Bookstore Conversations
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."
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."
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."
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