ABA Omnibus

Main | Next page »

Wednesday Jul 01, 2009

A post in two parts

I. E-Fairness

No, taxes aren't fun. (And I say this as someone who has to pay non-resident taxes in New York, so I know whereof I speak.)

I'm not just talking about the ones you pay annually (or quarterly, for all the self-employed), but the ones you pay without thinking about it, the ones that are just a line item on your bill.

The question of e-fairness is back in the news this week as more states are getting ready to follow New York's lead and recognize affiliate marketers as physical presences for the purposes of tax law - specifically, sales tax. The Site That Shall Not Be Named and other online retailers have responded by terminating those affiliate relationships or threatening to do so.

Obviously, ABA - and by extension, Omnibus - isn't a neutral reporter in this situation. We lobbied for the clarification of nexus in New York, and we're working with and on behalf of our members in other states. Certainly there's an aspect of self-interest; not collecting sales tax allows indies' competitors to offer items at a lower cost independent of discounting. But we refer to this effort as e-fairness because it's also about equitable tax collection.

Len Vlahos, our new COO, is much smarter than me, so I'm just going to borrow his words: "To extent sales tax exists, it should be collected at point of sale. To allow only some to rely on use tax creates inequities."

II. Fun stuff

Because finding out where the word cliché came from (courtesy of Jenny Davidson) is what makes blogging worth it.

Anyone who has spent time typing in ISBNs can join me in celebrating the bar code's recent anniversary.

I may have found a new style guide to love, courtesy of the one at Abbeville.

Mike Shatzkin looks at whether family ownership should be valued more heavily in evaluating a business. Any family-owned bookstores care to weigh in?

"They sound like nerds." For me, that's a selling point.

I may have mentioned once or twice that Paul Kozlowski has an excellent blog. He's been particularly on this week.

How not to fix children's books.

Posted at 04:16PM Jul 01, 2009 by Sarah Rettger in General | Comments[0]

Friday Jun 26, 2009

Swooping in and catching up edition

I wanted to give you a meaty post this week, but an ongoing Excel project (at one point I had 22 different workbooks open) put a stop to that. So I was going to at least start with a clever introduction, but Roller decided to erase my text instead of saving it.

Instead you get my apologies, promises to fill the next few weeks with my own thoughts on genre snobbery, kids and reading levels, and other pressing topics.

For now, though, a pile of links:

Still Life With Book Maven (get over the genre snobbery)
One Literature Nut (more on snobbery)
book-ivorous (and even more on the topic)
Booksquare (be part of conversations)
The Written Nerd (book-related etymology)
my3books (love letters to booksellers, constraint)
Unbridled Books (lots of stuff, why I'm glad Fred's off probation)
Neil Gaiman's Journal (details on The Graveyard Book parties)
Emerging Leaders (indie retail talking points)
ShelfTalker (learning to read customers)
Twitter Book Parties (online book launches that link to IndieBound)
Are You Loving Publishing Today? (PSU Press' theory of blogging)
The Abbeville Manual of Style (everything you ever wanted to know about Ed Champion)

Posted at 12:15PM Jun 26, 2009 by Sarah Rettger in General | Comments[0]

Monday Jun 15, 2009

Flat Stanley rides again, and other news from the land of books

If you need to be reminded why lit snobbery is bad:

"Eventually, my daughter finally read something that didn't have Stephanie [sic] Meyer's name on the cover. And then something else. And it turned out that she'd fallen in love with reading, not just with Twilight and Edward and Bella and the whole gang that Meyer had created."

See also:

"I'm sure the one thing most readers will take from the responses is the same thing I have - that there is no way to standardize the books that will impact a young girl's life. We all value radically different books for radically different reasons and yet we all have ended up here, the same place, as book lovers and writers."

I'm a sucker for Flat Stanley stories. Deal with it:

"It was fun for Humphrey to meet another character from a book."

A stunt that just might make a decent book (due out in November):

"It's been a little more than two years since Yann Martel, winner of the 2002 Man Booker Prize for fiction, started to send books of his own choosing to Prime Minister Stephen Harper's office on Parliament Hill. He continues to do so -- every two weeks."

