Because of the Presidents Day holiday on Monday--or maybe even moreso for Valentine's Day--this is our last issue until Tuesday, February 16.

Yesterday Barbara Meade, co-owner of Politics and Prose, Washington, D.C., which on Wednesday was hit by a second huge snowstorm in less than a week, wrote to us about a visit from one of the most intrepid reps we know:

Parson Weems rep Chris Kerr had an appointment with me for this morning. He started out driving from Westchester yesterday, abandoned his car in Metropark in New Jersey and got on Amtrak for a long, long journey to D.C. Last night I got an e-mail from him saying that he was in town and wondering what time we could meet today. I wrote him back, "You're kidding, right?" Wrong. He had found a hotel room along with all the people who didn't have heat, walked to Chinatown, which was apparently bustling, for dinner, and then this morning jumped on Metro and traveled to my local stop, walking the last three blocks. There was NOBODY walking because the snow was over three feet deep, but he made it to my door with all his catalogues and his laptop. When Chris left about three hours later, he did as promised: he flagged down a pickup on Wisconsin Avenue with four guys with shovels, gave them my address and told them to go dig me and my car out. A perfect sales call!

P.S. Kerr confirmed her facts and added, "She was indeed astonished, but, even more so, gracious--had some hot tea ready for me and fed me lunch."

---

Simon & Schuster Digital has launched simonandschuster.biz, which offers a range of resources and information for S&S authors and agents, booksellers, vendors, distribution clients, marketing partners, media and other industry professionals. It includes access to digital catalogues, marketing materials, author photos and cover images and corporate information as well as key parts of S&S's consumer site such as book detail pages and author pages. These features will have additional resources that will be useful to authors, agents, media and booksellers.

Among highlights: the Inner Sanctum, a blog for booksellers written by the marketing staff, and the Source, a newsletter that lists national media appearances by authors.

---

In time for Valentine's Day, Bookselling This Week presented the Indie Love and Romance bestseller list, based on sales in independent bookstores during the eight weeks ended Tuesday, February 9.

---

Book trailer of the day: The Next Best Thing by Kristan Higgins (HQN Books).

---

Next Tuesday, February 16, in an event at Idlewild Books in New York City, the judges of the 2010 Best Translated Book Award, sponsored by Three Percent, the international literature magazine of Open Letter Books, will disclose the fiction shortlist and discuss the 10 finalists as well the state of translated literature in the U.S. The longlist was announced last month.

A booking mistake had Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, author of One Amazing Thing (Hyperion) scheduled to appear Wednesday evening at both Books Inc. in Mountview, Calif., and Copperfield's Books in Santa Rosa--about three hours apart. So the stores and publisher "applied Winter Institute knowledge," as Copperfield's marketing director Vicki DeArmon put it, and set up a Skype event at which Divakaruni spoke with the audience at the Santa Rosa store from the Mountview store just before her Mountview appearance. It was Copperfield's first Skype event and after some early troubleshooting, all went well: "Her warmth translated right across that screen to the audience," DeArmon said.

One of the biggest moments during the Winter Institute panel about print on demand, which focused on two booksellers' experiences with Espresso Book Machines, came in an answer to a question from the audience. The person wanted to know if the machines are profitable. "Yes," said Chris Morrow, president of Northshire Bookstore, Manchester Center, Vt., which installed one of the first machines two years ago. "Sales have met expectations and the machine has certainly more than paid for itself." At this news, the attentive audience became even more attentive.

Both Morrow and the other bookseller, Lindsey McGuirk, digital marketing and publishing manager of Village Books, Bellingham, Wash., whose store has an updated version of the Espresso that was installed last October, emphasized that they were early in the process of using the POD machine the way many have imagined it: a place to print any book instantly.

The ABA's Dan Cullen, who moderated the session, provided some perspective about technological innovations, saying, "The effect is overstated in the short run and understated in the long run."

