Books-A-Million apparently has set up a retail division that will buy and sell used books, movies, music and computer games and is opening the first of these stores, called 2nd & Charles, in Birmingham, Ala., according to the Birmingham Business Journal. Birmingham is where BAM's headquarters is located.
Until now, BAM, which has more than 200 stores in 19 states and the District of Columbia, has sold a range of new books, magazines, newspapers and sidelines. Because of the recession, "value" retailing has been the strongest segment in general retail in the last two years.
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Wellesley Booksmith, Wellesley, Mass., has been bought by Bill and Gillian Kohli, who live in Wellesley, according to the Wellesley Townsman. They bought the store from Marshall Smith, who established the store in 1999 in an old Lauriat's space and who remains the primary owner of Brookline Booksmith in nearby Brookline.
Gillian Kohli has a background in engineering and law and will become president of Wellesley Booksmith. Bill Kohli is a portfolio manager of Putnam Investments and will work at the store weekends and some evenings.
The Kohlis are retaining the staff, including manager Deb Sundin and assistant manager Kym Havens. "The booksellers themselves are so knowledgeable about all the books and products, and provide a lot of guidance for people who are not quite sure of what they want," Gillian Kohli told the paper. She added that she doesn't anticipate making changes.
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Chicklet Books, in the Princeton Shopping Center in Princeton, N.J., is holding a major sale to clear out space in its basement level to make room for the inventory of Glen Echo bookstore, which closed its downtown Princeton storefront, according to
Town Topics. Both stores are owned by Deb Hunter, who said that Glen Echo, the used and collectibles bookstore opened six years ago, "wasn't pulling its weight." It will operate as a separate bookstore in its new location.
Chicklet will continue as "a fun and funky book boutique," Hunter said, but add "things like
New York Times bestsellers." In addition, Hunter is aiming to collaborate with other businesses to create, for example, a section of books devoted to Princetoniana and a wine section.
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A
recent Harris Interactive Poll of 2,775 adults found that "people with
e-book devices are not only reading more than other Americans, but also
more than they did before they owned the technology," Information Week reported.
"Those
who have e-readers do, in fact, read more," said Regina A. Corso,
director of the Harris Poll. "Overall, two in five Americans (40%) read
11 or more books a year with one in five reading 21 or more books in a
year (19%). But among those who have an e-reader, over one-third read
11-20 books a year (36%) and over one-quarter read 21 or more books in
an average year (26%)."
Information Week observed that
these results "should also relieve some of the anxieties of the physical
book publishing industry, because it showed that users of e-readers are
more likely to purchase books. 'One in five Americans (21%) say they
have not purchased any books in the past year compared to only 8% of
e-reader users who say the same,' according to Harris.... At the moment,
it is too early to tell for sure, but this early evidence is pointing
to something good. People seem to be reading more if they have an
e-reader which is something the publishing industry, which has been
decline over recent years, is sure to celebrate."
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After 15 years at the UCLA campus in Westwood, the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, which has grown into one of the biggest in the country, is moving to the University of Southern California's University Park Campus, near downtown Los Angeles, when it is held next year, April 30-May 1.
Last year more than 140,000 people attended the festival, which offers exhibits, readings, signings, q&as, children's activities and more.
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This just in!
The
Wall Street Journal examines the ever increasing popularity of paperback originals--"a format viewed by some as publishing's poor cousin"--especially for "young authors with no track record, midcareer authors with a challenging track record and international authors being published for the first time in the U.S."
One example:
One Day by David Nicholls, published by Vintage this summer, a strong seller in the U.K. that now has 300,000 copies in print in the U.S. As a result, some day the next David Nicholls book here will appear first in hardcover.
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Gwen Cooper shared more than a reading when she appeared at Quail Ridge Books & Music in Raleigh, N.C., last week to promote the paperback edition of Homer's Odyssey: A Fearless Feline Tale, or How I Learned about Love and Life with a Blind Wonder Cat. As she reported on her blog, she presented a check for $10,000 to Alana Miller, director of the Blind Cat Rescue and Sanctuary, in St. Pauls, N.C. Cooper is donating 10% of all domestic royalties from Homer's Odyssey to organizations that serve abused, abandoned and disabled pets.
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Book trailer of the day: The Progressive's Guide to Raising Hell: How to Win Grassroots Campaigns, Pass Ballot Box Laws, and Get the Change We Voted For--A Direct Democracy Toolkit by Jamie Court (Chelsea Green).
