Chris Finan

By Chris Finan, President of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression

It never hurts to be lucky.

Last fall, Carl Lennertz, vice president for independent retailing at HarperCollins, put out a call to booksellers and librarians for essays for regional versions of State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America (edited by Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey, Ecco). The Great Lakes Reader, the first of nine planned titles, debuts this October.

Chris Finan

In this column, Chris Finan, president of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, explains why booksellers should care about what happens to Robert J. Stevens, a Virginia man who has been convicted of creating videos that contain scenes of dogfighting.

I bought my bookstores 13 years ago without any business training. I had worked in, and then managed the stores for several years, but apart from that, I was, let's face it, an English major.

By Meg Smith, ABA Chief Marketing Officer

In 1787, eleven ships left Portsmouth, England, to form a penal colony in Australia. Among the 1,480 men, women, and children and clothing and building supplies carried by the First Fleet was a notable essential for the new life ahead: a printing press. Whatever was to come, the new settlers were prepared to write and read about it.

Dear Fellow Bookseller:

We are writing to you today both as colleagues and as members of the ABA Board of Directors because of our concern that one of ABA's most valuable services has become one of the most threatened.

This column by Lucy Kogler of Talking Leaves Books appeared on the Opinion Page of The Buffalo News on April 29, 2009.

Little did T.S. Eliot know when he wrote the first five words of "The Wasteland" in 1920 -- "April is the cruelest month" -- just how portentous his words were.