A prime reason for Northshire's installation of an Espresso was to "capture lost sales," Morrow said. (Many of Northshire's customers are tourists who won't order a book that's not in stock because they won't be in the area when it arrives.) So far, however, Northshire has used the Espresso mostly for self-published works.

The author-customers tend to be happy campers. "They're so excited to have their books in print," Morrow said. "I go downstairs when I know an author is coming in so I can witness that exchange." The authors often reorder copies of their books and bring in other customers. This part of the business, Morrow continued, "builds on itself." Compared to vanity presses, Northshire's service is "less expensive and trusted," he said. "You can also talk to a person here."

Some of the books have high potential for sales in the store, and one self-published Espresso title has sold more than 400 copies at Northshire. There is also "a community aspect" to some of the Espresso projects at Northshire. "We worked with a local high school writing class and made a book of their work," Morrow said.

Concerning criticism about the quality of self-published works, Morrow said that there is  a range of material, adding, "I've seen some pretty bad books from traditional publishers."

The bulk of books printed by Village Books are self-published, although it is also printing some obscure titles and has access to many titles through Ingram's Lightning Source and Google Books. Still, McGuirk said, "I'd love to have access to more titles than we do." Village Books has also published four books under its Chuckanut Editions imprint, two of which are regional out-of-print titles.

Village Books obtained an Espresso machine in part because "we wanted to establish that bookmaking belongs in bookstores," McGuirk said.

Village Books has published between 600 and 700 books so far, and the machine "is running continuously while I'm there," McGuirk said. Print runs vary from as few as 15 to as many as 200. At Northshire, initial print runs average 40 copies. Northshire also uses a digital offset printer for runs of 200-500 copies. "We've evolved the business to be a publisher, not wedded to the machine," Morrow said. Both stores have printed blank books. Northshire's most popular is The Wit and Wisdom of Sarah Palin.

For Village Books, the machine cost $75,000 for a five-year lease, which includes a black-and-white printer. A color printer would be another $28,000.

Northshire offers "three grades of services" for its author clients. Beyond an initial consultation, Northshire offers services at a rate of $45 an hour. Both booksellers noted that there is no economy of scale. Northshire has only one volume discount--on any order of 30 or more copies.

Morrow emphasized that the actual printing of the book is "simple and takes only a couple clicks." A 200-page book requires about 10 minutes to print.

Staffs at both bookstores were initially skeptical about the machine. But at Northshire, "most booksellers are on board now," Morrow said. At Village Books, McGuirk added, "there has been a little resistance with a learning curve."

Audience member Robert Sindelar, managing partner of Third Place Books, Lake Forest Park, Wash., said that the addition last year in his store of the Espresso machine was very popular: "Nothing has energized the staff so much in five years than this." In any given week, he added, the store is able to say 20-50 times that it can print a title that is not on the shelves. The machine is so successful, he said, that "there could be a point where we get a second machine, one that would do only copyrighted books."--John Mutter

Today on Fresh Air: Carol Leifer, author of When You Lie About Your Age, the Terrorists Win: Reflections on Looking in the Mirror (Villard, $14, 9780345502971/0345502973).

Also today Fresh Air remembers the late Rep. Charlie Wilson, the Texas Democrat who was the subject of Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of How the Wildest Man in Congress and a Rogue CIA Agent Changed the History of Our Time by George Crile (Grove Press, $14.95, 0802143415).

HBO has picked up Mildred Pierce, a five-hour miniseries based on James M. Cain's classic noir novel. The project, starring Kate Winslet and directed by Todd Haynes, was adapted by Haynes and Jon Raymond. "Casting for the other roles is under way, with production on the mini slated to begin in April in New York," the Hollywood Reporter wrote. 

