Industry News

On Wednesday, July 24, USA Today featured a "Snapshot" of the Book Sense 76 Teen Summer Reads on the first page of the newspaper’s Life section. Under the headline "Independent booksellers pick top teen books," the spot listed the top five Summer Teen picks:

Harlem USA, the 275,000-square-foot entertainment and retail mall on 125th Street in Manhattan -- the center of one of the nation's largest African-American communities -- will soon have an independent bookstore. According to store co-owner Rita Ewing, a writer and attorney, the Hue-Man Bookstore opens for business on July 29, with a grand opening celebration scheduled for August 1.

Twice a year since July 1999, Paz & Associates Bookstore Training & Consulting Group, in conjunction with the American Booksellers Association, has been conducting weeklong intensive workshops designed to teach potential booksellers the ins and outs of the bookstore business. The next program, "Opening a Bookstore: The Business Essentials," will take place in Portland, Oregon, on September 9 - 15, in conjunction with the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association convention and trade show, held September 13 - 15.

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.