When you spend as much time searching for book industry news online as we do, you can't help but spot certain trends. One I've been obsessed with lately is the curious art of headline writing when the subject of an article happens to be the book business, and bookshops in particular. Here is the apparent rule: If an article is about a bookstore, the headline must contain a play on words involving books, pages or chapters.
I'm not complaining. I'm just sayin'.
Librarians have long dealt with their own version of editorial addiction. The library pattern often emerges in lead sentences or opening paragraphs rather than headlines. The inevitable message is that if you visit libraries today, you will not encounter your grandmother's librarians anymore. It seems impossible to write about libraries without a qualifier like the following one, snatched from a random Google News search:
"The second role conjures up the image of the stereotypical librarian, ready to 'shush' at the hint of sound, working in a mausoleum where dead writers repose; a closed, dark place where stuffy intellectuals find obscure facts and parents drag unwilling children to complete school reports."
In the next quotation, the reporter managed to "round up the usual suspects" by quoting a librarian directly: "But they no longer fit the stereotype of a stern-looking woman with glasses holding a finger to her lips signaling you to 'hush,' of a place with dusty rows of bookshelves, large tables and hard wooden chairs, where you have to sit straight up and maintain a Sunday morning church-like quiet."
Does anybody really still hang on to this image besides the media? Have they been in any libraries lately?
The bookstore news equivalent shows up in headlines written by deadline-pressed editors who find the temptation to insert book terms just plain irresistible. If book news generally doesn't inspire New York Post-style, pre-apocalyptic 72-point headlines, it does fuel the media's uncontrollable need for wordplay.
I'm not a collector by nature, but this year I found myself saving headlines about the book business. There are basic themes and variations. The common thread can be summed up, since it's still poetry month, with a headline haiku:
Turning the last page,
Another bookstore closing,
One more chapter ends.
All of the examples included here were "ripped from today's headlines," as they say.
The news in our industry isn't always bad:
- Broad Vocabulary starts new chapter
- Bookstore opens a new chapter
- Bookstore opens latest chapter
- Store opening another chapter
- New chapter for Vermont author
It often seems to be a page-turner:
- Schwartz turns a page
- Turning the page at the Valley Bookseller
- Borders ready to turn a new page
- Brian Baxter decides to turn the page
- It's time to turn a new page after favourite bookstores close
- Partnership turns new page for vacant Burke's Building
At times it can be international or even philosophical:
- Turning a page in downtown Jerusalem
- Books: A dying form or are we turning the page?
Inevitably, however, in a world where books and the reading life are at risk, chapters must come to an end:
- Yankee Paperback Exchange faces its final chapter
- The final chapter for Back Pages?
- After 50 years, bookstore closes chapter of history
- Chapter ending for local bookstore
- Acres may close last chapter
Shelf life expires:
- Dutton's shelf life finally runs out
- Bookstore nears end of shelf life
Or we reach dramatic conclusions:
- The End: Canada's oldest bookstore shuts down
Occasionally, the headline will be anything but a mystery solver, offering only fragmentary information that leaves us wanting more:
- The next chapter
- A new chapter?
- Turning the page
Is this good news or bad news?
One bookshop was fortunate enough to still have time for some economic revisions, which may avert a sad ending:
- Bookstore rewrites plot
And sometimes, bless those headline scribes, rampant creativity transcends the subject at hand, plumbing all new depths:
- Owner of trailblazing bookstore chain pulls the plug
Is this a manifesto for change in the way headline writers approach our industry? Absolutely not. We're all word people by definition, avocation and profession. We've turned a few pages ourselves, finished more chapters than we can recall and we're nowhere near ready to close the book. Though it would be nice, now and then, to read a few more happy beginnings.--Robert Gray (column archives available at Fresh Eyes Now)