Bookstores

Nidhi Gupta, Executive Director at Crossword Bookstores, shares how she’s using technology to reinvent a legacy brand, personalising book discovery, empowering teams, and building community spaces.

Tens of thousands of centuries-old books are being pulled from the shelves of a medieval abbey in Hungary in an effort to save them from a beetle infestation that could wipe out centuries of history. The 1,000-year-old Pannonhalma Archabbey is a sprawling Benedictine monastery that is one of Hungary's oldest centres of learning and a UNESCO World Heritage site. Restoration workers are removing about 100,000 handbound books from their shelves and carefully placing them in crates, the start of a disinfection process that aims to kill the tiny beetles burrowed into them. The drugstore beetle, also known as the bread beetle, is often found among dried foodstuffs like grains, flour and spices. But they also are attracted to the gelatin and starch-based adhesives found in books. They have been found in a section of the library housing around a quarter of the abbey's 400,000 volumes. This is an advanced insect infestation which has been detected in several parts of the library, so the en

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Is it lit haste, or does it fill an important breach?

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Amazon said the legislation, adopted by parliament but not yet enacted, would punish those in rural areas who cannot easily visit a bookstore and rely on delivery

Last year, Covid-19 hit book sales - albeit not publishing per se - with the lockdown months shutting out physical retail altogether

Retail chain Shoppers Stop on Tuesday said it has closed the sale of a controlling stake in its wholly-owned subsidiary Crossword Bookstores at a gross business valuation of Rs 41.62 crore. The stake in Crossword Bookstores is being sold to the owners of Agarwal Business House (ABH), Pune -- Dinesh Gupta, Aakash Gupta and Family, Shoppers Stop said in a regulatory filing. Subject to receipt of necessary consents, Shoppers Stop shall divest 51 per cent stake, that is expected to be completed within 15 days, and another 39 per cent stake will be divested in the next 12 months, it added. "The business of Crossword Bookstores is valued at Rs 41.6 crore. Under the agreement, ABH will take over all the assets and brand. Any liabilities will be adjusted for arriving at the final consideration," Shoppers Stop said. The sale of the Crossword Bookstores is consistent with the company's strategic plans, which is to focus on its core business and expand its strategic pillars viz, First Citizen

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What one encounters in this slim volume is rare for a first book - a mature style, a confident voice, none of the fumbles of a younger poet's first book