2009 Post-mortems, the first

So Barnes & Noble reported a disappointing holiday season, with same store sales dropping 5.4%. Their expectation had been for a smaller drop of 1-3%, and as a result they have downgraded their earnings expectations.

Nielsen Bookscan reported a 3% drop in unit sales at their reporting outlets, with most of the drop in adult non-fiction, and adult fiction down just 1%.

In this environment I'll be curious to see what Borders reports, which I believe is scheduled for the latter half of next week. I did think Borders was better-positioned than B&N was, at least as far as my little JABberwocky corner of the world was concerned, but Borders also had a steeper uphill climb because of their challenges the past two years.

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