In the opening panel at the London Book Fair today, James Daunt, Barnes & Noble CEO and managing director of Waterstones, and David Shelley, CEO of Hachette UK and Hachette Book Group in the U.S., spoke about similarities and differences between book operations and markets in the U.S. and U.K. The conversation was moderated by journalist and book critic Alex Peake-Tomkinson.

From left: James Daunt, moderator Alex Peake-Tomkinson and David Shelley

Saying that publishing always goes through cycles, and right now the cycle is "clearly up," Daunt called it "hugely energizing" that B&N is expanding and renovating its stores and changing how it operates, particularly giving booksellers more autonomy. He noted that while nonfiction sales are off, children's and YA sales "on both side of the Atlantic" continue to be strong, with kids "bringing energy into the shops." One cautionary note: more in the U.S. than in the U.K., booksellers need to make stores more attractive to children again, especially following "the removal of chairs and end of story times" during Covid. Also, while B&N's core business is healthy, outside considerations, particularly rising costs and inflation, are challenging.

Shelley said he is "cheerful" about the book business, in large part because of TikTok, which is driving sales of physical books, particularly among readers aged 12 to 24. He noted that Hachette has also seen "some good sales" for "quasi-academic" nonfiction. Among other trends, Shelley pointed to "self help and self development," or "helping people cope with modern life." It's a category that demonstrates how books can often be more informative and helpful than articles online, he continued. Escapist fiction is a strong category, too.

Asked about differences between the U.S. and U.K. markets, Shelley noted that some celebrities popular in one country are completely unknown in the other.

For his part, Daunt said, "Americans buy more hardbacks and at much higher prices." Asked why, he added, "Because they're richer." Daunt said, too, that Waterstones is good at "taking good books by unknown authors and making them into bestsellers," something that B&N is "slowly getting better at."

Shelley noted that one of his most satisfying accomplishments heading Hachette in both the U.S. and the U.K. is "matching people" in the two companies to talk about particular projects or approaches that can be shared. Earlier, the two companies operated quite separately.

He mentioned that he is proud that Hachette UK has opened several offices outside London, bringing new perspectives to the business. In the U.S., Hachette Book Group has 11 offices outside New York, "each of which have ways of understanding readers in those areas."

Asked about AI, Daunt said that booksellers will always be "innately" against AI-derived books, "even AI-generated covers." On the back end of things, particularly customer service, AI could be helpful. For Shelley, copyright and transparency "safeguards need to be put in place," and if so, then "AI could be good for publishers." --John Mutter

Chapters & Charms bookstore will host its grand opening celebration on Saturday, March 15, in Stonewall, La. The Shreveport-Bossier City Advocate reported that owner Michelle Higdon, who had a soft opening for the shop, located at 2068 Hwy. 171, Suite 4B, last Friday, "has been overwhelmed by the support of the Stonewall community. She previously owned a bookstore in Bossier City but wanted to bring something closer to her home."

Michelle Higdon

Chapters & Charms will primarily sell new books, along with some used ones. "There will also be a faith-based gift shop area and plenty of tables for customers to sit, read or do work as they shop and hang out," the City Advocate noted, adding that self-serve coffee is also available. 

Higdon bought the Book Rack in Bossier City after working there on and off for almost 30 years, and while she loved running it, she envisioned a spot in her community. She would like her new location to be cozy, warm and inviting: "I want people to... know that whether you buy a book or not, you're welcome to come here and just hang out."

Higdon is adding a children's section and wants to host readings and book clubs for children in Stonewall. She also plans to have a teacher's section. "Making children's books affordable is pivotal for her because she knows how expensive a habit of reading can be and how early in life someone can fall in love with reading," the City Advocate wrote. "She also thinks children will enjoy returning after they finish their books and trade them."

Chapters & Charms eventually will expand into the space next store.

The Bookies bookstore, Denver, Colo., has been put up for sale and will close in June if a buyer isn't found by April 30, Westword reported. The bookshop was purchased by current owner Nicole Sullivan in 2021 after the death of Sue Lubeck, who founded the store in 1972. In 2024, Sullivan moved the store to a new location. She noted that even if a buyer isn't found by the deadline, the Bookies will continue to serve schools and partners with book sales and events, and will also switch to online, pop-up, and mobile sales out of the electric bookmobile.

"While our mission to create lifelong readers and support the Denver community remains the same, retail has not," Sullivan said. "With the advent of online shopping and big box stores offering cheaper options for books, toys, games and classroom supplies, it became necessary to rethink how the Bookies fit into the current retail landscape."

Sullivan founded BookBar, the bookstore on Tennyson she closed in 2023, "in part so that she could focus on making the Bookies an ongoing success," Westword noted, adding that whether the Bookies is sold or downsized, "operations will continue without interruption at BookGive, the store's nonprofit arm."

