One customer to another as they intently explored a used book display on Wednesday: "Sometimes I read so fast I can't remember which ones I've read."

 

Who knew one of the biggest issues Shelf Awareness could touch on would be bagels in New York City? Then again, we shouldda known.

Since we mentioned several bagel stores last week that BEA attendees might want to visit, we heard from readers with their own favorites.

For one, Jason M. Wells, publicity and marketing director of Abrams Books for Young Readers/Amulet Books, recommended H&H Bagels, at 46th and 12th Avenue, "nearly walkable from the Javits," that's next to "the impossible-to-miss carwash along the West Side Highway."

Robin K. Blum, founder of In My Book, the greeting card and bookmark company located in Brooklyn, N.Y., put out a shout out for what she called "the real thing . . . BROOKLYN bagels." Her personal favorite is Bagels on the Park on Smith Street, which she estimated is a half mile from the Hotel ABA in downtown Brooklyn.

And Matty Goldberg, sales and marketing director at Perseus, plaintively asked, "How could you have left out Ess-a-Bagel on Third and 21st? Or Tal Bagels further up on Third at 53rd St.?"

Consider the situation rectified.

BookExpo America is "a nice piece of business for the city," Christopher Heywood, a spokesman for NYC & Company--the tourism, marketing and events organization--told the New York Sun. "The attendees occupy 5,000 hotel rooms on the peak night, and the convention as a whole produces 23,725 'room nights,' over the course of the three days and the two days on either side. That generates around $15 million in economic impact."

The Sun led with the announcement of Alan Greenspan's BEA appearance and interviewed publishing industry notables about the show's impact. Particular attention was paid to after-hours activities, including the PGW party Saturday night and Knopf's Friday night dinner.

Knopf's director of publicity Paul Bogaards said, "The book business still turns on word of mouth and the hand sell. If you can sit an author next to an influential bookseller, and the bookseller can go back to their store [with the enthusiasm from that conversation], the book can develop a heartbeat."

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Oh, the copies we'll sell! Graduation season is a special time for many people, but particularly for booksellers, since it signals a predictable and welcome sales spike for Oh, the Places You'll Go! by Dr. Seuss. With eight million copies in print, the perennial grad gift has hit USA Today's bestseller list this week at number 14.

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Oh, the life they've lived! Eleanor and Gar Baybrook, owners of Leaves of Autumn Books in Payson, Ariz., celebrated their 68th wedding anniversary last week. The Payson Roundup reported that the couple, who both turn 90 this year, "are still going strong. He gets up at 4 a.m. every morning and she is up by 5 a.m. They are usually in bed by 9 p.m., but have put in a full day at the store and in the print shop where they make many of the new books they sell."

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"You've got so many reasons to lose yourself in a bookstore," the South Florida Sun-Sentinel noted in a profile of indie booksellers in the region. The search for great summer reads included stops at Murder on the Beach, Classic Bookshop, Pyramid Books, Book Lovers Lounge, Well-Read Books, Bluewater Books and Charts, Pierre Books, and, of course, Books & Books.

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The Bookmark in Colonie, N.Y., is closing June 1 because of declining sales, the Albany Times Union reported. Sheila and Bert Fontenot, who have owned the store for three years, attributed the store's problems to the usual suspects, "competition from cut-rate Internet and chain booksellers coupled with a steady erosion of book readers in general." Sheila Fontenot noted that "some days, we get more calls for Webkinz than we do for books."
 

Michael Hoynes, chief marketing officer of the American Booksellers Association for six years, has joined the board of directors of Kepler's, the Menlo Park, Calif., bookstore, where he has been providing advice during the past year.

"Michael's industry and marketing expertise is just what we need to round out our board and its support for the bookstore," president and CEO Clark Kepler said in a statement. "He has already provided Kepler's with excellent guidance to help us fulfill our goal of providing the community with the type of bookstore that will continue to serve them for years to come."
 
Other than chairman Clark Kepler, the members of the board that was formed after Kepler's reopened in the fall of 2005 are Silicon Valley executives and entrepreneurs with no book retailing experience.

Before his tenure with the ABA, Hoynes was v-p of marketing at the American National Standards Institute and was executive v-p and worldwide management director for Foote, Cone & Belding.

Net sales rose 1.7% to $514.6 million in March and rose 7.8% to $1.8 billion for the year to date for the 81 publishers reporting to the Association of American Publishers.