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Not many authors stop traffic, but Andrew Marr can now make that claim after 15 tons worth of his new book The Making of Modern Britain spilled from an overturned truck on the A4 Bath Road in Theale, Berkshire. BBC News reported that "one lane was shut through the night and reopened at about 1300 BST after a clear-up. The driver was unhurt."
"Firstly,
apologies to anyone who has been inconvenienced on the roads," Marr
said "But I can't decide whether it is a complete disastrous story for
me or a triumphant one. Is it Marr's latest rotten book has been taken
off to be pulped and the British transport system can't cope? Or whether
public demand is so extreme that the road system has given way under
the pressure, who knows? The publishers do tend to keep lorry-loads of
books pretty much on the roads for 24-hours-a-day in case of
emergencies. I just hope none have been lost in battle today and will
eventually go to grateful owners."
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Children's author Cathy Cassidy selected her top 10 stories about sisters for the Guardian,
noting that "I had a little brother, but I never did get a sister, so
sister stories have always been endlessly appealing to me. In my
friendships, I have often looked for something of the family as well,
and have been lucky enough to find it. These days, I find that
friendships, and the challenge of getting them right, are at the heart
of every book I write."
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A memorial meeting and reception for Paul Casimir Williams, who died last month (Shelf Awareness, August 24, 2010), will be held Saturday, October 16, at 11 a.m. at the Meeting House of the Fifteenth Street Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends in New York City at 15 Rutherford Place, near East 15th St. and Second Avenue. In Quaker style, all those attending are welcome to speak. A reception, including lunch fare and beverages, will follow. If you plan to attend, please RSVP to Livia Tenzer at ltenzer@gmail.com.
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Brooke Ann Borneman has joined Diamond Book Distributors as a sales manager. She will be based in New York City and, among other duties, will call on Barnes & Noble, Bookazine, Hudson Booksellers, HMS Host and the News Group. She has worked in book publishing more than 17 years, most recently as national sales director at Dorchester Publishing.
"Indie bricks and mortar bookstores may not always be able to satisfy that desire for 'search-find-click-done' instantaneity, but they do have an edge in browseability. And I would give a physical bookstore the edge in what I might describe in parallel terms as 'wander-browse-sample-done.... If all your book-buying is done online, you might find that your local physical bookstore is no longer there when you have one of those 'I wonder what life will put in my path' sort of days. And that would be a shame."
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Prospective booksellers hailing from from Victoria, Canada, Florida, Colorado, even the Kingdom of Bahrain gathered last week on Amelia Island, Fla., for
the Fall 2010 workshop retreat Opening A Bookstore: The Business
Essentials facilitated by the Bookstore Training Group of Paz &
Associates and co-sponsored by the American Booksellers Association.
They included (back row, from l.) Ty Williams, Kate Rattenborg, Linda
Merwin, Teresa Kirschbraun, Kappy Kling, Peggy Evans, Paula Baughan;
(front row, from l.) Judy Hutson, Lesley McNeely, Rana Aljalahma, Olga
Bof and trainers Donna Paz Kaufman and Mark Kaufman.
A few years ago, I was at a fancy party with several people who
have successful careers in what's commonly called lifestyle journalism. We were
drinking special cocktails made with a very special gin that had been infused
with cucumbers and rose petals, and mixed with rose water that had been
specially imported form Lebanon. 
Brian Doyle loves words; big words, small words, fancy words, plain words, exotic words, domesticated words, adjectives, verbs and nouns especially, and because he loves words he piles them up in great juicy heaps of phrases and paragraphs and sentences and pages and whole books and makes delicious stories with them, stories about impossibly possible events and a talking crow who loves football and cares for a nun in her last days, bringing her bits of fish, dusting her room with his wings and getting drunk on wine with her, and people with unusual names, and then he tells us why they have those names because he is a first-rate storyteller who has a story to tell in this book but also digresses into disquisitions on the bicycle and Puccini and Irish lore galore and frequent quotes from Ecclesiastes and William Blake, another writer who burns "always with this hard, gemlike flame," and occasionally interspersed with bursts of Italian or Latin or Gaelic, and all of this with the wonder of a child, the soul of a poet, the compassion of a saint, the pen of an angel, the imagination of an inventor and the wisdom of a sage.