"Where are you and why aren't you at Green Apple? We miss you."
--Simple but effective opening line in the most recent e-mail newsletter from Green Apple Books, San Francisco, Calif.

 

 

In court testimony Friday, the second day of trial in the suit by Ron Burkle's Yucaipa Companies against Barnes & Noble over B&N's "poison pill" provision, B&N chairman Len Riggio testified that the provision was not about "me and my family," the Wall Street Journal reported.

However, lawyers for Yucaipa then showed a videotaped deposition in which Riggio said, "The pill was about me and my family." (He and his family own at least 32% of B&N stock; the poison pill, enacted as Yucaipa was quickly buying shares, limits outside investors to 20%.)

In a deposition, Riggio also indicated that based on a joint investment with Burkle in another company, "I didn't think highly of his judgment and I didn't think highly of him as a partner."

According to Reuters, Riggio said he did not know until "shortly before" the board's November 17 meeting that a pill provision would be considered. The provision was adopted at the meeting.

Asked if he had said at the meeting that he feared Burkle wanted to make B&N buy Borders Group, Riggio testified, "Close, but not exactly. Let's leave it at yes."

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The Wall Street Journal's Heard on the Street column on Saturday came down hard on B&N, which it called a tale of "how a successful entrepreneur running a mature business grapples with the threat of new technology."

Noting B&N's 21% stock-price drop this past week after the company's fourth-quarter loss and prediction of losses in the current fiscal year, the Journal said that B&N would be in a better position to fight with "powerful rivals" Amazon.com and Apple "if it hadn't blown $596 million last year buying the Riggio family's college-bookstore chain." It also criticized B&N for continuing to pay a $1-per-share dividend, which cost $57 million last year.

"The big question is whether B&N will close stores fast enough as physical book sales shrink. Mr. Riggio said last week he didn't expect to close many stores in the next five years, predicting that general retailers would get out of the market first. To survive, Mr. Riggio has to be willing to take more radical action. Only then will readers see an uplifting ending."

 

Soaring gas prices in 2008 and the subsequent recession have had a positive effect on business for Half Price Books, Records, Magazines, the national chain based in Dallas, Tex. According to the San Antonio Express-News, sales began to rise at Half Price stores "as Americans latched on to thriftier habits and didn't let go.... Half Price racked up a 5% jump in same-store sales, those at stores open at least a year, in fiscal 2010 at its 110 stores. Its four stores in San Antonio posted a 5.6% jump in same-store sales."

"Where Borders and Barnes & Noble are flat to down, just the opposite is happening to us," said Kathy Doyle Thomas, the company's executive v-p for marketing and development.

Thomas added that Half Price is also examining the threat posed by e-readers and by the Internet's effect on the music business because "we don't want to be another Tower Records or Sound Warehouse.... We're looking to see if we can buy used Kindles to sell and if there's a market for that."

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"There used to be a real glamour thing about having a reading. It felt really special. Now it's like an industry," Lori Gottlieb, author of Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough, told the Wall Street Journal in a piece exploring the competition for "prestigious" author event sites in New York City.

Where authors end up signing "is a tricky gavotte involving publishers, chain bookstores and other venues. In fact, independent bookstores or locales like the 92nd Street Y are sometimes more appropriate perches," the Journal wrote, though it did not mention any specific indies.

"Within Manhattan it's always been competitive, and it's more so now because a lot of outlets have gone," said Evan Boorstyn, deputy director of publicity at Grand Central Publishing. The Union Square Barnes & Noble, with an event space for up to 1,100 people, is considered the "get."

"To be there is the equivalent of getting your name up in lights on Broadway," said Boorstyn.

Literary agent Laurence Kirschbaum noted that matching the venue to the author plays a key role. "There are definitely uptown authors and subjects and downtown authors and subjects," he said. "A lot of it has to do with where a writer has most of his posse. Thus, you're not going to put the latest Tea Party author at the B&N at 82nd and Broadway."

Author Susan Isaacs questioned the impact of signings in general. "Say you sell 75 books. It's all to the good, but I don't know how much it matters in the scheme of things. I'm more concerned about the size of the advertising budget. So if you start carrying on about whether you're at Lincoln Center or the Upper East Side, you're making your publicist even more crazy than you're already making her. You should be using that energy to write books."
 
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Calling it a "last hurrah," the Long Beach Press-Telegram reported on Saturday's bittersweet final act for Acres of Books, which closed in 2008. The ArtExchange now owns the building and reopened it "for a fundraiser involving the bookstore's leftover inventory of 30,000 books and 1,500 vintage fruit crates. For $25, visitors were able to choose a crate and fill it to the brim with books. Alex Salto, executive director of the ArtExchange estimated the crowd to be between 600 and 700 people."

