Finance
The adult and children/young adult segments had large sales declines in November 2019 compared to the year before. Despite the bad November, sales of children/YA titles were up 5.2% in the first 11 months of 2019, although sales of adult books were down 3.3%.
The week ended Jan. 25, 2020, was a good one for selling books, with print unit sales rising 8% over the week ended Jan. 26, 2019, at outlets that report to NPD BookScan.
Print Unit Sales Up 3% in Mid-January
Print Unit Sales Up 2.5% in First Full Week of January
Revenue at Educational Development Corp. inched ahead 0.8% in the third quarter ended November 30, 2019, over the comparable period a year ago. Net income fell 2.8%, to $2.7 million.
Sales in the children/young adult category increased 20.9% in October over October 2018, while sales of adult books fell 3.7%, according to AAP's StatShot program.
The first full shopping week after Christmas, which ran from December 29, 2019, through January 4, 2020, saw unit sales of print books fall 3.7% compared to the similar week in 2010 at outlets that report to NPD BookScan.
A dip in adult nonfiction puts an end to a streak of small annual gains in total sales.
Barnes & Noble Education hired Morgan Stanley to serve as its financial adviser as it looks for ways to increase shareholder value in a fast-changing college material market.
After beginning 2019 with 10 companies, the Publishers Weekly Stock Index was down to only eight members at the close of the year, losing Barnes & Noble and Simon & Schuster. The remaining companies saw their combined stock price decline by 9%.