Shelf Awareness for Tuesday, February 6, 2007


Del Rey Books: The Seventh Veil of Salome by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Dial Press: Whoever You Are, Honey by Olivia Gatwood

Pantheon Books: The Volcano Daughters by Gina María Balibrera

Peachtree Publishers: Leo and the Pink Marker by Mariyka Foster

Wednesday Books: Castle of the Cursed by Romina Garber

Overlook Press: How It Works Out by Myriam LaCroix

Charlesbridge Publishing: If Lin Can: How Jeremy Lin Inspired Asian Americans to Shoot for the Stars by Richard Ho, illustrated by Huynh Kim Liên and Phùng Nguyên Quang

Shadow Mountain: The Orchids of Ashthorne Hall (Proper Romance Victorian) by Rebecca Anderson

News

Notes: Louisville Institute; the Value of Video

More on the ABA's Winter Institute. In addition to the reporting below about new media opportunities for booksellers, we want to note that the ABA plans to hold next year's Winter Institute January 25-26 in Louisville, Ky. (The intention has been to hold it in a part of the country opposite from where BEA is held; next year's BEA will be in Los Angeles.)

Also we want to congratulate the ABA again for putting on an excellent event and former ABA president Mitchell Kaplan for suggesting the idea in the first place.

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Incidentally yesterday's New York Times's E-commerce Report examined how several bricks-and-mortar companies are discovering and harnessing "the power of video clips" online, something that several Winter Institute speakers mentioned. 1-800-Flowers is launching a program that posts videos in which customers tell stories that relate to flowers. Blendtec, which makes kitchen blenders, has posted some 30 videos of the CEO blending random objects on YouTube.com. The videos have been seen by 11 million people and have led to "wonderful improvements in sales." 

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Simon & Schuster is now distributing the full line of Kaplan Publishing trade books. It has distributed Kaplan's test prep publications, and until last year published the test prep guides jointly with Kaplan. The agreement to provide warehousing, fulfillment, customer service, fulfillment and sales for Kaplan's real estate, finance and investing, sales and marketing and architecture and engineering titles was effective January 1.

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Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, Tex., and Barnes & Noble College Booksellers will begin building a new bookstore in April, Pegasus News reported. The 34,000-sq.-ft., two-story store that will include indoor and outdoor cafes replaces a store that was destroyed in a fire last year.

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The Monterey Herald profiles Marcos Gallegos and his Raices bookstore in the Northridge Mall in Salinas, Calif.

"I want the store to be political," Gallegos told the paper. "I also want to bring in culture and celebrations, things like Dia de los Muertos, arts and crafts. The T-shirts, I want them to have politics, but also (cultural icons) like el Chapulin, Cantinflas, Resortes."

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Candlewick Press has introduced Candlewick Sparks, a paperback imprint "for readers ready to move from picture books to young fiction titles." The first Candlewick Sparks title, which appears in April, is Houndsley and Catina by James Howe, illustrated by Marie-Louise Gay ($4.99, 9780763632939/0763632937), recommended for ages 5-7.

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Patricia Kelly, who joined Ten Speed Press last summer as special sales director, has been promoted to v-p, sales. A former bookseller, she has also worked at National Book Network, PGW, Simon & Schuster, Scribner and Macmillan. She was also a PW Rep of the Year.


HarperOne: Amphibious Soul: Finding the Wild in a Tame World by Craig Foster


Books & Authors

Media Heat: The Twisted Mind of the American Man

This morning on the Early Show: Douglas Brinkley discusses his new book, Gerald R. Ford (Times Books, $20, 9780805069099/0805069097).

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Today on the Martha Stewart Show: Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez steps up to talk about his children's tale, Out of the Ballpark (HarperCollins, $16.99, 9780061151941/0061151947).

Also on the menu: Michael Lomonaco, chef and author of Nightly Specials: 125 Recipes for Spontaneous, Creative Cooking at Home (Morrow Cookbooks, $34.95, 9780060555627/0060555629).

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Today on NPR's Fresh Air: Elif Shafak, author of the novel The Bastard of Istanbul (Viking, $24.95, 9780670038343/0670038342).

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Tonight on the Colbert Report, Charlie LeDuff unveils US Guys: The True and Twisted Mind of the American Man (Penguin Press, $25.95, 9781594201066/1594201064).

