Shelf Awareness for Monday, September 11, 2006


Del Rey Books: The Seventh Veil of Salome by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Dial Press: Whoever You Are, Honey by Olivia Gatwood

Pantheon Books: The Volcano Daughters by Gina María Balibrera

Peachtree Publishers: Leo and the Pink Marker by Mariyka Foster

Wednesday Books: Castle of the Cursed by Romina Garber

Overlook Press: How It Works Out by Myriam LaCroix

Charlesbridge Publishing: If Lin Can: How Jeremy Lin Inspired Asian Americans to Shoot for the Stars by Richard Ho, illustrated by Huynh Kim Liên and Phùng Nguyên Quang

Shadow Mountain: The Orchids of Ashthorne Hall (Proper Romance Victorian) by Rebecca Anderson

Quotation of the Day

'A Bookstore Guy' Does Good

"Human beings can do only so many things in their lifetime. I am a publishing guy, a bookstore guy. It is good if I can help prevent Cody's from having perished."--Hiroshi Kagawa, whose Yohan last week bought Cody's Books, as quoted in a story in the San Francisco Chronicle. (For more about Cody's, see story below.)


HarperOne: Amphibious Soul: Finding the Wild in a Tame World by Craig Foster


News

Analyst Boosts Borders, Bumps B&N

On Friday, a Credit Suisse report on Borders and Barnes & Noble helped bump up Borders stock substantially and likely contributed to a small B&N drop.

Analyst Gary Balter praised Borders's new CEO George Jones as "very capable and forward thinking" and said the company is improving merchandising, dealing both with "international underperformance" as well as an "over reliance" on mall stores. He called the company's stock "one of the most attractive in our universe," upgraded the stock to "outperform" from "neutral" and maintained the target price of $24 a share.

Borders closed at $20.60, up 7.2%, on volume of 2.8 million, three times the recent trading average.

As for B&N, Balter downgraded the stock to "underperform" from "neutral," in part because of the improvements at Borders, a potentially weak economic climate and the distraction of investigations into its executive stock option practices, all of which, he wrote, "point to the potential for an earnings miss in the fourth quarter."

Barnes & Noble closed at $35.71, down less than 1%, on an up day for most other companies.


Park Street Press: An Autobiography of Trauma: A Healing Journey by Peter A Levine


Notes: Bookstore Moves; More on The Black Dahlia

The Memphis Daily News offers a "tale of two bookstores": Midtown Books, which recently moved and has been renamed Downtown Books (succinctly reflecting the change in locale), and Burke's Book Store, which, at 131 years old, is one of the oldest stores in the country.

After writing to customers and friends about its deep financial problems earlier this year, Burke's has raised some $20,000 and two fund raisers have netted $2,200. Owners Corey and Cheryl Mesler, who have solicited advice from the Service Corps of Retired Executives, are "more hopeful now," Corey Mesler told the paper.

A used bookstore, Downtown, owned by Hugh Hollowell, is now located in the basement of the Memphis Tobacco Bowl, "a smoke shop with a coffee bar," which allows for a bit of synergy. "Tobacco Bowl already was the place where customers could pull up a chair, light a smoke, and stay a while," the paper wrote. "Now, in the still-evolving basement retail space, they can get lost in a page-turner."

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Barjon's Books in Billings, Mont., a New Age store whose motto is "a deli for the mind," is moving to new space four times its current size, according to the Billings Gazette. Luckily for the move's logistics, the new location is just 386 feet away. Concerning the expansion, owner Barbara Shenkel told the paper, "I just really feel it's right for the downtown and right for us."

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In October 2007, Barnes & Noble will open a store in Minot, N.D., in the Dakota Square Mall at Highway 2 and 16th Street. The store will stock close to 200,000 book, music, DVD and magazine titles and include a cafe serving Starbucks coffee. 

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More about The Black Dahlia, which opens this coming Friday:

Kevin Morrissey, managing editor of Virginia Quarterly Review, tells us that VQR has an essay on its Web site by James Ellroy on the movie and his thoughts on the subject. It appeared in VQR's summer issue and is the afterword to Mysterious Press's tie-in edition. 

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Unbridled Books has launched a podcast called Unbridled Aloud, a series of half-hour shows produced and hosted by Kay Bonetti Callison, founder of the American Audio Prose Library, consisting of interviews with Unbridled authors, book commentary, readings and more. The shows are available on the publisher's Web side and other online sites. CDs will also be available. Unbridled hopes that bookstores and book clubs will use the podcasts so that they and customers will get to know the house's authors better. "We think it's much more satisfying and personal in many ways than readers guides," Greg Michaelson, co-founder of Unbridled, wrote to us.

