Barnes and Noble has announced that total sales for the holiday period were $953 million, declining 6.4% as compared to the prior year. Comparable store sales also declined 6.4% for the holiday period, while online sales declined 4.5%. Sales softened in December, primarily due to lower traffic. Book sales declined by 4%. One of the contributing factors to the holiday loses were the lack of people buying music and DVDS.
Barnes and Noble is not alone when they reported a lack of people buying books. The entire industry got off to a slow start since Black Friday. NPD Bookscan announced that for the first three weeks of December books saw a 4% to 7% decline and only the last week of the year saw a small gain of 4%, presumably people were buying last minute gifts.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
