This week’s In the News highlights include ABA, increased sales for Houghton Mifflin, a no sale for AOL Time Warner, sales up for used books and BEA attendance. Read On!
 
Tolkien Boosts Houghton Mifflin Sales – Since 2001 HM sales have increased by an aggregate of approximately 43% to nearly 150 million dollars, due mainly to the renewed interest in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of The Ring trilogy. The third segment of the movie trilogy will be released in December.
 
What’s happened to ABA Membership? – Mitch Kaplan, vice president and secretary, reported a decline of 300 in core membership at the ABA Board meeting in Los Angeles.  Core membership was 2794 in 2000, 2191 in 2001 and just over 1900 in 2002, a downward shift of over 30% in 2 years. (Source: ABA Membership profile on bookweb.org)
 
Time Warner doesn’t sell – Rumors were rampant at BEA about the sell of AOL Time Warner to Random House.  However, as has been the case several times before, the deal fell through.  It appears that AOLTW has pulled the sale off the shelf and put it on the backlist – at least for now.
 
Used Book Sales up – According to new research conducted by ISPSOS Book Trends, used book sales are on the rise.   In a recent article in Publisher’s Weekly, used book sales account for over 500 million dollars a year in book sales.  PW quoted Boris Wertz as saying that those figures are conservative. Wertz, vice president of online sales ABEBooks.com, said that ABEBooks.com has experienced a 50% growth in sales over the last 5 years with annual sales of 100 million dollars.
 
BEA Attendance Down but Up! – According to PW Newsline, BEA attendance this year was down from the New York Show but up from the two previous Chicago Shows.  BEA is moving back next year to Chicago, then New York, and then Washington DC for the first time in over 10 years.
 
Interesting to note is the bookseller attendance as a percentage was higher at the Chicago Show.  Of the nearly 32,000 attendees at the show approximately 6700 were booksellers at the LA Expo. 
 
Oren Teicher, chief operating officer of the ABA, said that “recognizing how difficult business has been for many booksellers for the first months of 2003, we are  enormously grateful that so many ABA member bookstores see the show as an important resource for their business,” according to Bookselling this Week.
 
ALA exhibitors down nearly 25% - Because of the fear of SARS in Toronto, the number of exhibitors pulling out of the ALA (American Library Association) show is nearing 200. Total exhibitors for the show approach 800.