Maybe publishers need a bailout, too

According to the NY Times, publishers and book retailers are nervous about the upcoming Christmas shopping season.

Like many businesses across the retail sector, the publishing industry has been hit by a raft of doom and gloom in the past few weeks. Leonard S. Riggio, chairman and largest shareholder of Barnes & Noble, said in an internal memorandum predicting a dreadful holiday shopping season, as first reported in The Wall Street Journal last week, that “never in all my years as a bookseller have I seen a retail climate as poor as the one we are in.”

Sounds like Riggio is not alone in his assessment.