Reed Exhibitions, parent company of BookExpo America, is in discussions with the American Library Association regarding the possibility of taking over ALA's annual convention in June and midwinter meeting in January. According to Publishers Weekly, the "process is far enough along that Reed has talked to a number of the major trade houses about the prospect and about the idea of combining BEA with the ALA annual meeting." If a deal is reached, "Reed is believed to favor locating BEA and the ALA annual meeting in 2012 in Chicago, creating in effect two shows under one roof."
Steven Rosato, BEA's event director, told Shelf Awareness that he could not "comment on ALA other than what has already been said. We are talking with them, but there is nothing to say at this point."
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The flurry of international publicity last month surrounding President Obama's vacation trip to Bunch of Grapes bookstore, Vineyard Haven, Mass., was notable beyond the media's analysis of the First Family's reading habits.
In the
Atlantic, Peter Osnos, founder and editor-at-large of PublicAffairs books, recalled that it was just three years ago a fire destroyed the bookstore and the "prospects for revival of the business seemed remote.... In its way, all that publicity for the store signaled its return to full stature as a mainstay of the independent book culture that, while under siege in so many ways, still represents the image of what readers cherish about the experience of browsing bookstore shelves."
Osnos stopped by the bookshop just days after the presidential visit to talk with owner Dawn Braasch about the store's phoenix-like rebirth.
"So what is the future for an independent store like Bunch of Grapes in the digital age?" he asked. "An attractive, established store in a prosperous resort community begins with a core constituency that so many urban independents are struggling to maintain. But Braasch recognizes that she too is in increasing competition with the convenience of online retailers, especially Amazon and the surging popularity of e-book readers. Bunch of Grapes has a good website and assures visitors they'll get what they want, whether still in the vicinity or having returned to their homes. In the store, when a customer asks for a book, Braasch and her staff do everything possible to close the sale, or at least recommend a comparable book, rather than see anyone leave empty handed. As of now, Bunch of Grapes does not sell e-books directly, but like most independents she hopes that the evolving technologies for use on multiple devices--especially the American Bookseller's Association partnership with Google Editions, when it is finally launched—will begin to establish a relationship with customers that last beyond their trip to the store.... It was a pleasure to spend time with Dawn Braasch in the store that she has brought back to life, and to be reminded what it is about bookselling that, for all its problems, makes it so appealing."
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Above the Treeline is working with eight of the nine regional
booksellers associations to provide online catalogues for their fall
trade shows and conferences. The catalogues will offer attendees and
others with information about titles featured at the shows, author
signings, rep picks, schedules and more.
Part of Edelweiss, the
catalogues will be called Books@GLIBA, Books@MBA, Books@MPIBA,
Books@NAIBA, Books@NEIBA, Books@PNBA, Books@SCIBA and Books@SIBA. Above
the Treeline's first similar catalogue at BEA this year was called
Books@BEA. The Northern California Independent Booksellers Association
is the regional association not participating.
The catalogues
will be accessible a week before the shows and remain active for at
least a month afterwards. Each regional catalogue will have its own URL
modeled in this way: http://www.booksatgliba.com.
Edelweiss
clients can choose which titles to include in the catalogues at no
additional charge. Others may join Edelweiss and load titles in at the
standard small-publisher price of $20 per month for one title and $10
per month for every additional title.
For more information, e-mail
tradeshows@abovethetreeline.com.
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Bob Woodward's 441-page book about President Barack Obama's administration, which will be released by Simon & Schuster September 27, now has a title:
Obama's Wars. Excerpts will appear in the
Washington Post beginning September 27 as well.
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Dustin Kurtz and Sam MacLaughlin, booksellers at
McNally Jackson, New York, N.Y., debated the merits of Jonathan Franzen's Freedom at the
Awl.
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Joe Domenici, an author, former bookseller and rep, died on Tuesday, August 31. He was 49.
Domenici
was a former regional sales rep and former co-owner of the sci-fi
bookstore Future Visions in Houston, Tex. He was also the author of
Bringing Back the Dead, his first thriller, which came out in 2008 and was published by Thomas Dunne Books.
For more information,
click here.
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Mentioned yesterday in connection with its publication in Jamaica by Ian Randle Publishers, Usain Bolt's memoir,
Usain Bolt: My Story,
will be available in the U.S. in October via Trafalgar Square
Publishing, which is distributing the HarperCollins UK edition in the
U.S.
