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Paul Erdman, who popularized what he liked to call fi-fi--financial
fiction--died on Monday at his home in Healdsburg, Calif. He was 74.
His best-known novels include The Billion Dollar Sure Thing, which won an Edgar Award, The Crash of '79 and The Panic of '89. Today's New York Times
noted the unusual circumstances that led to the beginning of Erdman's writing career.
Sitting in a Swiss jail--a dungeon built in the 1600s--after his bank
collapsed in scandal in 1970, he wanted to write a nonfiction book
about economics. But because he couldn't do research from his cell, he
decided to write a novel. A fellow inmate, a French safecracker, told
him how an amateur could crack a safe, which "became the first scene in
the first chapter in my first novel," he told the Times.
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"Mommy books" are generating a lot of discussion online, on playgrounds
and around office water coolers, but they are not nurturing expected
sales, according to Motoko Rich in today's New York Times.
Among "Mommy titles" published in the last year: The Feminine Mistake by Leslie Bennetts, Get to Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World by Linda R. Hirshman, Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest for Children by Sylvia Ann Hewlett and To Hell With All That: Loving and Loathing Our Inner Housewife by Caitlin Flanagan.
Rich focuses on Bennetts's book, which was published earlier this month
and "argues that mothers who stay at home with their children are
financially, emotionally and medically at risk." Citing Nielsen
BookScan, which measures an estimated 70% of a book's market, she said
the book has sold 5,000 copies. But while Cathy Langer of the Tattered
Cover in Denver said, "I really expected more [sales] than what we're
seeing," Mike Ferrari, a director of merchandising at Barnes &
Noble, said the book is "selling extremely well."
Ellen Archer, publisher of Voice, which published The Feminine Mistake,
told the paper: "This is a book that's going to build over time through
word of mouth." The title is in its fourth printing and has 42,000
copies in print.
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Effective May 1, Independent Publishers Group will distribute Search
Press's full line of arts and crafts titles. Search Press, which has
headquarters in the U.K., has been distributed by Midpoint since 1997.
Founded more than 30 years ago, Search Press specializes in beading and
jewelry, calligraphy and lettering, needle crafts, painting and
drawing, paper crafts and textiles crafts titles. Its backlist
bestsellers include Terry Harrison's Brush with Watercolour, Beginner's
Guide to Goldwork, Chinese Knots for Beaded Jewellery and Tea Bag
Folding. Fall titles include Art of Drawing: The Nude, Janet Whittle's
Watercolour Flowers and Handmade Embroidered Purses.
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Net sales by publishers in February rose 12.6%, as
reported by 81 houses to the Association of American Publishers. Net
sales for the year to date have risen 10.2%.
Among the strongest categories:
Weaker categories were:
Book Group Expo, which made a busy, successful debut last year, returns
to the San Jose McEnery Convention Center, San Jose, Calif., June 8-10.
Founded by Ann Kent and James P. Reber, the event aims to bring
together people involved with book clubs:
readers, authors, book club and reading group organizers and leaders,
booksellers and librarians.
This year's event includes a Literary Salon at which Khaled Hosseini, whose The Kite Runner has been a book group favorite, reads from his second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, and talks with Susanne Pari, author and Book Group Expo's program director.
More than 50 other authors, including Amy Tan, Anna
Quindlen, Roy Blount, Jr., Karen Joy Fowler, Aimee Liu and Ron McLarty, will take part, too.
At the show's Literary Salons, authors and readers have the kinds of
conversations that only readers have in book groups. The Literary
Salons happen, as the show put it, "in the midst of a marketplace
experience that includes wine, art, chocolate, jewelry, tea, and
books--lots of books--that will be sold by independent booksellers."
After each Literary Salon, authors sign books.
For more information, go to Book Group Expo's website. A portion of the proceeds of the show go to local and regional literacy and reading programs.
