Book Sense to Be a Featured Segment on The Spoken Word

The Spoken Word radio program is continuing its expansion from a weekly show focusing on literature, culture, and the arts in the Southeast to a nationally syndicated program featuring events in different regions of the country. As part of that expansion, each week listeners will hear about five titles from that month's Book Sense Picks, under a new initiative announced this week by the American Booksellers Association and the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA).

"Book Sense is a perfect fit," said SIBA Executive Director Wanda Jewell. "This will be a great addition to the program and to Book Sense. It's one of the ways that we can bring industry attention to the radio program and more consumer attention to Book Sense. It's a good marriage."

Jewell said that revenue to support the move to a national format is being generated by a successful new national spring catalog for consumers. Seven other regional booksellers associations joined with SIBA to create the catalog: Great Lakes, Midwest, Mountains & Plains, New Atlantic, Northern California, Pacific Northwest, and Southern California booksellers. In addition, ABA is helping to sponsor The Spoken Word program.

The Spoken Word features talks and performances that are recorded at independent bookstores throughout the country. At present, the show is carried on about 40 stations, including two stations in the Pacific Northwest.

Beginning next month, The Spoken Word will have a "new and improved format," Jewell reported. Each show will feature dialogue regarding five titles from that month's Book Sense Picks list, and by month's end, each title on the Picks list will have been featured. Also starting in June, each broadcast will have a "handselling component," featuring booksellers discussing titles they are recommending to customers.

Overall, the show has created two new member benefits for regional booksellers, Jewell said. To have an event recorded for the show, an author must appear at a bookstore that is a member of one of the regional associations sponsoring the program. In addition, bookstores that are members of participating regional associations, get the free Spring Catalog, with free imprinting and free shipping.

Besides helping to support the reach of The Spoken Word, the new catalog provides a much-needed promotional tool for booksellers during the important springtime selling season. The 8-3/8" by 10-7/8" catalog is called "Spring Into Reading", and it was shipped to bookstores in mid-March.

Thus far, reaction from booksellers has been positive, said Jewell, and these sentiments were echoed by several booksellers who spoke to BTW. Leigh Baumann, who owns Jekyll Books in Jekyll Island, Georgia, a high-end resort town, said the store had had its name and logo imprinted on the catalog. It then used the catalogs as inserts in the local papers and placed it in travel racks in hotels and welcome centers on the island. Baumann said, "It drives a tremendous amount of traffic to the store -- people come in with the books circled."

Chris Livingston of The Book Shelf in Winona, Minnesota, said that it's great that stores are able to imprint the cover for free. The store ordered about 20,000 copies of the catalog. "We inserted the catalog into the local newspaper ... and had a lot of people come in and say, I didn't even know you were here," Livingston said. "As an advertisement, it's been tremendously successful."

Livingston is also pleased that revenue generated through the catalog will support The Spoken Word. "We see value in it. I hope it does jump-start it" to go national.