The crates, "some dating back to 1900, were used to haul books to their Long Beach Boulevard location when Acres of Books moved in 1960. The crates served as shelving in the store until it closed," the Press-Telegram wrote.

In addition, the Los Angeles Times reported that "workers are using hammers to knock down and harvest an estimated 6½ miles of wooden shelving. Most of the 1930s-era building will be demolished this fall to make way for an art center.... Once the shelves are dismantled, the wood will be given to the public and provide much-needed building materials for community gardens, bike shelters, city planters and art projects."

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Beach reading in New Jersey. "We love our indie bookstores," Baristanet.com declared, "and now that we've picked up coverage of Maplewood, we've got a new bookstore to browse in, Words. We went there last week, and also to Watchung Booksellers in Montclair, to see what the natives are reading."

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How did you celebrate the 50th anniversary of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird? For Kathy Patrick, owner of Beauty and the Book, Jefferson, Tex., yesterday was a very special day, as she chronicled on her blog:

"I read To Kill a Mockingbird every year and every year the story reveals to me something different.... I sell the book in my shop, and if you truly know me, you know that this is my book that I treasure the most. But today, I have decided that I am going to pull a 'Harper Nell Lee' and go to my very private reading chair for my own personal experience. Sometimes it's when we get really quiet that we learn the most and this coming from what you think is the noisiest person on the planet!"

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"The Internet-versus-books debate is conducted on the supposition that the medium is the message. But sometimes the medium is just the medium," wrote David Brooks in his New York Times Op-Ed column examining a recent study in which researchers "gave 852 disadvantaged students 12 books (of their own choosing) to take home at the end of the school year. They did this for three successive years."

Subsequent test scores indicated that "students who brought the books home had significantly higher reading scores than other students. These students were less affected by the 'summer slide'--the decline that especially afflicts lower-income students during the vacation months. In fact, just having those 12 books seemed to have as much positive effect as attending summer school," Brooks noted.

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Literature as art... literally. Inspired by Richard Price's Lush Life, a nine-gallery art exhibition is currently paying homage to the novel as well as to New York's Lower East Side. The New York Times reported that the shows "correspond to the nine chapters of the novel, and work in each refers, sometimes specifically, to the book’s plot."

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Obituary note: Patricia Hoefling, director of sales and marketing at Indiana University Press since 2005, died last Wednesday, July 7, after a five-month battle with cancer.

She had earlier held the same positions at Illinois University Press and Louisiana State University Press and was sales manager at Indiana from 2003 to 2003.

Indiana director Janet Rabinowitch wrote that Hoefling was "a warm and caring mentor to her staff, a spirited and creative leader of our marketing and sales efforts, and a generous colleague and friend." The press has a memorial on its website.

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Although he was not exactly a book person, he sounded like one and had great taste in literature, so we want to note the death of Bob Sheppard, longtime public-address announcer for the New York Yankees and New York Giants, who died yesterday at age 99.

As the New York Times put it: "In an era of blaring stadium music, of public-address announcers styling themselves as entertainers and cheerleaders, Sheppard, a man with a passion for poetry and Shakespeare, shunned hyperbole. 'A public-address announcer should be clear, concise, correct,' he said. 'He should not be colorful, cute or comic.' "

We. Can. Hear. Him. Say. That.

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Sebastian Horsley, the "dandy, writer and artist," died last month from a heroin overdose "days after a play adapted from his memoirs--Dandy in the Underworld--opened at the Soho theatre," the Guardian reported. He was 47.

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This month the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance is holding four "indie booksellers revivals" at SIBA booksellers that are "designed for the day-tripper." Programs include education sessions, lunch with a writer and an "indie inquiry" session about "how to go forward successfully in this ever-changing industry."

For more information about locations, dates and full programs, go to SIBA's website.

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New England booksellers and librarians are encouraged contribute 2,500-word essays about their states for The New England Reader, which will be sold exclusively in regional stores next spring and summer. Essays should address what the authors love about their states and their experience of it.

The book will have one or two essays per state, including New York, will appear as a paperback original and list all New England Independent Booksellers Association member stores. A percentage of sales will be donated to the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression.

Carl Lennertz at HarperCollins is editor of the book. For anyone needing examples, he will send pieces from The Great Lakes Reader and The Pacific Northwest Reader and may be reached at Carl@harpercollins.com.