Alexandre Dumas's The Three Musketeers will be getting "the Sherlock Holmes treatment," Variety reported, noting that producer Lionel Wigram, "the creative force behind helmer Guy Ritchie's take on Arthur Conan Doyle's sleuth, has tapped screenwriter Peter Straughan (The Men Who Stare at Goats) to update Dumas's swashbuckling tale to appeal to young, contemporary auds."

With a Holmes sequel already underway, Wigram envisions "similar franchise potential in The Three Musketeers," according to Variety.

Mark Lee Gardner has written many books and articles on the American West, including interpretive guides for the National Park Service on subjects ranging from George Custer to Geronimo. As a historian and consultant, he has worked with museums, historic sites and humanities councils throughout the West. He has been a visiting professor in the Southwest Studies department at Colorado College in Colorado Springs. His new book is To Hell on a Fast Horse: Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett, and the Epic Chase to Justice in the Old West, published by Morrow on February 9. He lives with his family in Cascade, Colo., and can be visited at songofthewest.com.
 
On your nightstand now:
 
A Heartbeat and a Guitar: Johnny Cash and the Making of Bitter Tears by Antonino D'Ambrosio. This book combines my interest in Johnny Cash with my fascination for songwriter and Dylan mentor Pete LaFarge (who grew up not far from where I live in Colorado).
 
Favorite book when you were a child:
 
There were lots, but I distinctly remember my mother reading to me Jack London stories and Treasure Island. When I was quite a bit older, I asked for The Charles M. Russell Book by Harold McCracken for Christmas. At that time, it was an expensive coffee-table book of $22.50, but it was chock full of stunning reproductions of the cowboy artist's best-known oil paintings and sketches. I still have all three books in my library.
 
Your top five authors:
 
Mark Twain; Edward Abbey, especially The Brave Cowboy; Evan S. Connell, for Son of the Morning Star, a brilliant book; Owen Wister, his short stories originally published in Harper's Monthly. I'm still on the hunt for the number five spot.
 
Book you've faked reading:
 
I know I bought some Cliffs Notes in college, but I can't now recall what they were for.

Book you're an evangelist for:

The Man-eaters of Kumaon by Jim Corbett. These tales of man-eating tigers are real nail-biters, and Corbett is a superb storyteller. This is the only book I've read that I would put in the category "impossible to put down."
 
Book you've bought for the cover:
 
Hillbilly Hollywood: The Origins of Country & Western Style by Debby Bull. Okay, I bought it for the contents, too, but what caught my eye was the fantastic cover, complete with glued-on red-and-silver plastic gemstones. If I only had a rhinestone suit by Nudie Cohen to go with it....
 
Book that changed your life:
 
There was not one book that changed my life, but there was one library card that did. I grew up in a rural Missouri town of only 500 people, and we didn't have much of a library. My parents paid some sort of annual fee so that our family could use the library in another county 14 miles away, which gave me unlimited access to countless wonderful books.
 
Favorite line from a book:
 
"There ain't anything that is so interesting to look at as a place that a book has talked about."--Huck Finn in Tom Sawyer Abroad by Mark Twain.
 
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
 
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

What makes a good bookstore website? First, let's tackle the more common question I got in response to my last column: Does it matter if you make a good bookstore website? Is it possible that you can build it and they still won't come?
 
"The one big question that I think every bookseller has to answer is this: 'Why would any customer (except the few loyal local supporters) go to any site other than Amazon for this book?' " Deb Evans of Troubadour Books, Boulder, Colo., wrote. Diane Van Tassell of Bay Books, Concord and San Ramon, Calif., echoed this sentiment: "People want to be loyal to their independent bookstore, but Amazon is just too easy and has become synonymous with books, just like Kleenex is the name for all of those tissues that people buy, no matter what brand."
 
This felt defeatist to me. So I went to look at the January stats for my site, which has been live for about 10 weeks. We built it. Did they come?
 
