Third quarter financials for Barnes & Noble, announced yesterday, were “about as bad as could be,” as Jim Milliot puts it in a Publishers Weekly report. Total sales fell 4.4%, to $1.1 billion, which amounted to a net loss of $18.4 million (as reported in a more detailed breakdown by Michael Cader at Publishers Lunch, which is unavailable as a link). On top of that, “same-store” (individual) bookstore sales fell 7.4 percent. This was worse than even lowered expectations (see this earlier MobyLives report) were led to believe, and what’s more the company announced it expects sales to fall still further — a dramatic 6% to 9% — next quarter. Thus, despite the efforts of many to see the book business as some bulletproof arm of the entertainment industry, it isn’t looking like the theory is going to pan out. Limited silver lining alert: sales on B&N.com, the last, struggling line of resistence to the evil empire of Amazon.com, reported its sales were actually up. And, in a noble concession that should cheer publishers and the rest of the industry itself, B&N CEO Steve Riggio “said the company will not increase the discounts on titles in order to protect its gross margins,” and the company will persevere and open 15 new stores next year. (Admittedly, less then the 35 it usually opens annually, but hey, as you may have noticed about a year ago, it’s a recession!)