U.S. e-commerce sales up 25% in June (chainstoreage.com)

FY24 first quarter service performance scores covering October 1 through December 1, included: *First-Class Mail: 87.1 percent of First-Class Mail delivered on time against the USPS service standard, a decrease of 3.9 percentage points from the fiscal fourth quarter. *Marketing Mail: 94.0 percent of Marketing Mail delivered on time against the USPS service standard, a decrease of 1.2 percentage points from the fiscal fourth quarter. *Periodicals: 83.3 percent of Periodicals delivered on time against the USPS service standard, a decrease of 2.8 percentage points from the fiscal fourth quarter.

The Alabama Media Group is killing the print editions of The Birmingham News, the Huntsville Times and the of Mobile. All three will cease on February 26, 2023. This is part of a restructuring by parent Advance Publications that also included New Orleans’ Times-Picayune, NPR writes. Bates continues that the combined circulation of the three titles was 260,000 a decade ago, but not is down to around 30,000. In contrast, AL.com pulls a million people a day, NPR continues.

After word spread this spring that Costco was planning to implement a "holiday season model," selling books only in the final three months of the year starting in 2025, various sources now say the mass merchandiser has committed to keeping bookstore sections year-round in 100 of its more than 600 locations. The remaining stores will move to the September-December bookselling model, and publishers will also have the opportunity to sell promotional pallets in stores. Costco had no comment on the report. While overall sales to Costco will almost certainly decline, the news still comes as a relief to publishers. Costco, along with other mass merchandisers such has Walmart and Target, has become an important bricks-and-mortar outlet for print books. Not only do they have the capability of selling tens-of thousands copies of a title, but they serve as important places for consumers to discover new titles not typically sold in other stores and which can be difficult to find online.