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Why are e-readers the size of paperback books? If you answered "because of sheep," go to the head of the class. Wired reported that Got Medieval's Carl Pyrdum "has the skinny on book sizes. You see, before Europeans learned how to make paper from the Arabs (who’d learned it from the Chinese), books were made from parchment, which was usually made from sheepskin. Sometimes, they’d use calfskin, too; if it was really primo stuff, it was called vellum. Like reading a whole book made out of veal.
"We eventually mostly gave up on parchment, because it was expensive, and hard to work with. (There’s a reason medieval monks wrote manuscripts; preparing the parchment was penance.) But all of today’s book sizes (and by proxy, most of our gadget sizes) were established in the Middle Ages, and printers and paper makers carried them over."
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The Fine Brothers divulged "50 Book Spoilers in 4 Minutes."
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NPR's Talk of the Nation explored the pleasures of reading more than one book at a time, noting that "cultural critic Julia Keller says reading multiple books at once lets a reader juxtapose a somber book with a more lighthearted one.... And in an age of rampant multi-tasking, Keller asks, why not?
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"The Importance of Sitting in One Place and Reading" was considered by Art Bystander, which observed: "Sometimes you want to have a conversation, an interaction, and the real life ones don't fulfill those needs. Well, sitting with a book at a cafe, in a plaza or a park, a hotel room or in bed, these are the conversations I need to have. It is sitting with like-minded people, or with people I look up to. It's an opportunity to see new parts of the world, new perspectives, experience emotions and situations I may never experience. And most importantly it puts my own life in context."
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Offering advice to aspiring writers with dreams of seeing their work on bookstore shelves, the Jennifer Pooley Books blog noted that while everyone involved with the process--agents, editors, bookstores, consumers--is on the lookout for special new writers, the chain works in reverse as well: "The consumer gets to pick the titles they like, and pan others. They know authors they enjoy who have published previously and might only want to use that $20 to put towards a familiar voice. The bookstore, knowing this, might not be financially able to take books from the brilliant new voice. The editor knowing they can’t sell in the work might not be able to take on the dazzling gem of a novel (and trust me they’ll always remember it when they can’t with a broken heart–when editors fall in love they fall hard). And the agent, not sure they’d be able to sell the work, might decline representation. All of those elements are at play when you offer your book to the marketplace."
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Here's 2day's recipe from Workman's Eat Tweet by Maureen Evans (1020 rcps @ 140 chars each) culled from Twitter's @cookbook:
Marcella Hazan's Carbonara
Slice, fry c bacon; +T garlc. Simmr+¼c wtwine. Beat 2egg&yolk/½c parm. Toss+lb aldentespagheti/bacon/½c parm/pep.
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Book trailer of the day: A Worker's Manifesto to Slacking Off: 52 Outrageous Office Games to Keep You Sane (and Drive Your Boss Crazy!) by Annie Jackson (QNY/Langenscheidt), which will be published this Friday.
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For many good laughs, check out #litgaffe on Twitter--Things Not to
Say to an Editor and Things Not to Say to a Writer, organized by Janice
Harayda. We would say more, but...
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Congratulations! One of eight "page turners" featured by the revived Richard and Judy Book Club, the U.K. version of Oprah's book club, is The Crying Tree by Naseem Rakha (Broadway), the only U.S. author on the list.
"My dream scenario would be that you could go into a bookshop, examine copies of every book in print that they're able to offer, then for a fee have them produce in a minute or two a beautiful finished copy in a dust jacket that you would pay for and take home. Book making machines exist and they're remarkably sophisticated. You'd eliminate the waste and you'd get your book--and it would be a real book. You might even have the option of buying a deluxe edition. You could have it printed with an extra nice binding, low acid paper."
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Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls and Traveling with Pomegranates by Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor have been chosen as B&N Recommends selections for September, marking the first time that the company has featured trade paperbacks in its expanded buyers' picks 
program. 
On your nightstand now:
For those of us who revere The Little Prince as a book we return to again and again, the idea of a graphic novel interpretation may fill us with trepidation. Will it live up to the spirit of that wise and penetrating original text? Will a multitude of illustrations detract from our memory of the spare ink-and-watercolor renderings of the wheat-haired hero that punctuate the pilot's narrative? For this Little Prince fan, this graphic novel edition deepens the experience of Saint-Exupéry's narrative. Joann Sfar's panel illustrations--six to a page, 12 per spread--ask us to revisit the fox, to "go and see the roses again" and to remember what the fox told the Little Prince about the rose he tamed on his planet, asteroid B-612: "You can only see clearly with the heart. What matters is invisible to the eye." 