Melville House Books

Good news for America’s second largest bookselling chain yesterday: it, er, didn’t lose as much money as it was expected to in the first quarter. Yes, as this Reuters wire story reports, Borders Group Inc. ”reported a smaller-than-expected loss that beat Wall Street estimates as cost cuts offset a protracted slump in book sales.” For those worried about Borders going out of business and leaving the business with only one giant brick-and-mortar chain, it was good news, or at least, what passes for good news in the book biz these days. 

And it’s not as if the announcement left anyone dancing in the streets, including the company’s embattled executive corps. CEO Ron Marshall admitted they could only cut so many costs, saying, ”We know that we cannot save our way to prosperity. Our long-term success will come from doing a much better job of driving sales and that’s where our focus is right now.”

So how bad was it?  The company lost $86 million in the quarter (compared with a loss of $31.7 million for the same quarter last year), and “total revenue fell 11.6 percent to $650.2 million from $735.8 million.” Meanwhile, the company also announced that it “had cut its debt by $266 million to $325.9 million” during the quarter.

It was enough to prompt the company’s stock — which has been climbing ever since hitting a low of 35 cents per share last December, to end the day up at $2.57 per share.

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.