Industry News

The ABA Board held its summer meeting at the association's headquarters in Tarrytown, New York, from July 12-14. In addition, the ABA Strategic Planning Committee met in Tarrytown on Friday, July 12. Together with the members of the ABA Board, the committee includes two non-Board members, currently Timothy Huggins of Newtonville Books in Newton, Massachusetts, and Fran Keilty of Atticus Bookstore in Middletown and New Haven, Connecticut.

The votes have been tallied, and here are independent booksellers' picks of the best books for reading groups.

These are deemed to be the books that have been, and continue to be, the most popular choices of groups, as booksellers recommend them for their quality, subject matter, and discussion value.

An ever-increasing number of American Booksellers Association member bookstores are reporting to the Book Sense Bestseller List by using BookScan. Bookstores using Anthology, Books in Stores, Booklog, Computac/Square One, IBID, or WordStock systems can use BookScan to generate a weekly sales data file and to orchestrate electronic transmission of the file -- within a matter of seconds.

At first glance, the recent feature article in the Los Angeles Times about Santa Monica's well-known Midnight Special Bookstore seemed to be telling an all-too-familiar tale: independent bookshop forced out of long-time location by rising rents. Future prospects: bleak to none.

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

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

Beginning in August, as many as 20,000 consumers nationwide will receive a special Book Cash promotion designed to send book buyers into bookstores nationwide. The latest version of Book Cash certificates, good for $10 towards payment for any book purchase, will be sent to certain new subscribers to the New York Times.

As in previous Book Cash promotions, the certificates should be handled as if they were regular checks or traveler's checks: they should be deposited in the store's bank account.

Book Sense recently announced that Firehouse.com, the leading fire and emergency services portal, which covers daily news and information for the emergency services sector, will be joining with Book Sense and The History Channel in supporting "The Fire on the Mountain, Campaign for Communities: Firefighter Fundraiser" promotion. The fundraiser will run from September 9 through October 25 and will coincide with a documentary based on the book Fire on the Mountain: The True Story of the South Canyon Fire (Washington Square Press) by John N. Maclean.

Due to the overwhelming popularity, and numerous appearances on the BookSense Bestseller list, of Ian Falconer's Olivia books -- Olivia, Olivia Saves the Circus, Olivia Counts, and Olivia's Opposites (Simon & Schuster) -- BTW is providing sidelines information for related products.

We will update this list as more information becomes available.

For the second month in a row bookstore sales showed a fractional increase over the previous year. Preliminary May bookstore sales figures of $1,198 million were 0.8 percent better than the $1,188 million of the previous May.

However, May is the fourth month in a row in which bookstore sales failed to keep pace with overall retail. Overall retail sales of $313 billion for May 2002 came in 2.2 percent over the $306 billion realized in May of 2001.

Book Sense 76 picks continue to be the books of choice for network morning shows' book clubs. On Thursday, July 11, ABC News' Good Morning America aired the second installment of its monthly "Read This!" segment, in which one book club recommends a book of its choice to another book club and GMA viewers.

By Stacy Mitchell

New York is Book Country (NYIBC) has announced that the organization's founder and president, Linda C. Exman, will be stepping down at the end of this year. The person tapped to lead the organization, which will celebrate its 25th anniversary in 2003, is Courtney Muller. According to NYIBC, Muller will work together with Exman through the end of this year, when she will take over the organization's leadership with Exman's assistance through its anniversary.

Dateline: Wednesday, June 26. It was a dark and stormy night in landlocked Fort Wayne, Indiana. The staff of the 10,000-square-foot Million Story Book Company was closing up at 9:00 p.m. when the storm sewers serving the bookstore and other businesses in the Covington Plaza strip shopping center reached their capacity and "geysered up," according to store co-owner, co-founder, and marketing manager Dave Kaverman.

When Jean McGean, the long-time book buyer for Sam Weller's Zion Book Store in Salt Lake City, died recently, colleagues throughout the industry mourned her passing. McGean was a favorite among publishers' representatives, including the author of this piece, Bruce Roberts, who called on her for many years representing regional book wholesalers. Roberts is currently an account manager for Books West, a regional wholesaler in Boulder, Colorado.

Putting the Book Buyer's Handbook online has allowed ABA to update the data on a continual basis, and booksellers are strongly encouraged to alert ABA of any changing terms they learn of. To assist in this, ABA has included a link on the ABA members' Handbook homepage through which booksellers can send information.

Here is a brief outline of the most significant recent changes that have been made.