It's quote-chasing time again

Two great things coming together: "My wife spent much of her 20s working at another, Bookline Booksmith, together with her best friend, who went on to work at Booksense. So, I've wanted LibraryThing to do something BookSense since we started."

How to choose a book: "Sometimes author trust is just there because the quality has been consistent on practically every page."

How to win customers: "They basically paid the ransom on the books and turned them back over to me."

Posted at 04:28PM May 09, 2008 by Sarah Rettger in General  |  Comments[0]

Festival week

On Wednesday Jamie Rogers (if you didn't meet her at Winter Institute, you'll definitely see her at BEA) and I had occasion to venture out of suburbia, thanks to some last-minute tickets to one of the PEN World Voices Festival readings. I'd planned to come back and write all about it, but Garth at The Millions beat me to it.

I'm with him on the amazingness of Péter Esterházy - he struck me as the Hungarian Eduardo Galeano.

Ian McEwan (Jamie's reason for attending) was surprisingly funny. I have to admit I haven't read any of his books, but if the piece he read - noting that it's absurd to expect humans to take care of an entire planet when they can't even keep a communal mudroom under control - makes it into the next one, I'll have to make time for it.

My "discovery" of the night was South African Rian Malan. All I can say is he's complex, and when discussing contemporary South Africa you can't be anything else.

In other news, the Shrinking Violets have kicked off their second National Independent Booksellers Month. Nominate your favorite bookstore as National Independent Bookseller of the Year, and say hello to SV Robin LaFevers, who will be signing Theodosia and the Serpents of Chaos in the ABA Lounge.

Alison Morris touched a nerve when she asked readers to list the books they just didn't get, while everyone else seemed to love them. 91 comments so far! (For my part, I can't think of any books off the top of my head, but I vividly recall how shocked a friend was when I was underwhelmed by the ending of The Usual Suspects - and I was still scarred by that movie.)

I'd love to spend a few hours days weeks wandering through "the first real estate home for literary arts in the nation," especially if I could combine it with that. It would be like summer camp for nerds, but even better.

YA lit has been the subject of a lot of talk this week. First, it was the subject of a Publishers Weekly panel, where Sherman Alexie made some remarks that struck some YA writers as either condescending or hilarious.

And then Cory Doctorow, novelist and blogger extraordinaire, realized he was forcing a lot of people into a "parallel universe of little-regarded awesomeness" in search of his just-released Little Brother. Some of them weren't too comfortable making the switch. Meanwhile, much sighing was overheard from the people who read YA books on a regular basis.

Posted at 06:20PM May 02, 2008 by Sarah Rettger in General  |  Comments[0]

Follow the quotes

Why literature is not a substitute for marriage counseling: " My wife got really sick of me yelling "a whale is NOT A FISH!" at the poor, battered book."

That's the excuse, anyway: "The lowbrow nature of the tattoo juxtaposes nicely against the highbrow art of the book." (via BookTwo)

What, no one's called the Nobel committee? "It probably comes as no surprise that the staff of Skylight Books likes to read."

I sense a franchising opportunity: "We're Like Chuck E Cheese for Smart Kids."

One of the hazards...[Read More]

Posted at 02:38PM Apr 29, 2008 by Sarah Rettger in General  |  Comments[0]

The Carnival of Independent Bookselling Returns

April's carnival? Not so much. This month has just zoomed by here in Tarrytown, so we're looking ahead to May.

The May Carnival of Independent Bookselling will be posted on May 23, just before everyone runs off to BEA. There's a submission form at BlogCarnival.com, or you can send links directly to me.

Dan gets the credit for coming up with our May topic: What's your guilty bookselling pleasure? Do you sneak your way through the Gossip Girl books when no one's watching? (Come on, they're so easy to skim!) Do you admire your gift-wrapping before turning the packages over to the customer? Is re-alphabetizing the fiction section your version of a day at the spa?

Really, we want to know.

