The News-Enterprise offers a profile of the Bookstore, Radcliff, Ky., founded in 1976 by Jerry Brown, who now, happily, owns the building in which the store is located. Brown had imagined "a place where he would sell the works of Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald and have great discussions about their philosophies and writing styles." Soon he realized that to stay in business, he had to offer what customers wanted. The Bookstore has strong science fiction, mystery, romance and military sections, the last because of the proximity of Fort Knox. 

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Borders is active in Austin, Tex. Tomorrow it opens a 27,000-sq.-ft. store at the Domain, a lifestyle center at Mopac Road and Braker Lane, and closes its store at 10225 Research Boulevard.

Also, the company plans to open a 23,000-sq.-ft. store in May at the South Park Meadows shopping center at I-35 and Slaughter Lane.

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Today is the grand opening celebration for Mt. Yonah Book Exchange, the used bookstore in Cleveland, Ga., owned by Myra Meade, who also owns Hall Book Exchange in Gainesville, Ga., the White County News reported.

Mt. Yonah Book Exchange opened with some drama on February 1. That day a five-inch snowstorm hit, forcing Meade to abandon her truck on the way to the store. Only because she was given a ride by a passing stranger was she able to open as planned.

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Sam and Cheryl Wyly have closed on the purchase of Explore Booksellers and Bistro, Aspen, Colo., paying $4.6 million for the business and building, the Aspen Daily News reported. The estate of the late founder and owner, Katharine Thalberg, had been asking $5.2 million (Shelf Awareness, January 30, 2007).

Sam Wyly has become a significant philanthropist in Aspen, which is the couple's second home. In Texas, he and his brother have made several fortunes, and Sam was a major funder of Swift Boating campaigns directed at both John McCain and John Kerry.

The paper wrote that "the Wylys have said they don't intend to change the bookstore they love." 

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Lightning Source, Ingram's POD book manufacturing and distribution company, is now providing POD versions of photo books (known in earlier incarnations as photo albums) "in a variety of book formats and sizes, including perfect bound paperback and sewn case bound books." Lightning Source estimated that the photo book market is expected to grow to more than $1 billion by 2010. 

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Effective March 12, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, San Francisco, Calif., publisher of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, Eat That Frog! and Leadership and Self-Deception, among other titles, will be distributed by Ingram Publisher Services. Berrett-Koehler was formerly distributed by PGW and was one of PGW's top 10 publishers.

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Speakers at BookExpo America special events, including the breakfasts, will feature, among others, Alan Alda, Ken Burns, Paulo Coelho, Stephen Colbert, Khaled Hosseini, Paul Krugman, Ian McEwan, Rosie O'Donnell, Alice Sebold, Lisa See, Russell Simmons and Muhammad Yunus, last year's Nobel Peace Prize winner.

"Unlike last year, when politics provided a theme for much of our programming, this year we are celebrating the writer and the book," event director Lance Fensterman said in a statement. "This group of authors is as strong as any in recent memory at BEA and I'm exceptionally proud to present them to our audience of book lovers."

For more information about BEA, go to the show's Web site.
 

Today the Martha Stewart Show celebrates Paula Deen, author of Paula Deen Celebrates!: Best Dishes and Best Wishes for the Best Times of Your Life (S&S, $26, 0743278119).

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Today on NPR's All Things Considered: NBA agent Keith Glass, author of Taking Shots: Tall Tales, Bizarre Battles, and the Incredible Truth About the NBA (HC, $24.95, 9780061231858/0061231851).

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Today on KCRW's Bookworm: Vendela Vida, author of Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name (Ecco, $23.95, 9780060828370/0060828374). As the show put it: "The possibility that there are those who choose to escape or evade their identities enters our exploration of this quest-for-identity novel. In the cold arctic wastes of Lapland, Clarissa searches for her mother and true father. From her desk in California, Vendela Vida asks if these discoveries do, in fact, reveal anything at all."

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Tonight on the Tavis Smiley Show, Mike Farrell will talk about his memoirs, Just Call Me Mike: A Journey to Actor and Activist (RDV Books/Akashic Books, $21.95, 9781933354088/1933354089).

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Tonight Larry King Live concentrates on The Secret edited by Rhonda Byrne (Atria/Beyond Words, $23.95, 9781582701707). Larry's question: "Can you get whatever you want by thinking about it?" Possible answer: reformulate the question.

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Tonight on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart: Sharon Moalem, author of Survival of the Sickest (Morrow, $25.95, 9780060889654/0060889659).