Stronger categories included:

• Audiobooks, up 33.6%, with sales of $19.1 million
• Adult hardcovers, up 27.5% to $135.9 million
• Children's/YA paperbacks, up 13.7% to $47.1 million
• E-books, up 12% to $3.2 million
• University press hardcovers, up 4.8% to $5.9 million
• Adult paperbacks, up 3.2% to $130.1 million

Categories with declines included:

• Children's/YA hardcovers, down 2.2% to $47.6 million
• University press paperbacks, down 3.3% to $4.2 million
• Professional and scholarly, down 3.5% to $49 million
• Adult mass markets, down 5.8% to $76.4 million
• Religion books, down 19.8% to $62.6 million

Today Good Morning America clicks with Robert Clark, who offers tips from The Camera Phone Book: How to Shoot Like a Pro, Print, Store, Display, Send Images, Make a Short Film (National Geographic Society, $10.95, 9781426200908/1426200900).

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This morning on the Early Show: sportswriter Mike Lupica, whose new children's book is Summer Ball (Philomel, $17.99, 9780399244872/0399244875), the sequel to Travel Team.

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Tonight on Real Time with Bill Maher: Daniel B. Smith on Muses, Madmen, and Prophets: Rethinking the History, Science, and Meaning of Auditory Hallucination (Penguin Press, $24.95, 9781594201103/1594201102).

Since publication here on May Day, The Dangerous Book for Boys by Conn and Hal Iggulden (Collins, $24.95, 9780061243585/0061243582) is proving dangerously popular: after several trips back to press, it has more than 400,000 copies in print and is appearing on a range of bestseller lists. It's also poised to be a combustible title for Father's Day, June 17.

Today's Wall Street Journal outlines the phenomenon in happy detail. (We had begun working on a story about the book so we'll live dangerously here and weave the two tales--with apologies to Jeffrey Trachtenberg!)

As the Journal puts it, the book "purports to aim itself at a particularly inscrutable and un-book-friendly audience: boys around the age of 10. It tries to answer the question: What do boys need to know?

"So here are instructions on how to skip stones, fold a paper hat, make a battery, and hunt and cook a rabbit. It includes a description of the Battle of Thermopylae, but also how to play Texas Hold 'Em poker, and use the phrases 'Carpe diem' and 'Curriculum vitae.'

"The unapologetic message is that boys need a certain amount of danger and risk in their lives, and that there are certain lessons that need to be passed down from father to son, man to man. The implication is that in contemporary society basic rules of maleness aren't being handed off as they used to be."

First published in the U.K. by Collins U.K., the book was a bestseller there last year. Collins U.S. president Joe Tessitore, who is retiring from fulltime publishing later this year, told us he had heard about the book from London colleagues and "loved it. It gets us out in the yard and doing stuff and gives us some basic knowledge of life. The audience is from 8 to 80." Tessitore added that as a result of reading of reading the book, he has brushed up his rock-skipping skills and is teaching himself to juggle. The company changed about 30% of the book to fit the American market, for example, modifying entries on "cricket to baseball and the royal family to the president," he said.

The company promoted the title heavily to accounts. "The indies embraced it in a significant way," he continued. Many stores have been handselling the book, promoting it in windows displays and doing in-store activities based on some of its content.

Chains like the book as well. According to the Journal, Barnes & Noble has stacked The Dangerous Book for Boys on its Father's Day table and will give the book its own additional table later this month. B&N classifies the book as a reference title. Mike Ferrari, a director of merchandising, said that other reference titles from the U.K. have done particularly well. One example: Lynne Truss's Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation.

Librarians also took to the title. "When we showed the U.K. edition to librarians," Tessitore said, "they said this is exactly what's needed in libraries because it's geared to the people we'd like to draw to libraries." He called library sales "wonderful."

Conn Iggulden did an author tour in the U.S. right after publication, and the book received some unusual publicity: it became a bonus gift on at least one NPR radio station during the stations' current fundraising drive.

So far, there is no girl's version the works. HarperCollins CEO Jane Friedman, who has two sons and two stepsons, explained to the Journal: "Boys are very different."

The following were the bestselling titles in April at reporting member stores of the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association:

Hardcovers

1. What the Dead Know by Laura Lippman
2. Hunter's Moon by Randy Wayne White
2. The Naming of the Dead by Ian Rankin
4. The Woods by Harlan Coben
5. Spanish Dagger by Susan Wittig Albert
6. The Good Husband of Zebra Drive by Alexander McCall Smith
7. Simple Genius by David Baldacci
7. The Spellman Files by Lisa Lutz
9. Withering Heights by Dorothy Cannell
10. Murder with Reservations by Elaine Viets

Paperbacks

1. Catalogue of Death by Jo Dereske
2. Consigned to Death by Jane Clelend
3. Murder of a Botoxed Blonde by Denise Swanson
3. Blood of Paradise by David Corbett
5. The Alpine Recluse by Mary Daheim
6. Secrets on Saturday by Ann Purser
7. Mold for Murder by Tim Myers
8. The Hard Way by Lee Child
8. Cocaine Blues by Kerry Greenwood
10. Bleeding Hearts by Susan Wittig Albert
10. The Old Wine Shades by Martha Grimes

[Many thanks to the IMBA!]