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The Bookstore Training and Consulting Group of Paz & Associates has launched a blog for people interested in starting an independent bookstore.

"This is actually a great time for entrepreneurs to think seriously about the current window of opportunity," Donna Paz Kaufman said. "The closing of hundreds of corporate-owned mall bookstores early in 2010, the number of retail vacancies across the country with landlords looking for tenants, and the research conducted by Verso Advertising that identifies a huge gap between market share and mind share, all indicate that now is the time to claim a market."

She continued: "Over the last three decades, the mass media has loved to beat up on indie bookstores and proclaim their demise, but even the research into the habits of e-book users indicates that most still buy and read printed books as well, and some discover they don't like to read on gadgets at all."

 

Susan Walker, executive director of the Midwest Booksellers Association for the past 23 years, is resigning, effective January 2011. In open letter to MBA members, she said that her "family obligations and responsibilities have increased greatly since the beginning of the year," leading her to move to North Carolina "to live close to and assist my parents on a daily basis." She added that she'll "find it hard" to leave the job, but "I definitely will continue to work in the book industry, and I look forward to new opportunities to connect with many of you to +sell more books+!"

Walker is the longest-serving head of a regional booksellers association, most of whom have been in their positions since at last the mid-1990s. The sole exception is the New England Independent Booksellers Association, whose longtime executive director Rusty Drugan died in late 2006 and was replaced by Steve Fischer.

The MBA board is advertising the job of executive director and hopes to hire someone by this fall so that he or she will be able to work with Walker to make a smooth transition. The new executive director should be in place by January. Walker emphasized that in the meantime, "it's business as usual at MBA."

For the full text of Walker's letter and information about the job, go to the MBA website. 

 

Bridget Kinsella has joined Cleis Press and Viva Editions as marketing and publicity manager, a new position. She worked at Publishers Weekly for more than 17 years, is the author of Visiting Life: Women Doing Time on the Outside (Harmony), graduated from the Columbia School of Journalism and last but not least has regularly contributed stories to Shelf Awareness.

Cleis co-founder and CFO Felice Newman said that Kinsella has "a rare and valuable skill set that presents a whole new package to a publisher. We'll have whatever we need in terms of publicity and marketing, plus someone who can do some developmental editing as well."

Noting that sales grew 56.35% in 2009 and continue to climb, Cleis associate publisher Brenda Knight said, "We are adding two positions and the hire of Bridget Kinsella is key to our careful plan for growing the business. With her talent, experience and that vivacious energy that everyone in the book business recognizes, Bridget brings a lot to the party."

Our dear friend Bridget may be reached at bkinsella@cleispress.com.

photo by Lydia Daniller

 

 

A funny thing happened on the way to the Hedgehog Party. Last month (Shelf Awareness, June 4, 2010), author Brunonia Barry wrote about her favorite bookstore, the Spirit of '76, Marblehead, Mass., in a blog post at She Is Too Fond of Books and "happened to mention that I own a pet hedgehog named Stanley who occasionally visits the store," noted store manager Hilary Emerson Lay.

Lay was surprised to hear shortly after from someone at the Discovery Channel's Animal Planet program, who had "read the blog--totally randomly. Animal Planet happens to have a studio just outside Boston, and they happen to be filming for a new show called Pets 101, which will be about people who own exotic and unusual pets. Animal Planet called me up and asked if they could film me and Stanley at the bookstore. They loved the idea that Stanley was an integral part of our bookselling community (I bring him in for story hours, and we visit classrooms around town)."

During the interview, Lay mentioned that the bookshop had recently hosted a Hedgehog Party and "they were charmed by the idea, and asked me to throw another such party for them to film."

Despite less than two weeks to organize the event, Spirit of '76 is throwing a Hedgehog Party today from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. "and Animal Planet will be there filming us," Lay said. "I am going to talk about hedgehogs as pets, show everyone Stanley, and read some of Jan Brett's hedgehog books. I am making hedgie-shaped cookies and even a hedgehog watermelon. We also rented the Jan Brett hedgie costume, so he will be making an appearance as well. I have 40 kids coming (plus 40 parents), reporters and photographers from local papers, and I have already had to turn away more than 50 families who wanted to come (we simply do not have the space)."

 

This morning on the Early Show: Maggie Griffin, author of Tip It!: The World According to Maggie (Hyperion, $23.99, 9781401324049/1401324045).

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This morning on Imus in the Morning: S.C. Gwynne, author of Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History (Scribner, $27.50,
9781416591054/1416591052).

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This morning on the Today Show: Laura Ingraham, author of The Obama Diaries (Threshold Editions, $25, 9781439197516/1439197512). She will also appear today on the O'Reilly Factor.