Book TV airs on C-Span 2 from 8 a.m. Saturday to 8 a.m. Monday and focuses on political and historical books as well as the book industry. The following are highlights for this coming weekend. For more information, go to Book TV's Web site.

Saturday, March 10

6 p.m. Encore Booknotes. In this previously aired segment, Irvin Molotsky, a retired New York Times reporter and editor who works every summer in Paris for the International Herald Tribune as a copy editor, talked about his The Flag, the Poet and the Song: The Story of the Star-Spangled Banner (Diane Publishing Co., $13, 9780756758509/0756758505). The book offers a brief history of the U.S. flag, the War of 1812 and Francis Scott Key's poem that become the national anthem.

9 p.m. After Words. Retired Marine Corps Colonel Thomas Hammes, author of The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century, interviews Martha Raddatz, the chief White House correspondent for ABC News and author of The Long Road Home: A Story of War and Family (Putnam, $24.95, 9780399153822/0399153829). The book reports on a 2004 ambush in Sadr City in Baghdad, in which eight Americans died and more than 60 were wounded, a battle Raddatz says was a turning point in the Iraq War because it marked the emergence of a full-blown Iraqi insurgency.  (Re-airs Sunday at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m.)

Sunday, March 11

7 p.m. General Assignment. The finalists for the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Awards read from their work. Readers include: Debbie Applegate, Bruce Bawer, Taylor Branch, Patrick Cockburn, Daniel C. Dennett, Kiran Desai, Dave Eggers, Ann Fessler, Daniel Mendelsohn, Simon Schama and Sandy Tolan. For more about the NBCC Awards, which will be announced tonight, visit the organization's Web site. (Re-airs Monday at 12 a.m.)

When Elise Blackwell was a child, her grandfather paid her a dollar for every story or poem she wrote. Until she got too prolific, that is. "I can't afford you anymore," she recalls her grandfather telling her. "I hope you keep writing, but don't do it for the money. Do it because you like it."

Blackwell is indeed still writing, and her most recent literary endeavor is The Unnatural History of Cypress Parish (Unbridled Books, $23.95, 9781932961317/1932961313). Bookseller support and growing buzz for the novel have led to a second printing in advance of its April 1 publication date.

Over the next several months, Blackwell will visit some 30 cities to promote the book, primarily at stores in the South. Several are in Louisiana, the novel's setting and the state from which the author originally hails. Blackwell, who teaches fiction, creative writing and nature writing at the University of South Carolina, is also the author of novel, Hunger, which was a Book Sense Pick and a Borders Original Voices selection.

A Book Sense Pick for April, The Unnatural History of Cypress Paris is garnering advance praise. "Strong and moving" is how one bookseller described Blackwell's tale, which takes place in 1927. As abundant rain causes the waters of the Mississippi River to rise to dangerous levels, Louisiana's moneyed elite ruthlessly decide which nearby parish to flood in order to save New Orleans. Decades later, on the eve of Hurricane Katrina, elderly scientist Louis Proby recalls that fateful spring--and what it ultimately cost him when his family's home was washed away.

Blackwell wrote the novel before Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in August 2005, and the manuscript was on an editor's desk when the storm struck. Deciding what to do to with the book at that point "was very hard for me," said Blackwell, who withdrew the novel. She recast the story in a first-person voice and had the narrator, Louis Proby, tell the story on the eve of Hurricane Katrina. "I really, really love this book, and I decided it was worth a try to in some way acknowledge Katrina without pandering to it," Blackwell said. Although the story is set in the past, the similarities between the events of 1927 and 2005 "are so overwhelming it was hard to just ignore it," she added. Instead it gives readers a more immediate context in which to understand what happened in 1927, just as Louis' poignant narrative illustrates the steep personal cost of placing economic interests ahead of lives and livelihoods.

In The Unnatural History of Cypress Parish, Blackwell drew on elements of her Louisiana heritage to color the story. One source of inspiration was her grandfather's memoirs, which he would present to the family a chapter at a time at Christmas and other gatherings. When it comes to writing, she said, "the genes are definitely there."--Shannon McKenna

Some of the winners of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, intended "to encourage and reward the upsurge of new Commonwealth fiction and ensure that works of merit reach a wider audience outside their country of origin" and given in four regions, have been announced.