Yes, this works for bookstores too:

"Here are five basics to keep in mind as you venture into the virtual world to sell your books."

Firsthand reports from the latest (very odd) censorship case:

"Attitudes of those who wanted the books censored really became clear when Alderman Terry Vrana said to me, 'I don't care what your policies are. I want those books off the shelf.'"

And an homage to librarians who make tough calls:

"Yeah, but how many of us would have made the same type of decision in those tense wartime years? It's easy to laugh at the stereotyped librarian-figure but, in truth, those pioneers were really tough -- and truly worthy of admiration. They were badasses long before the word was invented."

How does your store do genre?:

"I have to say I was rather pleasantly surprised at just how many people got involved in this discussion (we had well over 300 tweets in the hour long session), and I was delighted that there were such varied and interesting views on the idea of genres."

The Arbiter of Style wins the prize for best response to criticism this week:

"Our industry seems increasingly to feel embarrassed about traditional books, as though they were stodgy and outmoded and better disguised as newer, more popular media."

Posted at 11:56AM Jun 15, 2009 by Sarah Rettger in General | Comments[1]

Monday Jun 08, 2009

Back from BEA edition

Groan. Shake head. Repeat:

"Also, if a woman is reading a book by an author who is considered a "guy's writer"--like Cormac McCarthy--that's likely to get her a lot more attention than if she were deep into Pride and Prejudice." (thanks - if that's the right word - to our friends at Inkwell)

A chain bookseller stands up for his role. (Keep reading for some insight into how customer types shape retail):

"Sure, it’s a low paid job in the service sector. It’s a 'customer service' job, and hence doesn't get the same respect as someone who works with numbers and reports all day, or who manages a 'team' or a division or a whole company. It produces nothing 'real' and at the end of the day when I go home I can't point to something I made, or something I did to change the world." (Also courtesy of Inkwell)

Secrets of the publishing mind:

"Let me just say, before we move on to the next stop on my tour, that I secretly LOVE working in an industry where every single office is required to have multiple bookshelves."

For those in a more philosophical frame of mind:

"Reading is both a public and private act. It's private in the sense that no amount of discourse can mirror or capture the intimate experience a reader has with a book and its author. But that discourse is precisely why it's public - the blog posts, the reviews, the conversations over coffee, all of that affects and informs your reading experience. When you give someone a book you love, you're inviting them to understand a private encounter you had with a text. It's the fusing of the public and the private, the social and the intimate."

Or if you want an academic perspective:

"'Reading used to be associated with mobility, but now reading—along with the rise of other sedentary enjoyments—has become a refuge for those trapped in enclosed spaces.”

'Reading for pleasure is done most often by women, children and the old—three segments of the population associated with the social loss of power. What does it mean that reading is associated with socially disempowered groups?'"

Stop reading now if you've had your fill of BEA stuff. But for everyone else, there are a few points still to be covered.

One point, really.

At our Day of Education keynote on Thursday, all four of the authors said a lot about the role of independent bookstores and other distribution channels - including e-books. And then Motoko Rich featured one snippet from the discussion in her New York Times summary of the show:

"Inevitably there was a backlash. At a panel of authors speaking mainly to independent booksellers, Sherman Alexie, the National Book Award-winning author of 'The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,' said he refused to allow his novels to be made available in digital form. He called the expensive reading devices 'elitist' and declared that when he saw a woman sitting on the plane with a Kindle on his flight to New York, 'I wanted to hit her.'"

And of course e-book enthusiasts fumed. And pounced.

But in at least one case, they followed up. Ed Champion contacted Alexie, asked a few more questions, and posted the interview on his blog. The entire interview is worth reading, but here's a taste:

"I consider the Kindle elitist because it's too expensive. I also consider it elitist because, right now, one company is making all the rules. I am also worried about Jeff Bezos' comments about wanting to change the way we read books. That’s rather imperial. Having grown up poor, I’m also highly aware that there's always a massive technology gap between rich and poor kids. I haven't yet heard what Amazon plans to do about this potential technology gap."

