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The San Francisco Chronicle
updates the phenomenon of authors promoting and selling their books
during appearances at companies' headquarters, in this case Google. Kim
Ricketts, who has organized such events in Seattle and San Francisco
since 2003, said business is booming because it's a popular perk at
forward-looking companies, publishers like the sales and there are more
sales per attendee than at bookstore events. She also called the
approach "a more efficient way to sell books."
Several booksellers said that they were working with more corporate
customers to sell books at company events and that they offer, as Clark
Kepler of Kepler's Books in Menlo Park put it, "a relationship--people
who love to read and recommend books."
Karen West of Book Passage, Corte Madera, said the events are "a good
thing" but that "if publishers become booksellers, that's a whole other
phenomenon. . . . Nobody wants to see that happen, and I think
publishers are aware of that."
Because of last week's steam pipe explosion in midtown Manhattan, staff of the Book Industry Study Group have been unable to get into their offices, a situation that may last for a few more days. Voice mail is also inaccessible, and only executive director Michael Healy is receving e-mail. Anyone who needs to contact BISG urgently should call Healy on his cell phone at 646-464-3061.
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Effective August 20, Melanie Chang will join Little, Brown Books for Young Readers as executive director, publicity and communications. Most recently she was director of publicity for Random House Children's Books. Before joining Random House 10 years ago, she worked in publicity at Scholastic.
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John Bouldry has joined Independent Publishers Group as assistant sales manager, selling new titles, monitoring stock levels and managing the company's business with Ingram. He had been a sales associate in the special sales department of Perseus Books Group since 2003.
Barnes & Noble sold 1.8 million copies of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on Saturday and Sunday in its stores and online, 38% more than it sold of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince during its first two days on sale, the company said yesterday.
Over the weekend, the company sold another 213,000 copies of the first
six Potter titles and Potter-related products. In the first hour the
book was available, B&N sold 560,000 copies or 156 copies a second.
More than one million people went to B&N stores last Friday night.
On B&N.com, Potter titles make up seven of the top 10 titles; 18 of
the top 50, 22 of the top 100 and 35 of the top 50 children's titles.
B&N has sold more than 11 million copies of all seven Harry Potter
titles.
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This is our favorite of the many bookseller stories about HP7, from Val Stadick of Main Street Books, Minot, N.D.:
"While
busy getting ready for my first Harry Potter Event, I received a phone
call from someone riding on the Amtrak train, heading west. She wanted
to know if there was any possible way I could meet the train at 8:30
a.m. on Saturday and sell her three copies of the book. I said, 'Great.
I would love to. And are there any more people on that train that would
like a book?' She paid with her credit card and told me that perhaps I
should bring a few extra copies.
"After last-minute scrambling to find someone to watch the register on
Saturday morning, I sat on the bench outside the train station and waited for a train that was now 2 1/2 hours
late. I was also half
asleep from Harry Potter mania the night before and was quickly
becoming paranoid at the legality of me pedaling books without a
'peddlers' license on a public sidewalk.
"When the train finally arrived, people greeted me with the widest
grins that I have ever seen. As word spread and people saw the books
in other people's hands, more people came over to enquire about the
book. Amtrak employees from cooks to conductors also purchased copies.
I ended up selling two cases, not a great deal, but it was a
great deal. I will never forget the looks on people's faces or the
vision of the woman walking next to the tracks holding her book high in
the air as she passed the windows of the train. It was a very heroic
moment in the life of what can sometimes be a lonely and frustrating
job--bookselling. And one that I will surely treasure forever. Thanks
Harry!"
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"Gawker has one! Michiko has one! Random people in Baltimore have copies! Why not us?"
New York magazine sent out a pair of "intrepid" reporters last Friday to see if they could bribe a Manhattan bookseller into slipping them a rogue copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows for $100 before the official midnight release.
The result? Tap city.
All six bookshops, including Union Square Barnes & Noble, Books of Wonder, Shakespeare & Company, Biography Bookshop and Three Lives Book Company said, in effect, "Get outta heah!"
The sixth bookstore, aptly named Partners & Crime, smelled a rat from the start. '''Who are you working for?' the frazzled employees of this subterranean haunt asked almost as soon we launched into our supplication. Morning had already brought two would-be advance Potter readers, each of whom unsuccessfully offered a hundred bucks for the book. Without the budget to outbid them, we left defeated."
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Independent bookseller Raman Krishnan, owner of Silverfish Books, Kuala Lumpur, told the Malaysia Star that major bookstores in the country were "'getting taste of own medicine' in the price wars over the latest Harry Potter book."
Bookstore chains MPH, Times, Popular and Harris had announced last week that they were not going to sell Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows to protest "hypermarkets Tesco and Carrefour" offering extreme and unfair discounts.
According to the Star, Krishnan said, "major bookstores have been pricing their books 'unfairly' despite pleas from independent bookstores all these years. 'I think what has happened with Harry Potter is the best thing for the industry. Unfair pricing? Isn't that exactly what major chains have been doing to independent bookshops all these years?'"
