Industry News

By Neal Coonerty

As a savvy and experienced bookseller, you should be able to name the best-selling single item in your bookstore in the last 12 months. Until I investigated, I couldn't.

First, I immediately thought about titles of hot books, but our best-selling book sold 845 paperback copies in the last year and wasn't even close to our number-one selling item. In fact, I found out that we sold 4,969 copies of our best-selling item last year, almost six times the number of our best-selling book.

On Monday, August 5, the Today Show named the Adam Haslett short story collection You Are Not a Stranger Here (Doubleday) as the latest pick of its "Today's Book Club." The title, selected for the club by author Jonathan Franzen, was a July/August Book Sense 76 selection.

We're still checking ISBNs of the latest paperback editions, but we wanted you to see this soonest. The flier will be ready this fall, and we'll publicize this major initiative then.

Note: This is also a great resource if your community is thinking of adopting a book for all to read. For a list of what books cities, towns, and states around the country have chosen recently, go to http://news.bookweb.org/read/305
(Let us know of any new ones!)

This fall, when ABA joins independent booksellers attending the regional trade associations' shows, there will be a special emphasis on education and on showcasing two major ABA initiatives, the online ABA Book Buyer's Handbook and the enhanced options for reporting to the Book Sense Bestseller List.

The educational programming that will be offered by ABA at regionals this fall features:

Book Soup, a general-interest bookstore in West Hollywood, California, will soon open a second store in Orange County. Book Soup has earned a staunch following and strong reputation in its 27 years on the Sunset Strip, for its strengths in art, cinema, and music books, and literary fiction.

The second Book Soup will be located in South Coast Plaza, the locally legendary retail mall that's a shopping Mecca for upscale consumers.

Below is a brief outline of the most significant recent changes to the ABA Book Buyer's Handbook online.

Booksellers are strongly encouraged to alert ABA of changing terms that come to their attention. Publishers are asked to inform ABA immediately of any changes to terms and contact information.

Downtown Howell, Michigan, is about to have something new to sing about. Opening officially on September 15 is a 3,000-square-foot general bookstore named Aria Booksellers, complete with a Patagonian conure, a tropical American parrot whose name is Mozart.

Published writers who don't know HTML from a hole in the wall can now set up their own multi-service Web sites in a day or two at minimal cost under the auspices of the Authors Guild, according to Paul Aiken, the Guild's executive director.

Aiken told BTW that many authors are responding to the Guild's offer of individual Web sites with the capacity to feature up to 50 titles with links to online booksellers, to post book excerpts, to host discussions, and to send and manage e-newsletters.

On July 25, First Lady Laura Bush and Librarian of Congress James H. Billington announced that the second National Book Festival would be held in Washington, D.C., on Saturday, October 12, 2002. "America was transformed three days after the first National Book Festival was held September 8, 2001," Mrs. Bush said in a statement. "But one thing that did not change was our love of spending time with friends and family -- especially our children.

By Walter Brasch

Between a diner and an empty store that once housed a shoe store, video store, and tanning salon, in a small strip mall in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, is Friends-in-Mind, an independent bookstore.

The 2002 Mid-South Independent Booksellers Association (MSIBA) Fall Trade Show will be held September 5 - 8 at the Hyatt Regency in New Orleans. "I am extremely excited about this trade show," said Andy Jackson, MSIBA's new executive director. (Jackson replaced Joe Holmes as executive director in January.) "This year … we are in a new hotel facility, the Hyatt Regency New Orleans. This is quite an upgrade for us.

Independent booksellers in Austin and Chicago are protesting the fact that developers could receive multi-million dollar incentives from their respective cities to facilitate retail developments that have signed tenant agreements with national chain Borders Books & Music. The booksellers contend that using financial incentives for developments that solicit national chains is unfair to local retailers.

For the second consecutive day, USA Today featured the Book Sense 76 picks of independent booksellers. On page four of the Thursday, July 25, Life section, an article by Bob Minzesheimer highlighted the top ten Reading Group 76 under the headline "Independents Pick Top 10."

The first Midwest Independent Bestseller List, published in a cooperative effort between the Great Lakes Booksellers Association (GLBA), the Upper Midwest Booksellers Association (UMBA), and Book Sense, has made its debut. The Midwest bestseller list is the fourth regional Book Sense bestseller list, joining lists published in conjunction with the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association, New England Booksellers Association, and Southeast Booksellers Association.

Karl Pohrt, owner of Shaman Drum Bookshop in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and a member of the American Booksellers Association Board of Directors, has long been an active and vocal participant in his community. For the last nine years, he has been on the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority. For the last three years, he’s been the president of the State Street Area Association (his store is on State Street).