Karl Pohrt says something very similar in the post I linked to above:

"I ask him about people who don’t have laptops or access to Starbucks.

He tells me he doesn’t think this is a problem because computers have come down in price to around $400.

I think about inviting him to visit Flint, my hometown, where about a third of the population now lives in poverty. We could take a poll or do a visual census of computer use among folks in downtown Flint coffee shops. But I hold my tongue."

So what are we going to do about it?

Posted at 12:22PM Jun 08, 2009 by Sarah Rettger in General |

Friday May 22, 2009

Next stop: BEA

Why summer reading is broken, a report from the front lines:

"Having worked a bookstore I know for a fact there are a lot of kids (and their parents, mostly) scrambling to find copies of the required book that first week of school because then, and only then, are kids frantic enough to care about reading it."

I'm rather fond of my latest job function (the Perle Mesta of the ABA Bookseller Lounge), but I could go for adding this:

"The job of digital concierge grows in significance as more and more material is introduced to the market via the web."

Insert your geographic location here:

"I think if we continue on the path we've started, offering excellent customer service, a great selection, and being the go-to place for literary events in North Brooklyn, we will be OK. At least I hope so. ;-)"

What happens when Canadians head south:

"I know, I know. Everybody who lives near me is saying "live oak? What are our plain old oaks then? Dead Oaks?", but it turns out that they are called Live Oaks because they don't lose their leaves in the winter. (Or what passes for a winter here.) They are the most graceful and beautiful thing. I love them."

RSS alert:

"This blog, Crossover, focuses on a rare breed of book--the adult book teens love, the teen book adults appreciate, and (very, very occasionally) that Middle Grade book adults read. I'm interested in reviewing books that transcend these age boundaries and understanding why these books are different."

Try this backlist promotion:

"Long story short, I was embarrassed at how few of the 50 books I had read, and have committed, this summer, to reading 4 classics I've never read before. Want to join me?"

That bottleneck? It starts with "book" and ends with "store," which is why we need to be part of this shift:

"Could it be that reading is suffering not from a lack of interest but from a bottleneck in its distribution? As digital reading devices proliferate—and other companies emerge to offer alternatives—books and booklike pieces of writing might even have more leverage on our culture."

Posted at 04:00PM May 22, 2009 by Sarah Rettger in General |

Where to get your BEA news

The regular link roundup will be posted later today, but there's housekeeping to be taken care of first: everything you need to know about ABA's coverage of BEA.

Bookselling This Week will, as always, send out overnight issues covering the day's events and reminding readers of the next day's schedule.

Omnibus will be updated on a schedule that depends entirely on when Dan and I have time to sit down in front of a computer. Stop by here or check your RSS feed for shorter (and quite possibly more frivolous) stories than you'll find in BTW.

And of course, we'll be on Twitter, sharing updates marked with #BEA and #abaed, the Day of Education hashtag. While I encourage you to follow the hashtags, because that's where you'll find the widest coverage from all BEA attendees, here's the list of ABA staff on Twitter:

Avin Domnitz: @avindomnitz
Dan Cullen: @dancullen
Jill Perlstein: @JillSP
Karen Schechner: @KSchechner
Kristen Gilligan: @cheydog44
Len Vlahos: @lenhouse
Lisa Winn: @digsummer
Martha Schulze: @ABAMartha
Matt Supko: @mattsupko
Meg Smith: @IndieBoundMeg
Paige Poe: @IndieBoundPaige
Ricky Leung: @KLeung
Sarah Rettger: @SarahABA and @SarahRettger (Yes, both, but not at the same time. I'm not that good.)

Posted at 02:30PM May 22, 2009 by Sarah Rettger in General |

Friday May 15, 2009

Quotes for the week before the week before BEA

Really, I just wanted to paste Elizabeth's entire post here:

"OH! And these two are crucial: Do put release month and year on the spines of ARCs. Many publishers have started doing this and we love you for it."

Did you think I was going to give away the punch line? Click through to the other Sarah's blog to find out:

"Q: How many booksellers does it take to screw in a light bulb?"

