Quick Change in Strategy for a Bookseller

  

In the movie “You’ve Got Mail,” Tom Hanks played the aggressive big-box retailer Joe Fox driving the little bookshop owner played by Meg Ryan out of business. 

Twelve years later, it may be Joe Fox’s turn to worry. Readers have gone from skipping small bookstores to wondering if they need bookstores at all. More people are ordering books online or plucking them from the best-seller bin at Wal-Mart.
But the threat that has the industry and some readers the most rattled is the growth of e-books. In the first five months of 2009, e-books made up 2.9 percent of trade book sales. In the same period in 2010, sales of e-books, which generally cost less than hardcover books, grew to 8.5 percent, according to the Association of American Publishers, spurred by sales of the Amazon Kindle and the new Apple iPad. For Barnes & Noble, long the largest and most powerful bookstore chain in the country, the new competition has led to declining profits and store traffic. After the company announced last week that it was putting itself up for sale, Leonard Riggio, Barnes & Noble’s chairman and largest shareholder, who has declared his confidence in the company’s future, hinted that he might make a play to buy the company himself and take it private.

Web Plan Is Dividing Companies

In an emerging battle over regulating Internet access, companies are taking sides. 

Facebook, one of the companies that has flourished on the open Internet, indicated Wednesday that it did not support a proposal by Google and Verizon that critics say could let providers of Internet access chip away at that openness.
Meanwhile an executive of AT&T, one of the companies that stands to profit from looser regulations, called the proposal a “reasonable framework.”
Most media companies have stayed mute on the subject, but in an interview this week, the media mogul Barry Diller called the proposal a sham.
And outside of technology circles, most people have not yet figured out what is at stake.

Profit Climbs at Cisco, but Sales Forecast Falls Below Expectations

Cisco Systems, the computer networking equipment maker, reported stronger quarterly earnings on Wednesday as its customers continued to catch up on delayed purchases, but its chief executive said the company was seeing signs of the economic recovery slowing down.

Tech Talk Podcast: Net Neutrality

On this week’s New York Times Tech Talk podcast,  Brian Stelter, a Times media reporter, drops by to chat about Internet access regulation with J.D. Biersdorfer and Bettina Edelstein. The so-called net neutrality plan of Google and Verizon would exempt wireless and some other online services from rules for maintaining open access to the Internet, and Mr. Stelter says that while the two companies  appear to be staking out their ground now, other wireless carriers and media companies are watching and waiting as the Federal Communications Commission looks at ways of regulating broadband.

TwitPic’s Creator Has a New Project, Heello

Before Noah Everett started TwitPic, a photo sharing service for people who use Twitter, he had bigger plans in mind: he wanted to build tools that made the Web an easier place to work.