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"The Internet is a fantastic creative tool that we don't yet fully understand. Most of the creative content of the Internet is rubbish, but you can say the same for much of the content in any bookstore."--Salman Rushdie, speaking at the University of Arkansas as part of its Distinguished Lecturer Series and quoted in the Fayetteville, Ark., Morning News.
Congratulations to the Secret Garden Bookshop, Seattle, Wash., which is celebrating its 30th anniversary tomorrow. As the store put it: "In today's climate of Internet shopping, corporate shenanigans, and monster chains, we think our continued success is a pretty good excuse for a party!" Besides giveaways, prizes, a birthday cake and more, the store will begin discounting by 30% one title a week for 30 weeks. Appropriately the first is The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. In addition, anyone 30 years old may register for an "I Was Born in 1977 Like the Secret Garden" card, which entitles the holder to a 30% discount on all book purchases for the year.
Book Passage continues to consider opening a third bookstore, in Novato, Calif. According to the Novato Advance, "The Corte Madera-based independent bookseller plans to open a new site in Novato, contingent on the Whole Foods project completion." Although the Advance conceded that "no agreement has been signed as of yet," it expressed optimism that a Book Passage store was a possible and welcomed addition to the proposed Whole Foods retail development at the end of Grant Ave.
Book Passage owner Elaine Petrocelli cautioned Novato residents not to make assumptions about the future: “There is no news. We are waiting to hear back from the developer at this point.”
The owner of a nearby used bookshop said he would welcome Book Passage's presence in Novato: "I don't think it could do anything but help me; it will get more book sales downtown," he said. "I'll buy books from her.”
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Laura Gentry will close her Crawfordville, Fla. bookstore, Tattered Pages Books & Espresso Bar, at the end of May. The Tallahassee Democrat reported that Gentry has opted to retire after failing to find a buyer for her 4-and-a-half-year-old business.
"It's been a hard decision for me," she said, adding, "I just wish the store was more robust. . . . I tried to find a buyer. An independent bookstore is a tough business. It's a tough business to sell."
Key factors cited for the closing included "the state of the economy and the arrival of the nearby Wal-Mart SuperCenter in June 2006."
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The
new Borders Rewards program is offering its first "bonus event,"
starting yesterday and lasting through Sunday. Members receive 10% off
purchases, and 5% of net proceeds from purchases will go to the Grammy
Foundation, which supports music education in schools across the
country.
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Dickens World, the £62 million "Victorian answer to Mickey Mouse," officially opens May 27 in Kent, but the Guardian offered readers an early glimpse of the theme park.
"The centerpiece is a boat ride which, loosely speaking, is Great Expectations presented as a log flume," the Guardian reported, noting that the park is "capitalizing on the author's ever-increasing popularity" and expects 300,000 visitors this year.
Increased online book sales was one of the factors cited by the Guardian as evidence of this Dickens renaissance: "Amazon reported that orders for Dickens' books shot up by 160% last year, thanks largely to the BBC serialisation of Bleak House, which was sold to 24 different countries. With the bicentenary of his birth set to coincide with the 2012 Olympics in London, we could be in for a whole new wave of Dickens-mania. Members of the Dickens Fellowship want to promote the author as a 'presiding spirit of the games,' on the basis that he is one of the best-known cultural figures associated with the capital."
The Guardian also covered a preview visit by select members of the public, including septuagenarian Thelma Gove, who a cast cool, Dickensian eye on the project and expressed disapproval after spotting the name "Daryll" on a tombstone. "No, no, no! Daryll will not do," she said. "They want to be proper Dickens names. There are 1,550 characters to choose from, for goodness sake!"
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Mystery Lovers Bookshop, Oakmont, Pa., will host the 12th annual Festival of Mystery on Monday, May 7. According to Mary Alice Gorman, bookstore co-owner and festival organizer, more than 50 authors will take part in an "evening of fun, book talk, author interviews, autographing, picture taking, enjoying Enrico Biscotti's Box Meals, and a fabulous raffle of gift baskets to benefit Beginning with Books, our favorite children's literacy and book loving program." For more details, visit Mystery Lovers Bookshop's website or call 412-828-4877.
