling at Walmart would need the retailer to approve price hikes, she added, a fact that “certainly has to be on the minds of publishers.”

Observers predict that newsstand sales declines will narrow in second-half ’09 but still be down, around 5 percent to 7 percent.

Even Rodale is predicting newsstand sales overall will decline slightly in the second half, some strong titles notwithstanding. “We’re hurting too,” McCarthy said. “If people are not going to stores as much, there are less eyeballs looking at your magazines.”

Drake,
I don't do stickies, but there are many ways to keep a thread ttt-ed that you can do yourself. If you want to support our forum, please do. If not, that's fine too. The forum is free to everyone.