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The Tonight Show with Jay Leno turns the spotlight on director and writer Tyler Perry, whose book Don't Make a Black Woman Take Off Her Earrings: Madea's Uninhibited Commentaries on Love and Life (Riverhead, $12.95, 9781594482403/1594482403) is on sale in paperback today. Perry's film Daddy's Little Girls opens in the theaters next week.

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Tonight the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson deals in Lawrence Block, whose crime caper Lucky at Cards (Dorchester, $6.99, 9780843957686/0843957689) has been reissued for the first time in nearly 40 years.


Park Street Press: An Autobiography of Trauma: A Healing Journey by Peter A Levine


Attainment: New Books Out Next Week

Selected titles with a pub date of next Tuesday, February 13:

The Double Bind by Chris Bohjalian (Shaye Areheart Books, $25, 9781400047468/1400047463). This psychological thriller from the author of Midwives and Before You Know Kindness alternates between the present and the Roaring Twenties and features characters from The Great Gatsby.

Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill (Morrow, $24.95, 9780061147937/0061147931). Acclaimed short fiction writer Hill's debut novel is a horror-filled tale about a collector of the macabre whose latest purchase is more than a benign conversation piece--it puts his life at risk.

Past Perfect by Susan Isaacs (Scribner, $25, 9780743242165/0743242165). In Isaacs' 11th novel, a successful TV writer is still unhappy about her unexplained firing from the CIA 15 years earlier . . . then the past resurfaces and she embarks on a quest for answers.

Sisters by Danielle Steele (Delacorte, $27, 9780385340229/ 0385340222). In the wake of tragedy, four very different sisters live under the same roof for a year.

Ten Days in the Hills by Jane Smiley (Knopf, $26, 9781400040612/ 1400040612). Hailed as a "modern-day Decameron" by John Updike, Pulitzer Prize winner Smiley's satirical tale takes place in a Hollywood Hills mansion for . . . 10 days.

Nixon and Mao: The Week that Changed the World by Margaret MacMillan (Random House, $27.95, 9781400061273/140006127X). A prize-winning historian illuminates the relationship between the United States and China--and the monumental meeting in 1972 during what President Nixon called "the week that changed the world."


On sale Thursday, February 15:

The China Fantasy: How Our Leaders Explain Away Chinese Repression by James Mann (Viking, $19.95, 9780670038251/0670038253). An exploration of Chinese authoritarianism and Western capitalism from the author of Rise of the Vulcans.


In paperback today: Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer by James L. Swanson (Harper Perennial, $15.95, 978-0060518509/0060518502


G.P. Putnam's Sons: Take Me Home by Melanie Sweeney


Ooops

Red-faced over 'Blue Color' in Rosy Pink Story

Robin J. Dunn, director of the St. John's College Bookstore, Annapolis, Md., nicely called our summary yesterday of Daniel Pink's Winter Institute presentation "excellent" and said he had assigned it to his staff to read. He also pointed out gently that we wrote that Pink had called accountants "this generation's blue color workers." Perhaps their collars are buttoned too tightly. Perhaps the presentation's emphasis on design, esthetics and artistry got us into too creative a groove. In any case, we think Pink said "blue collar."

 



Deeper Understanding

Winter Institute 2: Opportunities in New Media

New media offers plenty of opportunities for booksellers and will help them differentiate themselves from the competition, panelists at the Winter Institute's New Media Lunch agreed. In fact, some of the panelists suggested that booksellers are better-positioned than most believe to make digital headway.

C.J. Rayhill, chief information officer for O'Reilly Media, said that three key areas in media are "print, online and in-person." Bookstores have an advantage because they have two of the three components--print and in-person. Bookseller events are particularly important and attractive to publishers like O'Reilly Media. She recommended that booksellers develop a "two-way street" with publishers. "Help them take advantage of your 'in-person' strengths." Many companies want to "know the consumer and know what he or she wants. They want to build a sense of community," Rayhill said. "You guys invented that." The key is "to translate these strengths online and do so economically."

Amanda Edmonds, strategic partner manager for Google Book Search, agreed, noting that Web 2.0 is "all about community and social networking. You guys already have that. The question is how to leverage it."

