Book, newspaper and magazine stock watch

As someone who is interested in the history and future of books, newspapers, magazines and publishing, I have been watching the year-to-date share price performance of a selected group of publicly-held companies whose business activities include the publication, sale, and/or distribution of books, newspapers, and/or magazines (and/or their electronic equivalents). Here’s the list of 14 stocks I am watching, ranked by YTD performance:

1. Borders Group (+ 678%)

2. Books-A-Million (+ 372%)

3. Apple Inc. (+ 117%)

4. Amazon.com (+ 82%)

5. Google Inc. (+ 61%)

6. Barnes & Noble (+ 48%)

7. News Corp. (+ 46%)

8. Pearson PLC (ADR) (+ 30%)

9. The New York Times Co. (+ 11%)

10. McGraw-Hill Companies (+ 8%)

11. Thomson Reuters (+ 1%)

12. John Wiley & Sons (– 2%)

13. Courier Corp. (– 15%)

14. Bertelsmann AG (– 18%)

The data, derived from Google Finance, is as of the close of business on September 30, 2009. Note that I’ve rounded up or down to the nearest whole percentage. I’ll be updating the list at the end of every month.