Shelf Awareness for Tuesday, July 5, 2005


William Morrow & Company: Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay

Del Rey Books: Lady Macbeth by Ava Reid

Peachtree Teen: Romantic YA Novels Coming Soon From Peachtree Teen!

Watkins Publishing: She Fights Back: Using Self-Defence Psychology to Reclaim Your Power by Joanna Ziobronowicz

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

News

Preparing for Potter, Part 1

We'll forgo—or at least glide over—the sometimes mind-numbing numbers involving the July 16 release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. The book's record first printing is 10.8 million copies; the audio will have a record first printing of 635,000 copies; as of last week, B&N.com had sold more than 750,000 copies; Amazon.com has sold more than 725,000 through yesterday; and Indigo expects to sell more Harry Potter books in 24 hours than it sold copies of The Da Vinci Code in a year.

Midnight parties, a novelty two years ago, are now de rigueur, and it takes something highly unusual for retailers and libraries to stand out. The following are some snapshots of aspects of Potter-related mania, which we will continue to feature in the days before the book's release:

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Barbara's Bookstore, which opened a shop in the flagship Marshall Field's store at State and Main in Chicago in the fall of 2003, after the last Harry Potter appeared, now sells books in other parts of the store (and at other Marshall Field's) as appropriate. From this new spot, Barbara's will "take over" the flagship store for the day on July 16, as Barbara's owner Don Barliant said to Shelf Awareness. Details to follow.

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Besides having a magician and craft events at its Friday night party, Village Books, Bellingham, Wash., will make use of the new park behind its new building and project the Scholastic DVD interview with J.K. Rowling on a wall where movies are shown every Saturday night in the summer. The store will also donate $5 to a local literacy council for every copy sold.

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Borders is aggressively promoting "preorders" for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince in stores and especially in e-mails. A month ago, it had already exceeded its preorders on Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, according to Mike Spinozzi, executive vice-president and chief product officer. The company will have midnight parties in "a great many" stores, and will have more events in its mall stores than in the past. In addition, the parties will be expanded and include food, games, readings, face painting, mask making, science experiments and prizes. Spinozzi said that besides discounting the book 40%, the company is offering "a ticket to magic," which gives a 25% discount on another item bought when the Potter book is picked up.

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Even some college stores are aiming to create Potter magic. Stanford University Bookstore, Stanford, Calif., is hosting a breakfast on Saturday at 8 a.m., for which more than 150 people have signed up already, store director Ken Bowers said last week. The store will offer a literary program and prize drawings while encouraging costumes.

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Some booksellers have eschewed ancillary Potter merchandise, which has ranged in quality, as it were. But a few of these items stand out. In the case of one, Harry himself might say, "Lumos!"

LightWedge has shipped 60,000 Harry Potter Lumos Book Lights retailing for $34.95. These LightWedges have Harry Potter graphics and seven covers for the on-off switch. The storage cases are embroidered with each of the Hogwarts house crests and protect the Book Light "whether traveling by car, bike or portkey."

 While LightWedge's primary audience is women aged 35-55, some 15% of its market is children, according to owner Jamey Bennett. The company is also hoping that the November release of the movie version of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire will continue to light the way toward strong sales.

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The American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression hopes booksellers will remind customers that Harry Potter books hold an unfortunate record: they are the most-challenged titles since 1999, according to the American Library Association. Intended to be inserted in copies of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, an ABFFE flyer about censorship of Harry Potter is available for downloading.

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Paul Donovan, sales and marketing director of Allen & Unwin, which distributes Harry Potter titles in Australia and New Zealand, said at BEA that his company is using the same laydown model as last time although he predicts a "bigger laydown" with this book and overall "a little bit of growth." In other words, most sales will occur the first weekend. "We expect that resupply will be very tiny," he told Shelf Awareness.

One of the major media events in Australia and New Zealand will be the Rowling interview in Edinburgh with young journalists from around the world. Several of those young journalists were sponsored by newspapers Down Under; their give and take with the author will be featured on television.


Now Streaming on Paramount+ with SHOWTIME: A Gentleman in Moscow


Boxcar Bookstore Rolls into St. Johnsbury

Boxcar Bookstore and Caboose Cafe, St. Johnsbury, Vt., opened its doors last Friday in a ceremony attended by Governor Jim Douglas and several hundred others, according to the Caledonian-Record. Located in a new building, the 3,000 sq.-ft. store stocks some 12,000 titles and is owned by Scott Beck, a history teacher at St. Johnsbury Academy, and his wife, Joelle, who will run the store. Boxcar and Caboose aims to fill the gap in service caused by the loss of Northern Lights Bookstore & Cafe last year.

The Times Argus reported that Gov. Douglas's current read is, considering his position, an extremely diplomatic title, The History of the Vermont National Guard.

The store is located at 394 Railroad St., St. Johnsbury, Vt. 05819; 802-748-3551.