In an e-mail to customers, Liz Murphy of the Learned Owl Book Shop, Hudson, Ohio, wrote:
"In light of the tragedy at Virginia Tech, I'd like to recommend that you read the book 19 Minutes by Jodi Picoult.
"I did not recommend the book when I first read it a month ago,
although I thought that Picoult did an outstanding job of getting to
the heart of the issue, and made you believe in the characters and--as
in all her books--see all sides of the issue. The issue here is the 19
minutes during which a young man goes on a shooting rampage in his high
school classroom.
"I've changed my mind about the recommendation because while many don't want to read about this subject (we sold NO copies of We Need to Talk about Kevin
by Lionel Shriver, even though it, too, was very well written), it is
perhaps time that we DO read about it, and realize that it can happen
in any neighborhood, in any family, and that sometimes there ARE signs
if we just know what to look for.
"This also illuminates the critical importance of seeing and stopping bullying, even in the earliest grades. In Picoult's 19 Minutes
it is a young man who has been bullied continually since his first day
of kindergarten who finally decides that he cannot take one more day of
harassment. His parents, his teachers and the other students were all
aware of this bullying to some extent, and yet it continued.
"Anyone who asks will receive 40% off this title. I think it's that important."
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Richard Nash of Soft Skull Press noted that the house's Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion: From Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and Beyond
by Mark Ames ($15.95, 9781932360820/1932360824), released late last
month, has become all the more relevant this week.
An American who moved to Russia 11 years ago, Ames is the founding editor of eXile,
a Moscow English-language newspaper. He argues that school and
workplace massacres are "extreme responses to ever-increasing levels of
stress and pressure at work and school brought upon by the post-Reagan
loss of economic security." He also compares the massacres with slave
rebellions. "Like slave rebellions, rage massacres are doomed, gory,
sometimes inadvertently comic, and grossly misunderstood."
Today Going Postal will be
excerpted on Alternet, and an article based on the book appears in the
May issue of Playboy.
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Bookselling This Week
spoke with Eugene "Mac" Whatley, general books manager of Virginia Tech
University Bookstore, Volume II, which, on Monday, the
day the killings occurred, was locked down for several
hours with 10 staff members and five customers inside. The store reopened for business on
Wednesday and has been inundated with customers. "I think they
want to show support," Whatley said.
Scoring from Second: Writers on Baseball edited by Philip F. Deaver (University of Nebraska Press, $21.95 paperback, 9780803259911/0803259913, April 2007)
"The secret to my success is clean living and a fast outfield."
"I was never nervous when I had the ball, but when I let it go I was scared to death."
"A lot of things run through your head when you're going in to relieve in a troubled spot, [like] should I spike myself?"
"The Softball Memo" is penned by Ron Carlson, center fielder, bats
right, throws right, to Greg Sellars, left fielder, bats right, throws
right. Both a mea culpa and explanation of "calling the ball," it is
also the deconstruction of dropped fly ball, a high, arching drive into
deep left field that Carlson wants badly, wants even though the left
fielder has called the ball. "The ball rose in the hot air, almost
disappearing in the midday sky bleached to a blue that is only seen in
the eyes of dogs that could kill a man in a minute and the only reason
they don't is that nobody they've met is worth the effort."
Robert Vivian, in "Death of a Shortstop," weaves the suicide of an
ex-teammate with the author's abrupt decision to quit a promising
baseball career, a decision that "continues to haunt me, like the dust
I see rising from so many American roads. My dad supported me . .
. but something quietly died between us, some unspoken and common
ground of understanding that we lived out and played."