The first six shows feature Lise Haines, author of small acts of sex and electricity; Edward Falco, author of Sabbath Night in the Church of the Piranha and Wolf Point; William J. Cobb, author of Goodnight, Texas; Carolyn Turgeon, author of Rain Village; Marc Estrin, author of Golem Song; and Timothy Schaffert, author of The Singing and Dancing Daughters of God.

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Brad Meltzer, who has a background in marketing, advertised his new thriller, The Book of Fate (Warner, $25.99, 0446530999), on a car in the NASCAR Busch Series race on Friday, "the first book advertised on the front of a racecar," according to today's New York Times. The car finished 32nd; as of this morning the book was running at No. 12 on Amazon.com.

"The best we can do is to be the first at anything, in terms of trying something new and different," Meltzer told the paper, adding, "What is spectacular about the book industry is that it has no idea of its own demographics, no Nielsens, no way to track who is reading your book. Why would you be foolish and market to just one tiny demographic?"
 


G.P. Putnam's Sons: Take Me Home by Melanie Sweeney


Cold Mountain Author's Warm Gesture

Charles Frazier, who will soon be touring to promote his second novel, Thirteen Moons (Random House, $26.95, 0375509321), set in the Great Smoky Mountains in the early 19th century and steeped in the history of the Cherokees, is requesting that two books by an author he consulted be on the signing table at the stores he visits. The author is Barbara Duncan, education director of the Museum of the Cherokee Nation in Cherokee, N.C. The books are:

  • Living Stories of the Cherokee (University of North Carolina Press, $17.95, 0807847194), a 1998 title that Duncan edited which UNC has just reprinted. This contains 72 traditional and contemporary stories presented by six Eastern Cherokee storytellers.
  • Cherokee Heritage Trails Guidebook (University of North Carolina Press, $16.95, 0807854573), written with Brett H. Riggs and cosponsored by the North Carolina Arts Council. Besides offering information about sites in North Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia, the book contains stories, information about folk arts and general historic background.

Frazier makes his first appearance for Thirteen Moons on October 3, the book's official pub date, at Quail Ridge Books & Music in Raleigh, N.C. Duncan will join him there. Frazier will visit at least 15 bookstores.


More About Cody's Books Bumpy Year

Among points made in a San Francisco Chronicle story about the purchase of Cody's Books by Yohan, Inc.:

  • Cody's longtime owner Andy Ross had hoped that the company's San Francisco store, opened almost a year ago, would "spread out our overhead," but sales didn't grow fast enough to make up for problems at Cody's Telegraph Avenue store.
  • Brand recognition of Cody's in San Francisco wasn't as high as Ross expected. "I thought we would just open the doors and everyone would pour in," Ross told the paper. "Cody's was so well-branded in Berkeley that I took it for granted, but still there are a lot of people in San Francisco who don't know that the store exists."
  • In recent months, Cody's financial problems led some publishers to withhold credit to the store; as a result, inventory at Cody's stores in San Francisco and on Fourth Street in Berkeley dropped by a third.


Media and Movies

Media Heat: Kristen Breitweiser

It's a quiet day for author appearances, for obvious reasons.

This morning on Good Morning America: Paul Burrell, whose new book is The Way We Were: Remembering Diana (Morrow, $25.95, 0061138959).

Today on the Diane Rehm Show: Alice McDermott, whose new novel is After This (FSG, $24, 0374168091).

Tonight on Larry King Live: Kristen Breitweiser, author of Wake-Up Call: The Political Education of a 9/11 Widow (Warner, $24.99, 0446579327)



Books & Authors

Book Sense: May We Recommend

From last week's Book Sense bestseller lists, available at booksense.com, here are the recommended titles, which are also Book Sense Picks:

Hardcover

The Interpretation of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld (Holt, $26, 0805080988). "I inhaled this juicy murder mystery set in 1909 high society Manhattan. Rubenfeld spins an intricate and intelligent web of elegant young ladies, grand mansions and great construction projects, eager and earnest young men--and Sigmund Freud. Readers will become entwined."--Rebecca Dayton, The Vermont Book Shop, Middlebury, Vt.

Paperback

Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead: Stories by Alan DeNiro (Small Beer Press, $16, 1931520178). "This is a great debut collection of loopy, off-the-wall, and still-somehow-packing-emotional-weight stories; DeNiro can weld words into some mighty strange configurations."--Caleb Wilson, Davis-Kidd Booksellers, Nashville, Tenn.

