Carpenter Buys ‘The Portland Tribune’ And Other Oregon Publications (mediapost.com)

Skyrocketing demand for boxes and packing materials during the pandemic has slashed paper production across North America, and it couldn’t have come at a worse time for retail companies. “We’re starting to hear, ‘We’re out of paper,‘” said Polly Wong, president of San Francisco-based direct-marketing firm Belardi Wong, noting that some of her clients already missed their fall advertising campaigns due to issues at the printers. Ms. Wong estimates that 100 million catalogs will not be printed or reach U.S. homes in time for the year’s biggest spending season as a result. “It kind of put our industry up in a panic.” With some mills converting to cardboard to meet the spike in e-commerce deliveries and others shutting down altogether, more than 2.5 million metric tons of North American printing and writing paper capacity — or nearly one-fifth of 2019 levels — has come offline since the start of last year. more at source

Total net sales of $173.3 million increased by 16.5% for the 2021 holiday period compared to $148.7 million for last year’s comparable nine-week holiday period ended January 2, 2021 (the “2020 holiday period”). *Total comparable net sales, including both physical stores and e-commerce, increased by 14.1% for the 2021 holiday period compared to an increase of 2.7% for the 2020 holiday period. *Comparable net sales in physical stores increased by 23.2% for the 2021 holiday period compared to a decrease of 12.4% during the 2020 holiday period. Comparable net sales in physical stores increased by a double-digit percentage in all but one of 14 geographic markets compared to the 2020 holiday period. Net sales in physical stores represented 74.5% of total net sales for the 2021 holiday period compared to 68.4% of total net sales during the 2020 holiday period.

A host of new titles and a solid performance by the adult segments led to a 4.7% increase in unit sales of print books last week over the week ended October 8, 2022 at outlets that report to Circana BookScan. Adult fiction returned to its winning ways with sales up 7.1%. There was no single blockbuster driving sales, but five new releases were among the category’s top 10 bestsellers. Hannah Grace’s Wildfire took the #1 spot, selling nearly 60,000 copies. Tatsuki Fujimoto’s Chainsaw Man, Vol. 12 was in third place, selling over 33,000 copies, followed by Judgment Prey by John Sandford, which sold more than 28,000 copies.