"The opportunity to be just a small part of the Bookies' story and long history has been a dream," Sullivan said. "I've learned so much from the staff and community these last three and a half years. Both retail and the needs of educators have changed immensely since the store was founded in 1972, and there's little doubt that big changes are still to come, so I've done my best to implement a plan ensuring another successful 50 years of bookselling. Given the strong, passionate community backing of this store, I'm optimistic that a new owner will see the business through to its next chapter."

She added: "I promise that we will be diligent in finding the right buyer to care for this one-of-a-kind Denver institution. Given the current political and economic landscape, we expect the need for book access to only grow."

In a letter to customers posted on social media, Sullivan wrote: "If a new buyer is found, I will stay on to assist in the transition to make it as seamless as possible. Until then, you can expect the same caring and professional service as always. We will continue to bring in new titles as well as fill online and special orders. Events, bookclubs, and storytimes will go on as planned."

For more information and to inquire about the sale, contact buy@thebookies.com.

Betty's Books, Webster Groves, Mo., will be moving to a new location in August. St. Louis magazine reported that the shop, which opened on Summit Ave. three years ago, "has been able to provide a space for patrons to enjoy their favorite comics, manga, and graphic novels in full while also providing reading groups, a podcast called Comics Closet, and a space for myriad events."

Betty's Books' future home

"The thing that I love the most is that every day is different," said owner Betty Bayer. "I get to learn about new things all the time, meet new people, and we can try out new things if something doesn't work."

Betty's Books has increased its customer base and outgrown its current space. Parking is also limited. Bayer said another factor in deciding it was time to move has been the store being considered a "destination type place for people who love comics--kids, adults and everyone in between."

The new location, at 8772 Big Bend Blvd., is about a mile away from the current space, and "will be wider, with everything spread across one floor so customers can comfortably fill the space during large events. More parking is available, and Bayer says there will be 'fun wallpaper in the bathroom' and furniture will be brought from the current building to the new one. A new addition to the store is a coffee shop that will be available at the checkout desk," St. Louis magazine wrote. 

"We are a place for everyone. People who are really really experts in comics and people who are new in comics," Bayer added. "The community scene is a representation of what the purpose of our shop is."

Author and newspaper correspondent Richard Parker died last week at age 61, the Albuquerque Journal reported. He had had a terminal heart condition and was found during a wellness check.

Richard Parker at Literarity Book Shop in El Paso.

Only a week ago, on Tuesday, Mariner Books published his book The Crossing: El Paso, the Southwest, and America's Forgotten Origin Story, "a radical work of history that re-centers the American story around El Paso, Texas, gateway between north and south, center of indigenous power and resistance, locus of European colonization of North America, centuries-long hub of immigration, and underappreciated modern blueprint for a changing United States."

"It's heartbreaking that Richard Parker passed away the very week his book was published," his publicist Sharyn Rosenblum said. "He was passionate about the Southwest, illuminating its past and the role the region played in shaping America. I know he was grateful to have The Crossing out in the world."

Born in Albuquerque to an American father and a Mexican mother, Parker grew up in El Paso. He was the Albuquerque Journal's Washington bureau correspondent in the 1980s and continued to contribute columns until 1995. He wrote for the New York Times and other newspapers and journals, and he taught journalism. His Lone Star Nation: How Texas will Transform America was published in 2014.

In an interview with Writer's Digest published last week, Parker said, "Everything [we] are taught about American history is so incomplete as to be factually wrong. Despite the legend and the lore, we are not a people simply rooted on the colonial East Coast; instead, we are a nation of westerners with all the good, bad, dangerous, and tragic that entails.

"But as importantly, as a nation of westerners we can fashion an alternate national future in which people of a range of races, ethnicities, countries, languages, and religions can indeed live side by side. El Paso had its share of oppression, sure, but it is probably one of the few large American cities that never endured a race riot."

Valerie Burns visited the Detroit Public Library's Main Branch to speak about her newest Mystery Bookshop Mystery, The Next Deadly Chapter (Kensington), with book sales by Detroit Book City (Southfield, Mich.). Pictured: (l.-r.) Christine Peele and Jessica Keeler from the Detroit Public Library, author Valerie Burns, and Janeice Haynes, Detroit Book City owner. 

Highland Books, Brevard, N.C., shared photos of the shop's Mr. Rogers-inspired sidewalk chalkboard ("Won't you be my reader?") on Facebook, noting: "Be a neighbor, be a reader!" 

Maverick Li has joined Simon & Schuster as data analyst, corporate marketing.

Transmentation | Transcience: Or, an Accession to the People's Council for Nine Thousand Worlds by Darkly Lem (Blackstone Publishing).

Today:
Here & Now: Peter Wolf, author of Waiting on the Moon: Artists, Poets, Drifters, Grifters, and Goddesses (Little, Brown, $30, 9780316571708).