Cris Mazza writes about her passion for baseball and her obsession with
the San Diego Padres, interlacing the story of her life with the
history of the team: "When I had only a vague idea what was involved
when girls in the restroom spoke of making out . . . it was
consoling to find out there were at least eight ways for a runner to
score from third with less than two outs." And much later, "I went to a
doctor complaining of chest pains, positive the stabbing sensation was
because the Padres were blowing their lead, not a symptom of my
impaired marriage." David Carkeet relates his 20 years as a gentile on
a Jewish softball team, and equates both playing ball and communal joy
as being vital for life. "I see things simply now. To quit this league
is to die. To quit playing ball is to accept the end. So I will keep
showing up Sunday morning until they carry me off. When this happens,
when the ballplayers watch me being borne up the grassy hill on a
stretcher, I hope at least one of the turns to the other and says, 'Was
he Jewish?' "
There are 35 nonfiction pieces in this collection about the "pure,
basic, green beautiful game." Some are nostalgic, some are not, but all
speak to baseball's role in childhood and in present lives. Earl S.
Braggs sums it up well: He used to fall asleep in North Carolina
listening to the Yankees with his grandmamma on her transistor radio. A
few years back, "I started collecting baseball cards under the pretense
of saving them for my younger daughter . . . Even now, some days, I am
nine years old at a flea market, flipping through names, flipping
through my life."--Marilyn Dahl
Tomorrow one of the highlights of the Midwest Booksellers
Association/ABA Spring Meeting in Omaha, Neb., is the appearance of
four authors, all participants in MBA's Midwest Connections program,
which aims to promote and sell adult fiction and nonfiction,
particularly memoirs and history, children's books, and cookbooks. Most
titles have some Midwest connection, whether the author lives or lived
there or the book is set there, but the program is not limited to
regional titles, association executive director Susan Walker
emphasized. While the program focuses on new titles, it includes
backlist.
The authors appearing tomorrow are representative of the 11 authors lined up for the spring Midwest Connections list:
MBA's website has some information and examples of how Midwest Connection titles are being promoted.
Two authors involved in the Midwest Connections test last fall appeared to
connect in the Midwest. Truck: A Love Story by Michael Perry
(HarperCollins) parked on the Heartland regional list for 11 weeks,
and the program, Walker said, "brought a whole new audience to the
author's backlist," particularly Population 485, which has been out for
several years. Population 485 was on the Heartland list for four
weeks--and would have been on longer had the book not gone out of stock
temporarily.
As an example of stores' Midwest Connection activities and results, the Book Vault,
Oskaloosa, Iowa, ran an ad, featured Truck and an event on its website
and newsletter, displayed Perry's titles throughout the store, helped
get it written up in the local paper and encouraged the library book
group to read it. The store has sold more than 40 copies of Truck and
26 Perry backlist books.
For Tom Drury, whose The Driftless Area (Grove/Atlantic) was promoted,
the program "gave him name recognition for both frontlist and
backlist," Walker continued. Drury lives in California, but he's from
Iowa and his books are set in the Midwest.
Participation in Midwest Connections by publishers is free, but
publishers are expected to
nominate authors for the program; work with the association and
booksellers to schedule author appearances; provide promotional
materials to stores such as press kits, bookmarks, shelf talkers and
posters; provide graphic files for stores to use for signs, flyers,
their websites; offer applicable coop; advertise in MBA's catalogue;
provide ARCs through MBA's Advance Access program; and more. The aim,
as the program put it, is to use "the marketing tools and funds which
[publishers], we and our bookstores can make available, rather than
requiring
significant additional expense."
For booksellers, there are three levels of participation, depending on
the store's size and depth of commitment. Many of the stores don't do
author events in connection with the program, and they generally
determine how involved they will be. "We give the stores guidelines,"
Walker said. "But we haven't said you have to do this or that."
Authors are encouraged to do store events as well as meet booksellers
without necessarily doing a public event, but titles by authors who
don't do events may still be part of the program. Midwest Connections
is designed to be very flexible, and Walker emphasized that the
programs for specific titles are "not identical. It's not automatic."
Besides coordinating the program, MBA provides rebates of as much as
$100 to stores for ads and displays of Midwest Connection books. The
association also provides ad formats and shelf talkers and additional
money for author and special events, promotional material, etc.
The idea for the program came last year during the annual trip to New
York City to visit publishers made by Walker and the heads of the
association. "We refined the story as we went around," Walker said.
"The flows of conversation turned into something wonderful," Lisa
Baudoin of the Book Vault, Oskaloosa, Iowa, and president of the MBA,
added.--John Mutter
