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Friday, August 22, 2008

Book sales fall in the US

Barnes & Noble report falling sales, with actual bookstores the hardest hit.

Even with the success of Stephenie Meyer's Breaking Dawn, David Wroblewski's Story of Edgar Sawtelle, and Randy Pausch's The Last Lecture, the lack of a mega-seller on the scale of Harry Potter took a toll on Barnes & Noble's second quarter earnings.

Total sales for Barnes & Noble declined 2% to $1.22 billion, with bookstores suffering the most, their sales falling by 4.7%. Predictions for the full year were correspondingly pessimistic. The company will open 30 to 35 stores this year, but said that this is unlikely to keep on happening. Not only are sales falling, but developers are cancelling the construction of new malls.

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