Posted at 09:09AM Apr 23, 2008 by Sarah Rettger in General  | 

Honor system

An independent bookstore made an appearance on Boing Boing this week: Local Hero's "if we're not here, take a paper and pay for it" sign drew one blogger's attention, and generated dozens of comments about other businesses that rely on the honor system.

From the not-a-surprise-to-booksellers file: Texas Pages reports that after Teri Tanner's (huge) plans for Legacy Books were published, she got hundreds of calls from people who wanted to work there.

Do your customers complain about their kids spending too much time with the Clique series? Direct them to this article, where OUPBlog shares all you ever wanted to know and more about the word's etymology.

I'd love to be able to give proper credit for the first blog that directed me to Books on the Nightstand, but it seems like all the book blogs have linked there this week. Michael Kindness and Ann Kingman, two fabulous Random House reps, are writing and podcasting about their favorite books. (One of these days I'm going to get headphones for my work computer. I mean it.)

J.L. Bell wrote about historian extraordinaire Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's appearance at a recent Massachusetts Historical Society discussion. Ulrich's comments about her involvement in the PBS dramatization of A Midwife's Tale led Bell to explore the difference between documenting history and telling a story.

I'm working on a history project of my own at the moment - the history of Book Sense (one of the many exciting things we have planned for BEA). While Bookselling This Week has been its usual font of information, I also discovered a great resource in Holt Uncensored.

Reading Pat Holt's columns from a decade ago is like crawling out of a time machine. In the late 1990s, I'd barely heard of independent bookselling. Okay, I hadn't graduated high school, either.

Posted at 04:27PM Apr 18, 2008 by Sarah Rettger in General  | 

Field Trip... Providence, RI

The rain held off this past weekend in the Northeast, which was great because my partner in crime (the PIC) and I were headed to Providence, RI, to fete daughter #1, who was celebrating birthday number 24. She had said in a phone call earlier in the week that her idea of a great birthday would be visits to bookstores, to her local indie coffee shop, and to a killer bakery. We knew we had raised that girl with solid family values, and we were willing to pick up the tab at every stop along the way just to prove it!

A few snapshots:

If you haven't seen Providence lately, go! What a great vibe, and the town is full of interesting stops (including the Rhode Island School of Design Museum's Asian collection), shops, and restaurants. You can sense a great level of urban energy, and there are lots of places to slow down, plop down, and people watch.

As the home of Brown, RSDI, and Providence College, perhaps it's not surprising that Providence is a strong bookstore town -- with both used and new stores.[Read More]

Posted at 02:00PM Apr 16, 2008 by Dan Cullen in General  |  Comments[1]

Just in case you weren't feeling inadequate enough...

A nine-year-old boy is about to be published. Unless boys have changed a lot since I was nine, I don't think there are many who want to know how to talk to girls. (via Big A little a)

Laila Lalami points to Reading the World 2008, the lit-in-translation initiative with broad indie bookstore participation. Among this year's titles: Out Stealing Horses, one of NYT's favorites from 2007, So What: New and Selected Poems (Lalami's a fan), Serve the People (because who doesn't love a good banned book?), and Edith Grossman's translation of Don Quijote (sorry, I've spoken Spanish for too long to anglicize that).

Literary snit of the week: (Really, where would we be without these?) Jane Smiley reviewed Jennifer Weiner's Certain Girls - or at least the pinkness of it, and how Smiley would have told the story. GalleyCat picked up Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez's response ("See Jane, stuck in the 60s, angry at pink.") Weiner, who's usually pretty quick to jump on the chick lit label and the bashing thereof, hasn't posted anything about Smiley's review yet.

In the Washington Post, three-fifths of the King family (Stephen, Tabitha, and Owen) get together to talk about books and how it can be hard to write when you share DNA with a couple bestsellers.

The Post also ran an article on indies and chain stores this week - nothing new, but it's always nice to see an article that doesn't pretend that independent bookstores have already vanished.

