Book News

Following the weekend of staggering sales, retailers nationwide were clamoring for more copies of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. On Wednesday, June 25, Scholastic announced that it was going back to press for a third printing of 800,000 copies of Harry V.

The 2003 July/August Book Sense 76, with booksellers' comments, is now online at news.bookweb.org/read/1560. The fliers will be shipped to stores during the week of July 7.

The July 7 issue of The New Yorker, on sale June 30, will include a full-page Book Sense ad featuring the Top Ten picks from the Summer Paperback 76.

"The ad provides booksellers a terrific opportunity to highlight these titles in store displays," said ABA Marketing Director Jill Perlstein.

For a downloadable PDF file of the July 7 New Yorker ad, click here.

John Burdett wanted to capture a place that hadn't been explored all that much in previous detective thrillers. "I thought Bangkok really hadn't been done the way Los Angeles, New York, and Paris had been done," he told BTW. His original intention was to write a relatively conventional book.

In a slight change of pace, this week we're announcing the entire July/August Book Sense 76, with the full bookseller nomination quotes for the Top Ten. This is to give you ample time to order titles from the full list. Next week, we will post the list with all the bookseller quotes. Between this list and the Summer Paperback 76, what a summer of reading! Many thanks to all the booksellers who contributed nominations for the July/August list!

For the entire July/August Book Sense 76, click here.

On the Eve of Massive Bookselling Weekend Booksellers Encouraged to Report to Book Sense Bestseller List

As consumer expectation continues to build amid a growing barrage of media coverage, independent booksellers nationwide finalized last-minute details for special Harry Potter events in anticipation of 12:01 a.m. June 21 -- when copies of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Scholastic) officially go on sale.

On June 18, Oprah Winfrey announced the first selection for her revived Oprah's Book Club. The book, which had previously been identified by only an ordering ISBN, is East of Eden by John Steinbeck. In the Oprah audience were 10 staff members of Anderson's Bookshop in Naperville, Illinois. They were able to hear Winfrey declare Anderson's "the best independent bookstore in the country" and to see her air a video clip taped in the store.

As promised, the full Summer Paperback Book Sense 76 with booksellers' comments is now available on BookWeb.org. To view the entire list, go to http://news.bookweb.org/read/1530.

Throughout the summer, as you complete your in-store displays of 76 titles, it would be great if you would send us photos. We can add them to the materials about Book Sense that we share with publishers when we visit them.

The literature of Los Angeles is written by outsiders.

By Raymond Chandler, for instance, of Illinois, by way of England. By John Fante, from Colorado. By Joan Didion, born in Sacramento.

And now, in the 21st century, by Nina Revoyr: born in Japan and raised in Wisconsin, before moving to L.A. at age nine.

Here are the Top Ten titles in the latest Summer Paperback Book Sense 76, which features a wonderful selection of great reading for the summer months. Watch next week for the full list of titles.

Please send your nominations for the Book Sense 76 to Dan Cullen at [email protected]. Some upcoming deadlines:

On Thursday, June 12, NBC News' Today Show announced that the 12th selection of its monthly "Today Book Club" is The Dogs of Babel by Carolyn Parkhurst (Little, Brown).

Based on four weeks of sales from over 400 independent bookstores across America.

It’s summertime and, as thoughts turn to travel, Book Sense presents the top 25 best-selling travel literature titles as reported by over 400 independent bookstores across America.

Past Category Bestseller lists are available at www.bookweb.org/read/5677.

Here's a roundup of recent news related to the upcoming release of Scholastic's Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

Now that the June 21 release date of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is just days away, booksellers are making their last preparations for the industry's equivalent of grabbing a chamber full of golden snitches. Here's our final report on booksellers' plans to celebrate J.K. Rowling's latest, including story-writing contests, owl adoptions, goblets of butterbeer, and a midnight bazaar.