They did. In fact, as of today, almost 4,700 of them came. And that's 4,700 unique visitors. The majority came via links from our newsletter or social media. A quarter of them stayed on the site longer than 30 seconds, which means they read an event listing or a book description (or maybe got up to make a cup of tea). And the number of people who bought something? 12.
 
Yes, 12, no need for zeroes.
 
Now, as the person answering the phone at WORD 75% of the time, I can tell you that the commerce capability of the website probably led to at least 20 in-store sales as well. People called after seeing that something was in and asked us to put it on hold; some had trouble with checkout and preferred to buy their books over the phone. So let's round up. We probably had 40 sales this January as a result of our e-commerce site.
 
Which I don't sneeze at; it's January, for heaven's sake. But the site isn't free, and neither is the time of the people who work on it. It's hard not to ask myself: Could I be doing something differently to make e-commerce worth my time? Or should I stick to the fancy business card model? Many booksellers who wrote in asked those questions, too, because they've had a similar experience, often over a longer period of time. Is there something we could be doing differently?
 
Kenny Brechner of DDG Booksellers, Farmington, Maine, who's been selling books online since 1999, is one of the only booksellers I've ever spoken with who loves his website and thinks of it as a vital part of the store. He wrote: "My strategy has been to provide a lot of content and personality." He's taken what he calls the "all roads lead to Rome" approach, linking his website everywhere he can---in the newsletter, on social media.
 
"In terms of getting customers acquainted with ordering from you, I think you need to make ordering from the site feel like ordering from your store," he continued. "Character and content, the same personal knowledge and attention which sell books off the floor, will make people feel that ordering from your site truly is an interactive extension of being one of your customers." If you spend some time on the DDG site, you'll see that by creating special content for the web (like lists of toys available for purchase) and using content developed for in-person events (like a school book review contest), DDG has managed to strike just the right note.
 
The Maine Coast Book Shop & Cafe, Damariscotta, Maine, has another striking website, with an entire page devoted to Barbara Cooney, who has had a close involvement with the shop over her lifetime (among other things, she was at one time a silent partner). I loved this page because for me it created an instant emotional attachment to the store: I felt that I knew what sort of store Maine Coast was (even though I truly have no idea).

My more cynical Internet side was also intrigued by the Barbara Cooney page. I wondered: What if Maine Coast sold books on their website? After a few months of "buy books" and "Barbara Cooney" filtering through search engines, Maine Coast could become the first hit for anybody looking for a copy of Miss Rumphius (especially if they took advantage of search engine optimization, which I will cover in a future column).

The best response I got, though, was from someone who isn't connected (as far as I know) to the professional side of the book biz. Sally Gawne discussed a number of bookstores, their websites and their book-of-the-month programs: "One store that is really great is Rakestraw Books, Danville, Calif. They hold my book of the month for several months and then send them to me to save postage... that is, after letting me know what is available and chatting with me about books. A 10-minute phone call a few times a year and they sell me 12 books a year or more."

She ended by saying, "Although my face is not recognized, I am still regarded as a viable customer, and that will be the secret of the online indies."

Our personalities have kept us in business on Main Streets across the country for years, so it's not a stretch to think that they might be the key to increasing online business as well. So take a look at your website and compare it to your store. What are you expert in? What are the titles you're selling that nobody else is selling? Is your customer service as good online as it is in the store?

In other words, I think Deb and Diane are correct: Amazon and buying books online are currently PB&J. So what is on your website that isn't on Amazon's?--Stephanie Anderson

 

How about a little retail tough love? According to the National Retail Federation's unromantically named 2010 Valentine's Day Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey, couples will spend an average of $63.34 on gifts for their spouse or S.O., compared to $67.22 last year.

That, my friends, is still a lot of potential book love, and my e-mail inbox this week has been a digital bouquet of newsletters from bookstores nationwide inviting patrons to give Valentine's Day a literary twist.