Rayhill emphasized, too, the importance of "bridging the gap" between "the physical and the digital." Booksellers should see other forms of the book as opportunities and seek out ways to "share transactions with a publisher to deliver other goodies with a book"--such as offering the purchaser of a book the same title in audiobook form or its digital equivalent or "a lifetime online version."

She stressed that "if publishers had a way of validating that someone had bought a physical book, we would be open to giving the digital version of the book to the same customer." Booksellers, she continued, can offer such a validation.

Her most striking message was that different formats of books should not be seen as mutually exclusive. She said that 75% of O'Reilly's customers want both physical and digital versions of the books O'Reilly offers in both forms. On the digital side, "there will be a part you don't play a role in," she said, "but I absolutely believe that you can play a role in the larger part."

Online Opportunities

Panelists emphasized that booksellers must be online if only to support and expand what they do in "the real world." As Rayhill put it, nowadays "to tap into the offline world," booksellers must have "a component in the online world." Madeline McIntosh, senior v-p and publisher of the Random House Audio Group, seconded this observation, noting that "consumer behavior has changed. People who have questions about anything go straight to Google." Buzz about books and events offline either begins or is furthered online; a store without such a connection will lose out.

Moderator Scott Rosenberg, co-founder and v-p of new projects at Salon, suggested booksellers write or at least host blogs. "Blogs are where people go and where Google often points," he said. He called blogs "cost effective," and said that in his case, blog writing was "an exciting way of taking my name and leveraging my presence."

Rayhill added that blogs are becoming "easier to do every day." She also suggested "pulling data from other places and exhibiting it" as well as "syndicating," in other words, making sure that other sites post store information, particularly about events.

Madeline McIntosh pointed to several Borders projects as examples of what independent booksellers can do online. For one, Borders recently partnered with Gather.com, a social networking site (Shelf Awareness, January 9, 2007). Also, after J.K. Rowling announced the title and pub date of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, it sent e-mails to some 15 million customers asking "Is Professor Severus Snape a Friend or Foe to Harry Potter?" This is the beginning of a series of events to be held online and at Borders and Walden stores called the Great Snape Debate. McIntosh called such approaches "not complicated and what the customer wants, and it's taking what you already do and expanding it." She suggested that booksellers brainstorm with staff and customers "over pizza" about "what you do best and how to translate it online."

Amanda Edmonds recommended creative merchandising. "Match tools online and what you do in your stores." Echoing something Daniel Pink had recommended, she also suggested that stores make videos like one she encountered online while looking for a Broadway play to see. The videos were of theater-goers talking about the play immediately after seeing it. Booksellers could put similar videos on their sites and on YouTube.com. "There's no cost, and it's a great way to increase the exposure of the store," she said.

For her part, McIntosh said that samples help persuade people to buy audiobooks. She also advised "a YouTube approach" and told booksellers to go to Random House's Web site, where some audiobook titles can be sampled. Booksellers should embed such samples on their sites, she said.

Rayhill said she foresees a "fascinating next decade" in all parts of publishing, from the "creation of content" to its distribution. Print on demand may offer some "unique business models" that could take hold. In bricks-and-mortar retailing she said it may happen that large box stores will dominate "the sweet spot" of book bestsellers but that in the Long Tail tradition, independents may find many opportunities "outside the sweet spot."

"At the end of the day," Rayhill said, "satisfying consumers" is most important. "Will they leave the store with what they want?" Independents who offer books in a variety of formats will be more likely to be able to give customers what they want.

Tipping Points

Panelists agreed that the trade book will not vanish, but that some book and related categories have gone over to the digital side for good, mainly reference, science, technology, math, engineering, encyclopedias and scientific journals.

In audiobooks, the tipping point will come when digital delivery supersedes CDs, McIntosh said. For now, the problem with digital downloads is that iPods have 80% of the market but Apple's system is closed and accessible only through iTunes and Audible.com. If publishers become less concerned about potential copyright infringement, then selling digital downloads online will become "much more flexible." She noted that Random House Audio's CD sales grew 10% last year across the list and warned booksellers against believing that customers don't want audiobook CDs, which are still very popular.

McIntosh said that the potential of e-books remains untapped because e-books readers--including the latest, the Sony Reader--are "so limited."--John Mutter


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