When recommendations go bad:

"We noticed that customers who bought Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer also bought trendy, must-read fiction by people much younger, hipper and more gifted than you."

A great endeavor in so many ways:

"The Book Fair for Boys is built around a wish list at Powells Books. We chose Powells because the GLW crew was very determined to use an independent bookstore for this endeavor (another example of putting our money where our mouth is)."

He's not only a sales rep and book blogger, he's also a fantastic artist:

"A few stats: the collage measures 1 foot by 3 feet; the background is made of squares cut from actual books (all galleys, all favorites of mine); the letters and frames are made of tiny book jackets."

Patrick solves the piracy issue:

"For bookstores and publishers, the answer has to be this: make it more appealing - in every way - to buy the ebook than to steal it."

Because everything, including industry news, sounds better in noir format:

"A leathery blonde two tables away held on to her shivering Yorkie for dear life. A middle-aged guy in a black raincoat across the street had a lit cigarette blown right out of his mouth. I thought to myself, this wind is nothing compared to the one that's blowing through the book business."

The Arbiter of Style just wants to turn me into a lush:

"To decant, first stand the bottle upright for a few hours in a dark, cool place. Remember that several days after it is opened vintage port loses its aroma."

I don't recommend the post as a whole. Mark Cuban is whining because the world doesn't bend to accommodate his every need. But he makes one interesting point:

"I’ve always been a believer that Amazon has excelled not just because they have great customer service and decent prices, but because they have those, PLUS they have my credit card on file. It’s easier to buy from Amazon than it is to go to the store."

(via)

Posted at 03:31PM May 15, 2009 by Sarah Rettger in General |

Friday May 08, 2009

A rather kidlit-centric update

Housekeeping: Don't forget to e-mail me to make hotel reservation changes, request theater-seating tickets, or reserve your spot on the Brooklyn Bridge tour with Kevin Baker.

Actual content: I'm sure the latest Omnibus post is the highlight of your Fridays, but every other week, there's something even better: Fine Lines, Jezebel's nostalgia-filled look at past young adult favorites, is back!

Jezebel also scores a hit with their newly minted children's-book slang. (For my part, I wander into Granger Danger territory with unfortunate frequency.) Link courtesy of The Longstockings.

Titles: Join the ShelfTalkers in sharing your favorite title manglings, and then click over to Schott's Vocab to invent some new ones.

Are you a fan of Vroman's blogger Patrick Brown? The Big Bad Book Blog interviewed him this week.

Mike Shatzkin offers his take on how independent bookstores should deal with e-books - as simply as possible. (If you're interested, he's hiring.)

Kat Meyer and Charlotte Abbot have independents' collective backs this week too - not only did they host a discussion of bookstore-blogger relationships, they saved all the relevant tweets in a format that's both chronological and legible!

Colleen Mondor asks what's up with all the twelve-year-olds in recent fiction - including this month's #1 Indie Next List title.

Bookseller Alex Green receives our second metaphor-of-the-week award for this gem: "Innovation is like a greedy child, its will and appetite outpacing its emotional maturity."

Last week Tim O'Reilly explained why he wants to "reinven[t] the book for the age of the Web." This week's Foreign Policy's Evgeny Morozov explains why we really don't need to. Both are worth reading.

Posted at 03:24PM May 08, 2009 by Sarah Rettger in General |

Sunday May 03, 2009

"If the link supposes that," said Mr. Bumble...

I was tempted to make all the links in this post DickensURLs, but decided not to make you click twice for everything. But go play around with the site. When book geekery and mainstream nerdiness intersect, it's a moment to savor.

A new blog for the collection: Bookseller, writer, and blogmaster Drew Goodman has launched Bits of Ink, exploring how bloggers fit into the future of independent bookselling.

And another one: Kidlit bloggers Jen Robinson, Pamela Coughlan, and Susan Kusel are joining forces to talk about books at PBS Parents. Take a look at Booklights!

Tricia Stohr-Hunt takes a break from comment-induced frustration to point out that "parody" and "dumbed down" are not synonymous. This Mel Brooks fan is nodding in agreement.