Greenlight Bookstore, Brooklyn, N.Y., started the celebration last night with a panel discussion "on the subject of bittersweet romance," and tonight "the romance theme continues with chocolate, champagne and paper craft" from Esther Smith's The Paper Bride: Wedding DIY from Pop-The-Question to Tie-The-Knot and Happily Ever After.

There's also a lovefest going on at Nantucket Bookworks, Nantucket, Mass., where owner Wendy Hudson--in her "loverly" e-mail newsletter--showcased an "I heart Bookworks!" video and wrote: "It's that time again when we say... 'We Love You, Dear Reader!'" Also, check out her recap (aka bookseller-to-bookseller video love letter) of a visit to San Francisco's legendary City Lights bookstore during her recent trip to ABA's Winter Institute.

Roxanne Coady, owner of R.J. Julia Booksellers, Madison, Conn., sent a letter to her customers noting: "With Valentine's Day around the corner, I thought, what better time to share some of my favorite reads on love? I will give this disclaimer--my idea of a good read about love does not involve the traditional boy-meets-girl story with a happily ever after ending. I'd rather read a book that explores all the dimensions of love in all its complexity--happy and unhappy." See Roxanne's Picks, as well as the bookshop's Valentine's Day selections for its Just the Right Book program.

Inspired by a line from Shakespeare's Twelfth Night--"If music be the food of love, play on."--the Regulator Bookshop, Durham, N.C., is hosting a cabaret tonight in celebration of Valentine's Day: "Bring your spouse, date, best friend, lover, significant other, main squeeze, life partner, POSSLQ, or soul mate, and see if we can figure out 'What Is This Thing Called Love?'" 

A "Love Your Readers Sale" is being held at the Galaxy Bookshop, Hardwick, Vt., where they wanted "to give a special Valentine to our customers to say 'Thank you for making us your bookstore--we love you!' Shop at The Galaxy Bookshop the week of February 8-13, spend $20 or more on a book, and receive a delicious treat from LePre Bonbons--or--Spend $20 or more on a book to get 14% (in honor of February 14th, of course) off a second book for your Valentine!"

Sometimes love is dangerous. At Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore, San Diego, Calif., "love is in the air when best-selling romance author Joan Brady visits for a Valentine's Day book-signing of her mystical new love story, The Ghost of Mt. Soledad."

Kids love Valentine's Day, too. After all, who do you think actually eats those Sweethearts candies? Odyssey Bookshop, South Hadley, Mass., has invited children "to a very special Valentine's Day Story and Craft Hour with children's author, Corinne Demas and Odyssey's children's manager, Rebecca Fabian" on Saturday.

And the Twig Book Shop, San Antonio, Tex., features an event Saturday titled, "Junie B. Jones Learns Some Valentine's Manners," during which Miss Anastasia and the bookstore are "hoping to help Junie B. Jones with her Tea Party etiquette," with a little help from Margaret Houston, Children's Etiquette Instructor from Protocol School of Texas.

Last Saturday, Tattered Cover Books, Denver, Colo., hosted a "Handmade Valentine Fundraiser" where guests could buy handmade valentines created by the "talented young poets of the Metro Denver Promotion of Letters (MDPL), a writing center for kids." The aspiring poets were available to help "create the perfect message for loved ones," and all proceeds from the event went to "help fund publishing these young authors."

But what would the holiday be without a dissenting opinion? Vroman's Bookstore, Pasadena, Calif., hosts an Anti-Valentine's Day Party this Sunday and proclaims that "Valentine's Day does not have to be the most dreaded holiday of your year anymore....  Make your own voodoo doll, swap stories of dates gone wrong, and enjoy a little food and drink!"

Romance will endure, no doubt, especially if writers have anything to say about it--and they do. In a world that has permitted "tweet me" and "text me" to enter the traditional Sweethearts candy lexicon, it's reassuring to know that old-fashioned love of books and bookshops can still be a great retail aphrodisiac.--Robert Gray (column archives available at Fresh Eyes Now)