For Young Adults

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne (David Fickling Books, $15.95, 0385751060). "Adults will know almost instantly the secret behind the story, but I can only imagine what it would be like to be introduced to this piece of history in such a patient and delicate manner. A haunting, yet kid-appealing tale, of one boy who comes to learn a dreadful lesson about human nature."--Dana Harper, Brystone Children's Books, Fort Worth, Texas

For Ages 4 to 8

Tudley Didn't Know by John Himmelman (Sylvan Dell, $15.95, 0976494361). "This is a beautiful story--in pictures and words. Tudly knows how to do things that he didn't know he wasn't supposed to know, and he learns that most important of all skills: to try. Ultimately, his example teaches others that limitations aren't always really there."--Amy Ellis, Front Street Books, Alpine, Texas

[Many thanks to Book Sense and the ABA!]


Deeper Understanding

BISG: Much Accomplished, Much to Do

Celebrating its 30th anniversary, the Book Industry Study Group held its annual meeting last Friday and welcomed a new executive director, Michael Healy, editorial director of Nielsen Book Services, who officially begins October 15 but was on hand for the BISG and BISAC meetings--and to meet with a range of people in the industry. (About this, he said, "People have been lining up to tell me what my priorities should be," adding that this was just "a demonstration of the commitment of the people who make BISG work.")

Healy called the new job "a natural step" and said it is "an exciting time to take this position at such an extraordinary organization." He thanked former executive director Jeff Abraham and others at BISG for bequeathing him such a strong and financially sound organization. "There's nothing that urgently needs fixing, which gives me the freedom to consolidate and innovate," he said.

Among things he would like to do is increase BISG's international profile, promote greater efficiencies and drive more costs out of the industry, focus on e-commerce (where "there is much to be done") and monitor Web standards. "We can learn from those in the library supply chain who are doing interesting and far-sighted things," he added.

Healy stated that "our industry is at the beginning of a period of absolutely transforming change" and that "the most powerful driver in this growth" will be technology. "The emergence of a new digital supply chain" will follow, and the book business will need to focus on "the huge opportunities offered by digital publishing and digital distribution." New players will emerge, too, and they will need to be drawn into BISG. The organization will need to be a leader in developing policies and standards and must "monitor new developments so we can respond in the right ways," he continued.

During his seven years at Nielsen, successor to Whitaker, Healy was, he said, encouraged to be involved in supply chain issues--a BISG focus. Currently he is chair of the International ISBN Agency, chair of the international committee responsible for revising the ISBN standard (and creating ISBN-13), a director of BIC (the U.K.'s equivalent of BISG), a member of the ONIX International steering committee and a director of the International DOI Foundation. Obviously he has a book standards pedigree.

Trained originally as a librarian (although "I never worked in a library for more than a few years"), Healy spent five years working for the British Council installing automated systems in its more than 100 libraries around the world, a job that would have been much easier, he said, had today's standards existed then. Then he worked for Silver Platter, "a CD-ROM pioneer of the '80s," and Chadwyck Healey, which has large databases of texts in the humanities, before joining Whitaker.

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As has become his enlightened tradition, outgoing BISG chair Joe Gonnella of Barnes & Noble led off the meeting by reading a poem, in this case "Ode to the Book II" by Pablo Neruda. He thanked the "more than 1,000 people" who participate in committees and working groups and "make BISG relevant to the industry and the writers and readers we serve." He also thanked fellow transition committee members Jeff Abraham and Angela Bole, BISG's marketing and communications manager, who kept the organization functioning since Abraham's departure in January. (She was roundly thanked for her efforts. Gonnella, for example, said that she had done "a terrific job keeping this ship afloat.")

Gonnella also spoke a bit "wearing his B&N hat," saying that while the organization has done much, there is much to do. For example, BISG "has not yet formalized its relations with other organizations central to its mission"; needs to do more research since "no one can say how large the industry is, the number of publishers or number of titles to be printed"; needs to work on "data quality and data synchronicity" because every day sales are being lost and customers are irritated because of bad data. He also called for a shipping label container certification program.

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While BISG continued to grow financially and surpassed its budget in the current fiscal year--and total assets rose to $551,000--its budget for the coming year, which was approved at the meeting, is the first that foresees a negative number at the end of the year, a loss of $8,800 on projected income of $764,000. (Treasurer Jan Nathan called this year "a little more challenging than past years.") Extraordinary expenses, particularly involved in the transition costs associated with hiring and moving the new executive director, account for the projected loss.


Among other news from BISG:

  • The new slate of officers was voted in. Co-chairs are Andrew Weber of Random House and Dominique Raccah of Sourcebooks. The new vice-chair is Boris Wertz of ABEbooks.com. Jan Nathan of PMA continues as treasurer, and Deborah Wiley remains secretary.
  • BISG signed up 27 new members during the past year and recently approved a strategic plan.
  • Making Information Pay, the annual seminar that has been very popular, will be held again on May 10. The agenda has not been set.
  • BISG's online material about ISBN-13, including the readiness directory, is now completely free.
  • The research committee is seeking to formalize how it decides on topics to cover and will be reconsidering how it issues reports.


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