Industry News

Sarah Zacks, owner and founder of Books on the Square in Providence, Rhode Island, remembers the difficulty of toting one or more of her five children to downtown stores with few parking spaces and child-unfriendly sales people. That’s why, when she opened her bookstore 10 years ago, she selected a spot with good parking that was six blocks from the crowded Brown University area and away from the congested downtown.

On May 29, Olsson’s Books & Records, an independent book and record store with nine (soon to be eight) branches in the greater Washington, D.C., area, has announced that it will be closing its Georgetown store at the end of June.

Before 1989, Dr. Sharon Ames-Dennard -- who in April was named "2002 Working Mother of the Year" by Working Mother magazine -- had never set eyes on a black bookstore. There were none in her rural hometown of Cheapside, Virginia -- population 1,000 -- nor any in the areas of Florida where she attended graduate and undergraduate schools. But an internship in Los Angeles led her to the Aquarius, Eso Won Books, and other black bookstores in the area, where she discovered a new passion.

With War Emblem only one win away from horse racing’s triple crown, the USA Today book club’s second book selection is a fitting one: Seabiscuit, by Laura Hillenbrand (Ballantine Books), winner of this year’s BookSense Book of the Year Award for adult nonfiction. The national newspaper announced the selection Thursday, May 23.

This week, the American Library Association (ALA) announced that Joyce Meskis, owner of Denver, Colorado’s Tattered Cover Book Store, is the recipient of the 2002 John Phillip Immroth Memorial Award and the 2002 Freedom to Read Foundation (FTRF) Roll of Honor Award. Meskis and her colleagues at the Tattered Cover Book Store have won widespread acclaim as a result of the store’s legal battle in which it successfully defended the privacy rights of its customers.

Esteemed scientist, elegant essayist, and award-winning author Stephen Jay Gould died on May 20 of metastasized lung cancer at his home in New York City. He was 60 years old.

Leonard Shatzkin, author of In Cold Type, former book publishing executive, and consultant, died from congestive heart failure on Saturday, May 11, at the age of 82. Shatzkin's life was one of many remarkable achievements, throughout which his original, innovative, and oftentimes controversial ideas spurred many to think about the business of book publishing in new and better ways.

Preliminary March sales figures of $1,122 million were 3.7 percent off the $1,165 million of the previous March. While not a significant drop, it is disappointing when compared with bookstore performance over the last two years and when compared with overall retail recently.

Overall March retail sales for 2002 came in 2.8 percent over the $288 billion realized in March of 2001.

Ann Christophersen

This year’s Town Hall Meeting was filled with positive and constructive comments from attending booksellers.

An average 11 percent square-footage increase in 2001 to New England Booksellers Association stores can be interpreted several ways, but, as executive director Rusty Drugan said of the latest survey, "This expansion does speak to the fact that business may be better. And it certainly speaks to the confidence of the store owners."

In a complex decision that provided neither side with exactly what it wanted, on May 13, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed a lower court ruling that had declared the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) unconstitutional. In a vote of 8-1, the Supreme Court vacated a decision of the Third U.S. Court of Appeals, which had held that COPA was unconstitutional because the law’s use of "community standards" to identify material that was harmful to minors was "substantially overbroad."

In an atmosphere described by attendees as buoyant and energized, greater numbers of booksellers and industry professionals than in recent years returned to New York for the city's first national booksellers trade show in over a decade. Scheduling considerations placed the show a full month earlier than usual, but few complained about an early spring visit to New York, particularly when the weather turned perfectly sunny and balmy and so many unique activities were within reach.

The millions of fans of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books might not be able to return to Hogwarts for new adventures until 2003. Rowling spokesperson Rebecca Salt told A.P. on May 9 that the author is unlikely to finish the manuscript of the fifth Potter novel, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, until the end of the year. "It could be this year and it could be next year," she said.

After 24 months of uninterrupted growth, bookstore sales dropped below their performance of a year ago. Preliminary February sales figures of $1,066 million lagged 8.3 percent behind the $1,163 million of February 2001. This decrease is in stark contrast to the nearly 29 percent increase in sales shown in January of this year.

For the same period, overall retail managed a modest increase. Overall sales of $263 billion for February were 3.5 percent over the $254 billion for the previous February.

The American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression (ABFFE) has announced that it is extending its online auction and adding many autographed items from BookExpo America, including concert posters signed by the Rock Bottom Remainders -- Stephen King, Dave Barry, Ridley Pearson, Amy Tan, Mitch Albom, and Kathi Kamen Goldmark. The Remainders performed at New York's Webster Hall on Saturday, May 4.