Posted at 05:48PM Apr 11, 2008 by Sarah Rettger in General  | 

Amazon.com's New Tactic: The Surge

Is it fair to call print on demand (POD) the duck-billed Platypus of the still-nascent digital publishing environment? And, if so, how loudly did it quack last week?...

A hybrid business model that for almost a decade has straddled the worlds of atoms and bytes (in 1999, American Bookseller magazine published an article "Is On-Demand Printing Ready for Prime Time?"), POD has never sparkled with the high-buff silicon sheen of e-books, and it's coolest incarnation -- in-store printing -- is just beginning to emerge.

But the lack of media sex appeal hasn't hindered the growth of publisher-, wholesaler-, and self-published author-fueled POD. A spokesperson for Ingram's Lightning Source, told the Wall Street Journal last month that the company has printed more than 50 million books for more than 5,000 publishers worldwide since its founding in 1997.

To cite the Senator Everett Dirksen rule for calibrating innovation success: "50 million here, 50 million there, pretty soon, you're talking a big business."

Posted at 11:45AM Apr 07, 2008 by Dan Cullen in General  | 

Old bookstores don't fade away

From the Department of Gone But Not Forgotten, Halfway Down the Stairs invites booksellers to pay another visit to its website. The store closed in January, but their detailed reading suggestions for all ages are still available online. (Thanks to former HDS employee Sarah Miller for the link.)

The Onion isn't too happy about the latest Dr. Seuss-based movie to hit theaters, and they've invited him to explain why - in verse.

And Oh!
Oh, dear! Oh!
My poor Grinch, what they've done!
They crammed in live-action and snuffed out all the fun!

Not quite appropriate for the preschool set, though. (via Bottom Shelf Books)

Rupert Murdoch, who counts HarperCollins among his multitude of media properties, spoke at Georgetown University this week. FishBowlDC covered the speech.

Bookslut's latest Indie Heartthrob is a bookseller: Terry McCoy of St. Mark's Bookshop.

Gibson's Bookstore (okay, bookseller Michael Herrmann) writes about the difference between "favorite books" and "best books." If you're capable of admitting a book you despise can still be considered great literature (sorry, not there yet), add your picks to the comments.

The Inkblotter has a new guest blogger. Her year-old daughter is a big fan of The King's English, so watch for Elif and Mina's children's book recommendations.

In case anyone is still confused: fiction is the stuff that's made up. Novelist Linda Grant vents her frustration with people who assume all her work is autobiographical (via Bookninja).

The Wall Street Journal's small business blog looked at workplace wikis and how to make them more useful. If your store is making use of the ABA wiki, tell us how in the comments.

Posted at 05:40PM Apr 04, 2008 by Sarah Rettger in General  | 

Topics of the week

Inventory: For your reference, Slate has compiled a list - the first in a series - of recession-related titles. Who's going to admit to stocking up on these? Or are you betting on superbooks?

(Just don't tell me you're relying on everyone's favorite "perfect size 4" twins.)

Kids: Children's Book Week is coming up (how did May get to be so close?) and voting for the Children's Choice Book Awards is open. More details over the next few weeks.

Oh, and kids have definite preferences in their reading. Shocking, I know. (Thanks to Leila for the link.)

Indiana: As a liberal, I'm supposed to love government regulation. Not this one.

Thanks to the efforts of ABFFE, GLBA, and many of our Indiana booksellers, everyone's taking note of the new state law that will require any business selling "sexually explicit material" - broadly defined - to pay $250 and register.

Reading: The Numbers Guy joins the multitudes pointing out that last year's NEA report doesn't actually herald the end of reading as we know it.

Bricks and mortar: Gibson's Bookstore reminds readers why it's often in their best interest to shop in a physical bookstore. (Particularly appropriate, too.)

Too cool to pass up: Dave Isay is this week's Indie Heartthrob. Everything you want to know about the history of ray guns (Thanks, Inkwell).

Posted at 12:00PM Mar 31, 2008 by Sarah Rettger in General  |