Fresh Air: David Enrich, author of Murder the Truth: Fear, the First Amendment, and a Secret Campaign to Protect the Powerful (Mariner, $32.99, 9780063372900).

Tomorrow:
Today Show: Yung Pueblo, author of How to Love Better: The Path to Deeper Connection Through Growth, Kindness, and Compassion (Harmony, $27, 9780593582275).

Drew Barrymore Show: Amy Griffin, author of The Tell: A Memoir (The Dial Press, $29, 9780593731208).

Late Night with Seth Meyers: Michael Kosta, author of Lucky Loser: Adventures in Tennis and Comedy (Harper Influence, $32, 9780063418066).

Last Sunday night's premiere of the third season of Dark Winds, based on the Tony Hillerman novels, included surprise, high stakes cameos by two of the project's eminent executive producers.

The debut episode featured a scene in which Lt. Joe Leaphorn (Zahn McClarnon) is checking a holding cell containing two old-timers playing chess. The cellmates were played by actor and filmmaker Robert Redford and author George R.R. Martin. Leaphorn offers some unwanted (by Redford, at least) advice on Martin's next move. 

Dark Winds' season three features all-new episodes weekly on Sundays at 9 p.m. Eastern on AMC and AMC+.

Ootlin by Jenni Fagan won the £10,000 (about $12,905) Gordon Burn Prize, which honors "exceptional writing which has an unconventional perspective, style or subject matter and often defies easy categorization."

David Whitehouse, a member of the judging panel, said: "All of the books on the shortlist deserve recognition, but Jenni Fagan's Ootlin is a singular achievement. Everything about it--the language, the rhythm, the approach, the subject, the author--conspires to make a beautiful, vital, difficult, human piece of art." 

Set in a dilapidated old French country manor, The Usual Desire to Kill by Camilla Barnes is a quietly dazzling, sharp-witted generational drama featuring the family of an aging couple from Oxford, England, long settled in rural France. As families go, this one has more than its fair share of quirky personalities, which makes for a delightful story. Narrating it all is their daughter Miranda, a theater actress in Paris whose visits home leave her utterly exasperated.

Barnes is a British-French stage writer with a flair for superb dialogue and bitingly clever insight into the baggage-laden relationship between almost-50 Miranda, her sister, Charlotte, and their Mum and Dad. The parents, spectacularly ill-matched, spend much of their time talking at cross purposes. Human relationships are tricky for Dad; he much prefers animals, so Miranda's visits invariably involve serving as translator and umpire between her parents. Yet no matter the state of Mum's bad hip or whether Dad has his hearing aids in, they are always up for a game of tennis and are united in their fondness for wine and pudding.

Meanwhile, the siblings must contend with the nagging rivalries that pursued them into adulthood and their parents' "insanely irritating" idiosyncrasies. They are also determined to uncover a potentially scandalous incident concerning Dad's flamboyant American friend Barbara. The cast is rounded out by the Miranda's daughter, Alice, and various animals who play supporting roles in the daily life of Miranda's parents. The erratically furnished family residence, La Forgerie, houses two llamas, ducks, chickens, and a pair of entitled cats who dine alongside their masters in theatrically grand formality every evening.

The novel's structure marks an entertaining departure from convention. Sprinkled in between e-mails from Miranda to Charlotte venting about her trips to La Forgerie are scenes that take the form of a play and old letters Mum started writing when she was an undergraduate student at Oxford. Miranda's mother is clearly the star of Barnes's debut, an intelligent matriarch with thwarted ambitions who doesn't let logic, reality, or her husband's maddeningly circular philosophical arguments get in the way of her agenda. And once Mum's guard is down with the help of post-surgery wooziness, her secrets come tumbling out, each revelation a missing piece of the puzzle that is Miranda and Charlotte's mother.

Relishing this quintessentially English domestic comedy, readers peeking below the surface will be astonished by the complex generational and emotional undercurrents guiding Barnes's memorable characters. --Shahina Piyarali

Shelf Talker: A quick-witted, quintessentially English domestic comedy drama set in an old manor in rural France explores the baggage-laden relationship between two sisters and their elderly parents.

The bestselling self-published books last week as compiled by IndieReader.com:

1. God of Fury by Rina Kent
2. Kiss of the Basilisk by Lindsay Straube
3. The Charlie Method by Elle Kennedy
4. Haunting Adeline by H.D. Carlton
5. On the Hippie Trail by Rick Steves
6. On Being Jewish Now by Zibby Owens
7. Hunting Adeline by H.D. Carlton
8. Styles of Joy by SC Perot
9. Forgotten Home Apothecary by Dr. Nicole Apelian
10. Cozy Friends by Coco Wyo

[Many thanks to IndieReader.com!]