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Today on NPR's Talk of the Nation: Thomas French, author of Zoo Story: Life in the Garden of Captives (Hyperion, $24.99, 9781401323462/1401323464).

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Today on NPR's Fresh Air: Daniel Carlat, author of Unhinged: The Trouble with Psychiatry--A Doctor's Revelations about a Profession in Crisis (Free Press, $25, 9781416590798/141659079X).

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Today on Hannity: Brande Roderick, author of Bounce, Don't Break: Brande's Guide to Life, Love, and Success (Running Press, $14.95, 9780762439027/0762439025).

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Today on Oprah: Geneen Roth, author of Women Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything (Scribner, $24, 9781416543077/1416543074).

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Tonight on the Late Show with David Letterman: Jonathan Alter, author of The Promise: President Obama, Year One (Simon & Schuster, $28, 9781439101193/1439101191).

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Tomorrow morning on the Early Show: A.J. Jacobs, author of My Life as an Experiment: One Man's Humble Quest to Improve Himself by Living as a Woman, Becoming George Washington, Telling No Lies, and Other
Radical Tests (Simon & Schuster, $15, 9781439104996/1439104999).

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Tomorrow morning on the Today Show: Stacy Kaiser, author of How to Be a Grown Up: The Ten Secret Skills Everyone Needs to Know (HarperOne, $25.99, 9780061941184/0061941182).

Also on Today tomorrow: Laura Ingraham, author of The Obama Diaries (Threshold Editions, $25, 9781439197516/1439197512).

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Today on NPR's On Point: Jonathan Weiner, author of Long for This World: The Strange Science of Immortality (Ecco, $27.99, 9780060765361/0060765364).

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Tonight on a repeat of the Colbert Report: Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains (Norton, $26.95, 9780393072228/0393072223).

 

Alan Ball (Six Feet Under, True Blood) will direct the pilot episode of All Signs of Death, which has been greenlighted by HBO. The project is based on Charlie Huston's novel The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death. Variety reported that Ball will also serve as executive producer and Huston is writing the screenplay for the pilot, with production set to begin during August in Los Angeles. No cast has been named thus far.

 

On Friday, Summit Entertainment announced it "will begin shooting the fourth and fifth Twilight films this fall in Vancouver and in Baton Rouge, La., with production taking place over the next year," Variety reported. Part one of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, directed by Bill Condon, is scheduled to open Nov. 18, 2011.

 

Winners of the Shirley Jackson Awards, which were announced yesterday at the Readercon 21, are:  

Novel: Big Machine by Victor LaValle (Speigel & Grau)
Novella: Midnight Picnic by Nick Antosca (Word Riot Press)
Novelette: "Morality" by Stephen King (Esquire)
Short story: "The Pelican Bar" by Karen Joy Fowler (Eclipse 3, Night Shade)
Single-author collection: Tunneling to the Center of the Earth by Kevin Wilson
(Harper Perennial) and Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical by Robert Shearman
(Big Finish Productions)
Edited anthology: Poe: 19 New Tales Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe, edited by Ellen Datlow (Solaris)

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With five of six nominations, American writers dominate this year's shortlist for the €35,000 (US$44,253) Frank O'Connor award for a short story collection. Finalists are What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us by Laura van den Berg, Burning Bright by Ron Rash, If I Loved You I Would Tell You This by Robin Black, Mattaponi Queen by Belle Boggs, Wild Child by T.C. Boyle and The Shieling by British author David Constantine.

The Guardian called the announcement "a day when small presses and debut authors elbowed aside longlisted authors including Louis de Bernières, Patrick Gale and Helen Simpson," noting that judge Nadine O'Regan, arts and books editor for the Sunday Business Post, "said she had 'really agonized' over the U.S.-heavy shortlist, but with 23 Americans on the 58-strong longlist for the award, the balance was already weighted in that direction."

"I was a little sad not to have more authors from other countries but at the end of the day you're not looking at it like that--you have to give it to the best," she said. "I was looking for a story collection which I felt I could give to someone on the street who liked short stories, and say: 'This is a story with an interesting take on life'. I didn't want something which felt like it came out of a creative writing program--I wanted the stories to show individuality."

The winner will be named in September at the Frank O'Connor short story festival in Cork.