Yesterday, the four chains announced a change of heart, the Star reported, adding that the stores would begin selling HP7 today.
A public celebration of the life of Jan Nathan, the founding executive
director of PMA, the Independent Book Publishers Association, will take
place at the Portofino Hotel (Pacific Room), 260 Portofino Way, Redondo
Beach, Calif. 90277, from noon to 4 p.m. on Saturday, August 18, PMA
president Florrie Binford Kichler announced.
The program will begin at 1 p.m. and will be led by former association
president and long-time friend Don Tubesing. All attendees will have
the opportunity to share their memories of Nathan, who led PMA for 24
years and built it into an organization that now has 4,200 members.
Light refreshments
will be served.
This fall PMA will host another memorial ceremony in New York City.
In order to benefit the many causes to which Nathan was devoted, PMA has
created the Jan Nathan Memorial Fund. Donations may be made payable to
Jan Nathan Memorial Fund and sent to PMA, Attention: Jan Nathan
Memorial Fund, 627 Aviation Way, Manhattan Beach, Calif. 90266. The
Fund will be managed by the PMA board of directors and Terry Nathan, a
member of the family and a director of PMA.
People are invited to share thoughts and memories of Jan Nathan on the website created in her memory at http://jannathan.pma-online.org.
Today on the Diane Rehm Show: Joshua Coleman, author of When Parents
Hurt: Compassionate Strategies When You and Your Grown Child Don't Get
Along (Collins, $23.95, 9780061148422/0061148423).
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Today on Hallmark's New Morning with Timberly Whitfield: Mary Anne
Radmacher, author of Lean Forward into Your Life: Begin Each Day As If
It Were on Purpose (Conari Press, $16, 9781573242981/1573242985).
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Tonight on the Late Show with David Letterman: Tony Dungy, head coach
of the Super Bowl champion Indianapolis Colts and author of Quiet
Strength: The Principles, Practices, and Priorities of a Winning Life
(Tyndale, $26.99, 9781414318011/1414318014).
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Tonight on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart: Robert Pallitto, co-author of Presidential Secrecy and the Law (Johns Hopkins University Press, $25, 9780801885839/ 0801885833).
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Tonight on the Colbert Report: ACLU director Anthony D. Romero, author of In Defense of Our
America: The Fight for Civil Liberties in the Age of Terror (Morrow,
$24.95, 9780061142567/0061142565). He also argues
his case today on NPR's On Point.
When the novel begins, Matilda and her mother are about to join her father in Townsville, but the rebels' declaration of war on the copper mine company has brought soldiers from Port Moresby to the island. "According to Port Moresby we are one country. According to us we are black as the night. The soldiers looked like people leached up out of the red earth. That's why they were known as redskins." Now the islanders' time is spent waiting for the redskins or the rebels, whoever arrives first. And now, the only white man in the village begins to take part in the islanders' lives. Everyone has called him Pop Eye, although his name is Mr. Watts, because his large eyes "made you think of someone who can't get out of the house quickly enough." He wore the same white linen suit every day and sometimes wore a red clown's nose, "and on those days . . . you found yourself looking away because you never saw such sadness." He pulled a trolley on which his wife stood, regal and proud, with straightened hair piled into a crown.
He decides, in the absence of a teacher since the blockade, that he will instruct the students. He tells them that he is not a teacher, but he will do his best. "I have no wisdom, none at all. The truest thing I can tell you is that whatever we have between us is all we've got. Oh, and of course, Mr. Dickens." They have no idea who Mr. Dickens is, but their parents tell them to ask this Mr. Dickens (for surely he must be a white man with resources) for anti-malaria tablets, aspirin, generator fuel, kerosene and wax candles. When Mr. Watts begins to read to them the next morning from Great Expectations, they are first surprised, then entranced, pulled into Pip's world. "During the blockade we could not waste fuel or candles. But as the rebels and redskins went on butchering one another, we had another reason for hiding under the cover of night. Mr. Watts had given us kids another world to spend the night in. We could escape to another place."
In addition to reading Dickens, Mr. Watts asks the adults to come to the classroom and share what they know of the world. Gilbert's uncle explains broken dreams: "At night the blimmin' dogs and roosters chase after dreams and break them in two. The one good thing about a broken dream is that you can pick up the threads of it again. By the way, fish go to heaven. Don't believe any other shit you hear." But the children always welcome a return to Pip's story, since his world made sense. As the soldiers and rebels make repeated, vicious visits to Matilda's village, the children still have a room of their own that Pip's voice created, "where our voice is pure and alive." Matilda and the rest of the villagers are changed by Dickens and Pip, and Mr. Watts is changed by sharing his beloved author with them.
Mr. Watts also tells them that a gentleman will always do the right thing, and on an "island all but forgotten, where the most unspeakable things happened without once raising the ire of the outside world," that principle is put to a horrific test. Lloyd Jones has written an intense and lyrical novel about the power of story, the dangers and gifts of imagination, and people who do the right thing.--Marilyn Dahl
[Editor's note: First published in Australia by Text Publishing, Mister Pip won the $20,000 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for overall best book, announced in May.]
