Handseller Gives
Indies Mobile Option
Retail
After nearly four years of work, Eagle Harbor Book Company, in Bainbridge Island, Wash., is
getting ready go live with Handseller, an
app that will give independent booksellers a way to make personalized book recommendations to customers with their
iPhones and iPads. EHBC will be the
;rst store to implement Handseller next
week, and three to ;ve bookstores are expected to follow soon afterward. More
stores from around the country are expected to join the service, which is available to stores on a subscription basis.
Handseller is based on the experience
of Eagle Harbor store owners Morley
Horder, Tim Hunter, and René Kirkpatrick, who, with Horder’s wife, Colleen
Horder, and software developer Theresa
Savage, created and now market Handseller. The app, which is already available
on i Tunes and will be available for An-
SOURCE: NIELSEN BOOKSCAN AND PUBLISHERS WEEKLY. NIELSEN BOOKSCAN’S U.S. CONSUMER MARKE T PANEL COVERS APPROXIMATELY 80% OF THE PRINT BOOK MARKET AND CONTINUES TO GRO W.
Unit sales of print books fell 1% in the week ended March 22, 2015, compared to week 12 of
2014 at outlets that report to Nielsen BookScan. The decline came entirely in the mass
merchandiser channel, where units dropped 15% compared to the week ended March 23,
2014. Juvenile fiction was the only one of the four subject categories to post a decline in
the week, with sales falling 8%. The segment is no w facing extremely difficult comparisons
with last year’s Divergent trilogy. In week 12 of 2014 the three Divergent books held the
three top spots on the juvenile fiction list and sold a combined 201,000 copies. The first
three titles in week 12 of 2015 sold a combined 43,000, topped by John Green’s Paper
To wns , which sold just under 20,000 copies. The juvenile nonfiction segment had a 14%
increase in the week, aided by two Johanna Brasford titles that shot up the list: Secret
Garden sold about 6,500 copies and Enchanted Forest sold approximately 6,000 copies.
Two books that just hit the top 10 list in adult nonfiction contributed to a 2% increase in the
week. Mr. Food Test Kitchen Guilt-Free Weeknight Favorites sold about 28,000 copies in its
first week on sale, putting it in second place on the list, while Pioneer Girl, the annotated
Laura Ingalls Wilder memoir published by the South Dakota Historical Society Press, sold
almost 19,000 copies, making it #4.
MAR. 23, MAR. 22, CHGE CHGE
Juvenile Non;ction 821 937 14 12
Juvenile Fiction
3,287 3,008 - 8 0.9
Unit Sales of Print Books by Format
MAR. 23, MAR. 22, CHGE CHGE
Mass Market Paperback
1,322 1,320 -0.1 - 11
Board Books 551 659 19 17
Audio 108 78 - 28 - 17
Unit Sales of Print Books by Channel
MAR. 23, MAR. 22, CHGE CHGE
2014 2015 WEEK YTD
Total
10,892 10,741 -1% 2%
Mass Merch./Other
2,288 1,935 - 15 - 3
Retail & Club
8,605 8,806 2 4
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
25%
29%
9% 9% 9%
5%
21%
33% 33%
31%
35%
24%
23%
15%
12%
10%
2013
2014
Device Ownership of E-book Buyers, 2013–2014
phone in 2014, up from 9% in 2013.
Apple’s iPhone still was the digital read-
ing device owned by most e-book buy-
ers, but its share in 2014 rose by only
two percentage points over 2013 (con-
sumers could select more than one de-
vice). The iPad’s share also rose by two
percentage points in the year. Dedicated
e-reader ownership declined in the year,
with 21% of e-book buyers saying they
owned a Kindle e-reader, down from
25% in 2013; 9% of e-book buyers
owned a Nook device, down from 12%.
E-book buyers also showed slightly less
interest in Amazon’s tablet, the Kindle
Fire, with its share dropping by one per-
centage point in 2014, to 23%.
—Jim Milliot
