Phoenix, AZ

Borders Group Inc., the bankrupt bookstore chain, agreed to sell its business to Najafi Cos.’ Direct Brands LLC, a direct marketer that owns Book-of-the-Month Club.

The deal, which still requires an auction to test for higher bids, would save Borders from liquidation, the bookstore said yesterday in court papers.

Last year, retail e-commerce totaled $88 billion, or 2.4 percent of total U.S. retail sales, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. In the first quarter of this year, U.S. retail e-sales hit $25 billion—2.7 percent of total retail sales for the quarter ($906 billion). And based on the average annual growth rate (in the mid 20-percent range) of the last few years, 2006’s year-end e-commerce totals are likely to top $110 billion. Book publishers in almost every market have launched e-commerce sites to tap the growing potential in e-sales. Major publishers such as Scholastic (ShopScholastic.com), Random House (RandomHouse.com), McGraw-Hill (Books.McGraw-Hill.com), Penguin Group

by Tatyana Sinioukov Seybold Seminars program director Thad McIlroy, Arcadia House, highlights key issues of PDF workflows Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF), the new golden child of the publishing industry, was a hot topic at Seybold in San Francisco in September. As PDF workflows are being implemented in various ways by industry pioneers, many agree that PDF stands a very good chance of becoming the standard for digital workflows in the near future. PDF, says Thad McIlroy, president of the San Francisco-based Arcadia House and program director, Seybold Seminars, will have a profound impact on the efficiency and profitability of workflows. A major advantage