BMI Launches Member Community

The U.S. Postal Service today released a First-Year Progress Report on Delivering for America (DFA), its 10-year plan to return the organization to financial sustainability and achieve service excellence while maintaining universal six-day mail delivery and expanding seven-day package delivery. “We have made significant progress in the first year of our Delivering for America plan, but our work is far from over,” said Postmaster General and Chief Executive Officer Louis DeJoy. “Our employees are playing an integral role in the advancement of the plan. As we continue to implement components of the plan, we expect to significantly improve on-time delivery performance, operational capacity, precision and efficiency, and to do so in a financially sustainable manner over the coming decade. Delivering for America is helping to drive a new sense of purpose and focus across all levels in the organization.” Key milestones in the first year of DFA include: Reversing decades of losses; Improvements in on-time national service performance; Streamlined organizational functions; Conversion of nearly 63,000 pre-career employees into career positions; New standards to provide service reliability for customers and more

The book manufacturing segment has come a long way since the doom and gloom days five years ago when many people questioned whether the printed book was in death mode due to the rise of ebooks. But, as we head into 2018, the demand for printed books is rising. And, with customer demands driving shorter runs and ultra-fast turnarounds, book printers are rising to the challenge of meeting those demands by continuing to invest in production inkjet and digital imaging technologies. New Disrupter: Amazon’s Turnaround SLAs: “It’s an exciting time to be in the industry,” says John Conley, CEO of Borderland Advisors, and a 42-year book manufacturing industry veteran with stints at RR Donnelley and then Xerox. What he is referring to is a new disrupter in the industry: Amazon same-day delivery, which he points out, will totally change today’s book publishing, manufacturing and distribution markets. Although it is unclear at this point exactly what the Service Level Agreement (SLA) will be, Conley does note that the supply chain requirement will create new profit models and opportunities for both publishers and printers.

Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE:BKS) today reported sales and earnings for its fiscal 2018 first quarter ended July 29, 2017. Total sales for the first quarter were $853 million, declining 6.6% as compared to the prior year. Comparable store sales decreased 4.9%, as declines in non-book categories outpaced improved book trends during the quarter. The Company also experienced lower online and NOOK® sales during the quarter, which were impacted by the prior year eBook settlement and lower promotional activity.