Bookstore as Mr. Right?
My new favorite description of the difference between indie and chain bookstores:
Sure, the Big Guys have their charms, but it's as if they are like the Good Looking Man in the room, the one who winks at you, whose suit fits perfectly without a pucker or a wrinkle, whose hair is fashioned in the latest cut, and who knows he owns the room; he's also the one who doesn't have time to say much more than a, "Hello! Okay, busy busy busy, have to run now, call me! Or rather, have my people call your people and we'll have lunch." We all know lunch isn’t going to come, unless it's with his representative.
Porter Square Books is one of the places you can pick up a free copy of Give + Take. No, you can't actually buy this book anywhere - the publisher has printed up 1,000 copies and is giving away all of them.
Okay, they're not technically books, but I'm a sucker for anything with writing on it. If you're going to be in the New York area between now and January, stop by the Jewish Museum to see the Dead Sea Scrolls on world tour.
A School Library Journal article on the unpopularity of recent Newbery winners started a fuss here in blogland. While debate raged about what makes a book appealing to children and why the Newbery committee can't actually consider popularity, former bookseller Sarah Miller pointed out that from a sales perspective, there's no question:
At our shop, Newbery season coincided with returns season, often with amusing results. Every January we examined our entire inventory and weeded out books that hadn't sold at least one copy in the last 6-12 months. In the last four years, we had to 'rescue' Newbery gold-medal winners from the returns pile twice. Both times, we'd joked and placed bets about those very books being chosen for the award even as we pulled them from the shelf.
(Jealous of all those librarians with their Newbery-selecting power? Booksellers are welcome to nominate their favorite children's and YA books for the Cybils, now in their third year. I'm serving on the MG/YA nonfiction panel, so if you want to load up my to-be-read list, now's your chance!)
Banned Books Week is over, but it's nice to see I'm not the only one who's sometimes late responding to a topic. Some that didn't make last week's roundup:
YPulse reports on the best ways to market books to teens. (And Turnrow Books shares one of the best book-promoting letters I've seen.)
A tribute to Paul Ingram's "Ministry of Books."
Posted at 05:09PM Oct 12, 2008 by Sarah Rettger in General | Comments[1]
...
Posted by Tom on October 21, 2008 at 10:26 AM EDT #