In Canada and the Caribbean:

• Best Book: The Friends of Meager Fortune by David Adams Richards (published originally in Canada by Doubleday Canada; available here from MacAdam Cage, $25, 9781596921894/1596921897)
• Best First Book: Vandal Love by D.Y. Bechard (Doubleday Canada)

The overall awards will be announced May 27.

March Madness UNC fans with fans HarperCollins made for To Hate Like This Is to Be Happy Forever: A Thoroughly Obsessive, Intermittently Uplifting, and Occasionally Unbiased Account of the Duke-North Carolina Basketball Rivalry by Will Blythe.

 

 

I just couldn't resist a Wizard of Oz headline, since our bookstore Web siteseeing bus will be parked for a couple of columns at RainyDayBooks.com, the online version of the Fairway, Kan., bookshop run by Vivien Jennings and Roger Doeren.

Next week, we'll explore the genesis and evolution of RainyDayBooks.com, but I want to begin this tour by highlighting an option that first attracted my attention to the site. A link on the home page--Staff Contact Information--takes you to a list of booksellers. Click on a name (Suan Wilson or Steve Shapiro, for example), and you can access that individual's e-mail address.

Bookseller/patron interactivity--what a concept.

Although we know that great handselling begins with conversation, the potential for such interaction is lacking (or at least not apparent) at many bookstore Web sites. Staff Picks are often highlighted, but if customers hope to engage in online book discussions with booksellers of likeminded reading tastes, they have to take their chances with the generic info@, orders@ or books@ alternatives more commonly available.  

Maybe somebody will answer.

The RainyDayBooks.com approach blends technological sophistication with human interaction. Roger describes this as a way "to empower our customers with information, knowledge and the wisdom to make informed choices and decisions about books and their community. Our Web strategy utilizes Internet technology as a bridge to connect our customers to our e-marketing and e-commerce."

He describes himself as "webmaster, technology geek, information nerd, etc. My middle initial is D for Donald, but it might as well be D for 'Data'; that's what Vivien lovingly calls me when I am working in what she calls 'computerland.' " Roger adds that the bookshop's site is "freshened up" nearly every day: "I even update our Web site sometimes when needed from my Web-enabled cell phone."

Beneath the RainyDayBooks.com technology, however, beats a bookseller's heart. Consider those staff e-mail addresses.
 
According to Roger, "Our staff and our loyal customers are the best. They look out for each other. They treat each other with appreciation and with respect. Many loyal customers visit RainyDayBooks.com and call us up or e-mail us while they are making their selections. We welcome live interaction with customers. Providing direct contact information is appreciated and utilized. It can turn a shopping experience into a book buying experience."

If that's the case, why do so few bookstores offer this level of interaction? "I can only speak for myself. For us, handselling and building lifetime relationships is what we do best, whether it is in our bookstore or through our Web site. Providing our loyal customers with direct access to our knowledgeable staff through our Web site makes perfect sense."

Vulnerability is a challenge. "RainyDayBooks.com and our @RainyDayBooks.com e-mail addresses have been out there on the Internet since 1994," Roger says. "That's a long time for spammers to put us on the hit lists, and we are on plenty of them."
 
Two key strategies help counteract the threat. A first line of defense is the use of, for example, "roger at RainyDayBooks.com" instead of the more vulnerable roger@rainydaybooks.com hyperlink.

The second is Spam Arrest, a tool which, according to Roger, "filters out about 99% spam from each of our e-mail account inboxes; that is thousands of spam e-mails per day, per e-mail account. Hundreds of these spam phishing e-mails are fraudulently representing companies. We are lucky that so far RainyDayBooks.com is in the clear."

He believes that booksellers "need to make ourselves available to do competitive business on the Internet, but with calculated risks and safeguards. Over the years, I have expressed serious concern for safety and security on the Internet. Exploitation with phishing and pharming are rampant and people are being harmed in lost valuable time, productivity, privacy and money. I am vigilant in taking steps to protect our customers and our company. I constantly and thoroughly research technologies that will improve our business contact, communications and operations. Spam Arrest is a solution to an increasing problem with the Internet, and it works."

These safeguards also allow Rainy Day Books to offer direct, online conversations between staff and patrons.

I've wandered through more bookstore Web sites than any rational human being probably should to find a shop that provides online access to its frontline handsellers. I've heard plenty of reasons for not offering such contact, but at RainyDayBooks.com, unfeasibility has been trumped by the potential for at once virtual and real conversation.

Next time, we'll examine the genesis of the Rainy Day Books Web site and its ongoing evolution.--Robert Gray (column archives available at Fresh Eyes Now)