Last week, we told you about the 2.0 percent drop in revenue reported by major publishers for the month of September—now the U.S. Census Bureau has put out its figures for that month, which say that bookstore sales dropped 4.5 percent... although sales for the first nine months of 2008 are still up 1.8 percent over the same period from last year.

Publishers Weekly also offers a glimpse at the retail industry's benchmarks for October, which show a devastating plunge of 2.8 percent, largely driven by declining automotive sales—although things probably won't be looking good for bookstores when the final calculations are made, either.