GLOW: Greystone Books: brother. do. you. love. me. by Manni Coe, illustrated by Reuben Coe


Media and Movies

Dark Water to Begin Flowing on Friday

This is slightly complicated and a little dark, so bear with us:

Dark Water, directed by Walter Salles, starring Oscar-winner Jennifer Connelly with a screenplay by Rafael Yglesias, opens this Friday. The psychological thriller, featuring a leaky apartment, shall we say, is based on a 2002 Japanese film also called Dark Water (or, for aficionados, Honogurai mizu no soko kara) made by the team led by director Nakata Hideo that produced the original Ring (Ringu) movie. Both Dark Water and Ring are based on titles by Koji Suzuki. (And here we finally get to the book!) "Dark Water" is the title story of Suzuki's short story collection Dark Water (Vertical, $21.95).


BINC: Apply Now to The Susan Kamil Scholarship for Emerging Writers!


Media Heat: Woodward, Sedaris, Willems

Making up for lost time, Bob Woodward tells all about The Secret Man: The Story of Watergate's Deep Throat (S&S, $23), beginning tomorrow on an hour-long primetime special with Tom Brokaw on NBC. (Brokaw also interviews Carl Bernstein and Ben Bradlee.) On Thursday Woodward appears on the Today Show and Larry King Live. This coming Sunday the longtime Washington Post reporter Meets the Press.

Summer session? Stacy DeBroff attends the Today Show this morning to talk about her book The Mom Book Goes to School: Insider Tips to Ensure Your Child Thrives in Elementary and Middle School (Free Press, $15).

Scheduled for tonight on the Charlie Rose Show: Jennet Conant, granddaughter of the chief administrator of the Manhattan Project and author of 109 East Palace: Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos (S&S, $26.95).

Leading off Diane Rehm's lineup today: Thomas Oliphant, author of Praying for Gil Hodges: A Memoir of the 1955 World Series and One Family's Love of the Brooklyn Dodgers (Thomas Dunne Books, $24.95).

Tonight at 8 p.m. at Cooper Union in New York City, David Sedaris hosts a reading featuring authors who contributed to Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules (S&S, $14.95), the collection of short fiction he edited that benefits 826NYC, a nonprofit organization with headquarters in Brooklyn that aims to help students aged 6-18 to develop writing skills. The group is modeled on 826 Valencia, founded by Dave Eggers and others three years ago in San Francisco. Today Sedaris and Lorrie Moore, one of the contributors to the book, appear on the Leonard Lopate Show.

Also on Lopate today: Michael Jacobson, author of Downsizing Prisons: How to Reduce Crime and End Mass Incarceration (New York University Press, $29.95), and Caldecott Honor winner Mo Willems, author of Knuffle Bunny and Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus whose latest book is Time to Say 'Please'! (all Hyperion).

Author Tour Goes Downriver

An author's attempt to conduct a tour by raft on the Mississippi has drifted, according to today's New York Times, but publicity continues to steam along. John Wray aimed to call attention to his Canaan's Tongue (Knopf), a novel set along the river in 1863 based on the life of a man whose worst of many criminal schemes was encouraging slaves to escape after which his agents captured and resold them. Ironically the only successful appearance for Wray was when he went overland to Square Books in Oxford, Miss.

One Asheville Author Can Go Home Again

Covering a reading last week by Elizabeth Kostova, author of The Historian, the Asheville Citizen-Times chronicles the bestselling writer's deep roots in Asheville, N.C. (for example, her great-grandfather owned the Citizen) and her inspiration for the story, which came literally on a mountaintop.

More...

The RealEyes Scene in Charlotte

Joseph-Beth isn't the only bookstore to open in Charlotte, N.C., this year.

Almost six months old, RealEyes Bookstore, a 1,300-sq.-ft. bookstore in the artsy North Davidson part of Charlotte, is "based on what I love to do when I want to get away," owner Jaz Vincent told Shelf Awareness. "We have a sitting area with welcoming chairs and a couch where people can get comfortable and quiet, listen to jazz, read for a moment and feel all right."

The store also offers Internet services, homemade pastries and coffee. Its books, 80% of which are used, include a "huge" self-help section, religion, politics and war and a strong African-American selection. Among current bestsellers are Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons as well as The Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins. The store has about 9,000 titles.

Perhaps most important to Vincent is the children's section, which includes a puppet theater and chalkboard. "We have a lot of educational books and regular storytelling," Vincent said. "We really entertain the kids."

He also wants to educate the kids, which he attributes in part to his work for the board of education in his hometown of Niagara Falls, N.Y. (He also worked in the community college bookstore there.)

Vincent holds regular author events and workshops geared to customers' interests. For example, after noticing that many people enjoy astrology, he had a hypnotist lead one mesmerizing event. Recent sessions feature a massage therapist speaking on her trade and a financial planner discussing the financial aspects of divorce.

The neighborhood includes many galleries. (Every other Friday evening a gallery crawl takes place.) Bluegrass is also popular in the area. Vincent's next project: promoting a flea market or city market for the large parking lot outside to offer customers "something else to do on the weekend."

RealEyes Bookstore is located at 3306-A N. Davidson, Charlotte, N.C. 28205; 704-377-8989; www.realeyesbookstore.com.



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