Chris Brogan's list of things to do before attending a conference is one I'll be thinking about a month from now, when we're all showing up for BEA.

Although Harry and the Can of Purple Spray Paint won the Unnecessary Sequels Contest, I think Brie and Foie Gras for Frances is still my favorite.

Patrick learned a thing or two at the LA Times Festival of Books. Happily for those of us on the other side of the country, he's decided to share.

Want to know more about the IndieBound iPhone app? Kat Meyer goes behind the scenes with programmer extraordinaire Matt Supko.

Paul Kozlowski adds his thoughts to the discussion of what reading really is.

And we'll end with a feel-good story for the week. If you missed hearing about Leonard Abess when he appeared at the presidential address in February, Knowledge @ Wharton has an in-depth interview with the man who shared $60 million with his former employees.

Posted at 02:02PM May 03, 2009 by Sarah Rettger in General |

Friday Apr 24, 2009

Other people's words

I wanted to give y'all some original content this week. I really did.

But you might have noticed we announced a a reduction in the Hotel ABA rate today, along with other special events for hotel guests. And did you notice who's handling all those requests for tickets and tours and things like that? Yeah, that would be me.

And since other people have had some great stuff to say this week, I'm going to point you to their words instead. Go get involved in these conversations.

From Jason Pinter:

The haters can shove it. To my mind, THE DA VINCI CODE was a perfectly decent thriller. No more, no less... I have read three different New York newspapers this morning, and all three have prominent articles on the impending publication of THE LOST SECRET. These articles are not buried in the middle of the paper, but are printed within the first eight or so pages (right up there with tawdry wedding scandals and mockery of David Patterson--you know, the important stuff). The publication of this book is a bona fide event. When was the last time a book for adults was an actual event? Sure Grisham and Patterson sell books by the truckload, but their release dates are hardly the kind of thing you call your friends to talk about.

From Brendan Sherar:

Seriously, folks, the future of books is being decided now, much like it was being decided for newspapers 5-7 years ago. I’m not at all bashing e-books... But, there are some extremely important questions involving books and technology these days which -- left unheeded -- are defaulting in a direction which may not be the world of books we want to live in. And, most of these are things that you as a citizen/taxpayer/person-who-cares can take action on now. Let us learn from history, and not be like the newspaper industry and simply Do Nothing.

From Andrew Wheeler:

I have mixed feelings about Jonathan Karp's recent article for Publishers Weekly, in which he laid out his "12 Steps to Better Book Publishing." On the one hand, I imagine they would make publishing more consistently successful and profitable. On the other, the only way they'd do that would be through unfeasible collusion in restraint of trade, losses of the jobs of at least half of the people currently working in book publishing, and publication schedules that resemble Karp's own Twelve imprint (one guaranteed big-seller a month and nothing else). Since I enjoy both reading books outside that narrow framework and a publishing ecosystem with jobs for myself and my friends, it's not a model I can entirely agree with.

From the Arbiter of Style:

By this same astute reasoning, Stevens has proved that Walt Whitman, a poor carpenter’s son who left school at eleven, never wrote Whitman, while Stevens’s colleague (and fellow Shakespeare doubter) Antonin Scalia, educated at a Queens public school, never became a Supreme Court Justice.

From Rich Rennicks:

Don’t serious readers (defined as anyone who reads more than simply the “must-read” book of the year) already drop one book for another in mid-chapter if boredom or burning curiosity take hold? Can’t we already satisfy our craving for (near) instant gratification by ordering online or picking up the phone? Isn’t the point (conscious or not) of collecting your books in one place, of hanging onto everything you’ve ever read (even those ancient college textbooks you have in a box in the attic) and creating elaborate (or not so-) systems of organizing your books intended to facilitate that exact skipping from one text to another, the hunting down of obscure references, the application of a palate-cleansing chaser of short fiction to wash the taste of a badly written biography away? In short, don’t we already mix and remix our reading in exactly the way that Johnson seems to think ereaders newly facilitate?

Search Blog

Feeds

Links

Navigation

Referers