Bookstores Buoyed by Harry Potter But Future Looks Grim

Borders, Barnes and Noble, and Books a Million (BAMM) all experienced profitable quarters due to the scads of people buying Harry Potter books.

Borders

Sales in the quarter ending in August 2007 rose 10.4%.

Excluding the sales of Harry Potter, the same store sales for Borders showed only a 0.4% increase compared to the previous year sales. With the Harry Potter sales, Borders sales were up 9.7%.

Via ShelfAwareness.

Barnes and Noble
Earnings for Barnes and Noble rose 9% on the spine of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Excluding the sales of Harry Potter, Barnes and Noble had a same store sales increase of 1 percent.

Barnes and Noble expects to have a loss of 6 cents to 10 cents per share in the upcoming quarter given that same store sales growth is flat (or nearly so).

Via MSNBC.

Bamm

Books a Million experienced a 9.6% rise in net sales with a 6.6% gain in same store sales. I could not find an article that parsed out what the gain would have been without Harry Potter but given the Borders and Barnes and Noble results, I would suspect that most of the growth was due to Harry Potter.

Via Stockhouse.

*the same store sales is an important measurement because it measures growth within existing stores instead of counting for new store growth

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