At the Boathouse Restaurant in New York City's Central Park on Monday,
Workman Publishing Co. hosted a fête to toast the recently-published
silver anniversary edition of The Silver Palate Cookbook, which
included (from l. to r.) Ron Longe, director of cookbook publicity, and
authors Sheila Lukins and Julee Rosso. [Photo by Ben Asen]
Writers are often praised for evoking a vivid "sense of place" in their works. Seldom, however, is the compliment applied to bookstores, and almost never to bookstore websites.
Let’s change that today by showcasing the Bookloft bookstore in Great Barrington, Mass., which projects a distinct sense of place online. The "place" in question is the Berkshire region of western Massachusetts and the "sense of" originates with the bookstore's owner, Eric Wilska.
The Bookloft's home page tells us that when he isn't in the bookstore, Wilska "can usually be found at the world famous Sticky Fingers Farm, known for the best maple syrup this side of the Mississippi!" As a bookseller, Wilska deftly walks the line between technological sophistication and Berkshire country life.
The Bookloft.com uses a standard Booksense.com template with creative twists and links, some of which we'll explore in more detail next week. A few years ago, Wilska co-authored the bookstore's first website, but "it was just ridiculous." He is pleased with the current setup, even as he considers improvements.
He gives Booksense.com high marks for what it allows him to do. "I believe they're doing a good job," he said. "For the $225 per month, it's worth it for the content. This has been an expense, but it's also a leap of faith. I believe bookstores that don't have an active website two to five years from now will miss the next generation of readers."
Still, it's what Wilska and the Bookloft docreate within the Booksense.com template that gives the site its individuality and regional flare. At the top of that list is the beneficial relationship between Bookloft.com and the store's other website, BerkshireBooks.com. "I absolutely believe that the combination of Berkshirebooks.com and the Booksense.com site is key," said Wilska.
Location, location, location . . . BerkshireBooks.com was created to take advantage of the bookstore's advantageous setting in the heart of the Berkshires, an immensely popular New England destination spot--as anyone driving through Lenox or Stockbridge on a summer afternoon can attest--where thousands of visitors flock every year for outdoor activities as well as a lavish cultural menu that includes world class music, theater, art and literary events.
When you visit the Bookloft's main website, you'll notice a colorful banner for Bershirebooks.com occupying prime territory in the top right corner of the home page. If you click Read More, you stay within the Booksense.com site and link to a page with local titles available exclusively from the Bookloft. If, however, you click BerkshireBooks.com, you leave the Booksense.com site and link directly to the bookstore's regional showcase, where an array of titles and products are offered.
Let's say you click the link for Berkshire Regional histories, and suppose the book that catches your eye is Ghosts of Old Berkshire by Willard Douglas Coxey, which is described here as a "fascinating facsimile paperback edition of the original 1934 book. Full of curious early Berkshire tales, myths and traditions visualized in story form."
Should you decide to purchase the title and click on the cover, you are linked back to the Booksense.com site and given the option to add this esoteric, long out-of-print title to your shopping cart.
The ease with which a customer can move between the websites--taking advantage of regional sense of place at BerkshireBooks.com and the convenience of a Booksense.com shopping cart--has become a powerful online sales tool for the Bookloft, but there is another aspect of this transaction that is particularly appealing to Wilska.
While BerkshireBooks.com offers in-print books of regional interest and searches for hard-to-find titles, a more recent innovation allows Wilska to produce some of the public domain titles he sells here thanks to Troy Book Makers, a print-on-demand venture Wilska owns in partnership with Susan Novotny of the Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza.
"We've sold 97 copies of Ghosts of Old Berkshire at $10.95 since last November," he said. "I paid $1.50 each to produce them. You give me 30 or 40 of those little niche books, and I print them, and that's real profit."
Did somebody say Long Tail Theory? Actually, Erik Wilska is happy to bring the subject up, noting that his efforts to find profitability through books like Ghosts of Old Berkshire "is a way of using that whole Long Tail thing. I love the Long Tail theory."
Next week we’ll explore Bookloft.com's subtle mastery of the Art of the Portal.--Robert Gray (column archives available at Fresh Eyes Now)