 

From last week's Indie bestseller lists, available at IndieBound.org, here are the recommended titles, which are also Indie Next Great Reads:

Hardcover

Blood Oath by Christopher Farnsworth (Putnam, $24.95, 9780399156359/0399156356). "Vampire fans, rejoice! Blood Oath is a stunning return to classic vampire fiction, with no mopey incubi to be found in this spine-chilling story. Zach Barrows, a lively young White House staff member, is assigned to Nathaniel Cade, a vampire sworn to protect the President. Trouble soon besets the duo, setting off one of the most thrilling narratives fantasy has to offer."--Alex Baer, River's End Bookstore, Oswego, N.Y.

Critical Care: A New Nurse Faces Death, Life, and Everything in Between by Theresa Brown (HarperStudio, $19.99, 9780061791550/0061791555). "While the entire country has opinions on health care, very few people speak about it with the voice of Theresa Brown in Critical Care. In an honest and comforting tone, Brown showcases the front lines from her new role as a nurse. Vignettes both humorous and humbling fill this book, and the reader is left with an appreciation for the people who truly understand the difference between life and death."--Geoffrey B. Jennings, Rainy Day Books, Fairway, Kan.

Paperback

Trust: A Novel by Kate Veitch (Plume, $15, 9780452296350/0452296358). "Australian writer Kate Veitch brings readers another powerful novel with this story of a woman determined to allow herself to grow with her art while raising her family and taking care of her husband in the traditional way. After a car accident brings tragedy to her family, Susanna comes to terms with how fragile and fleeting life can be and puts her mind to becoming the artist she wants to be. Without being just another book about a woman who is unhappy in life, Trust demonstrates that strength and perseverance can help one get to where they truly want to be in life."--Annie Philbrick, Bank Square Books, Mystic, Conn.

For Ages 4 to 8

Princess Posey & the First Grade Parade by Stephanie Greene, illustrated by Stephanie Roth Sisson (Putnam, $12.99, 9780399251672/0399251677). "What rates high on any child's list of anxieties? Why, the first day of school, of course, and Posey is nervous about saying goodbye to Mom in the 'Kiss & Go' lane. How Posey solves her dilemma, and with whom, will charm early readers and get them thinking outside the box as well."--Rosemary Pugliese, Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh, N.C.

[Many thanks to IndieBound and the ABA!]

 

Anyone who has managed to become the first sportswriter in the 150-year history of the Nation magazine probably deserves to be taken seriously for that achievement alone. In this withering portrait of some of the worst miscreants of the professional sports world's ownership class, Dave Zirin ably blends his sportswriting talent with some gifted social and political commentary.

Like oil gushing from the Deepwater Horizon, over the past 25 years, more than $30 billion of public money has flowed into the pockets of team owners who threaten to uproot established franchises if citizens (who can't afford to attend the games) don't vote for tax increases to erect glittering palaces festooned with luxury boxes and underwritten by exorbitant "personal seat licenses." Zirin draws a direct line from this perfectly legal misallocation of public funds to the deplorable, sometimes fatally defective, infrastructure in cities like New Orleans (crumbling levees), Minneapolis (collapsing bridge) and Washington, D.C. (Metro crash), all of which boast new or recently renovated venues.

If surpassing greed alone weren't reason enough to resent the megalomaniacal antics of these predators, Zirin offers a healthy sized rogues' gallery of some of the more odious members of the fraternity (and it is most definitely a boys' club). Clay Bennett and Aubrey McClendon purchased the Seattle SuperSonics in 2008, professing their intention to keep the team there, all the while plotting to move it to their hometown of Oklahoma City. In unique and creative ways, Dan Snyder (Washington Redskins) and Peter Angelos (Baltimore Orioles) have managed to wring handsome profits from their legendary franchises while fielding teams that can't be described charitably as competitive.

Zirin provides other disturbing examples of how owners of teams like the Colorado Rockies and the Orlando Magic funnel the revenues of their taxpayer-subsidized operations into right-wing political or fundamentalist religious causes, while some engage in shameful business practices (Donald Sterling/Los Angeles Clippers) or wink at sexual harassment by team management (James Dolan/New York Knicks). It's hard to imagine, but George Steinbrenner of the New York Yankees emerges almost as a sympathetic figure. 

The subtitle of Zirin's book reveals he's writing more in sorrow than in anger and, in the concluding chapter, he offers a brief "fans' bill of rights" and presents the Green Bay Packers' example of public ownership as a model of what his ideal sports world might look like. Unfortunately, as he demonstrates in this concise, passionate brief, if professional team owners have their way, it's a world you won't see at your local ballpark or on ESPN any time soon.--Harvey Freedenberg

Shelf Talker: The Nation's sports columnist marshals an impressive attack on the greed and overall bad behavior of the current breed of professional sports owners.