Employee health care coverage is an ongoing challenge for small businesses, and bookstores are no exception. Betsy Burton, co-owner of the King's English Bookshop, Salt Lake City, Utah, told the New York Times she had worried that health insurance premiums might force her to close eventually, but a tax credit in the health care overhaul will give the business a $21,000 rebate this tax year.
"These people really need their insurance, and I'm right there with them," said Burton, who provides coverage for seven full-time staffers. "I have a son with special needs, and I don't know what would happen to him or us without this insurance."
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The New York Times spoke with Leonard Riggio and Ron Burkle about the stakes involved in their battle for control of Barnes & Noble.
"I find it almost repulsive I have to be put in a position to defend myself," said Riggio. "I don’t want to consume myself with not liking people."
While the fight over B&N "may seem disproportionate to what is at stake," the Times noted that Riggio believes "the battle touches on deep reservoirs of sentiment about an empire he fashioned starting with a small bookstore 39 years ago."
"Lots of people have an emotional stake in books," he said. "It’s not like what they have with their haberdashers."
Burkle, on the other hand, "professes a desire for peace with his longtime acquaintance. But he also described Mr. Riggio as intolerant of questions about his strategy and management," the Times wrote.
"With Len, you’re either a white hat or a black hat," he said, adding that his primary goal is the appointment of independent directors on the board rather than control of the company. "I want someone in there who doesn’t say, 'That’s the most amazing thing I ever heard' every time Len opens his mouth."
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The Wall Street Journal's new weekend section (Shelf Awareness, September 10, 2010) will debut this Saturday. The Associated Press reported that "the Saturday Journal, under a new masthead reading 'WSJ,' will replace Weekend Journal with two distinct sections. The Review section, comparable to the Times' Week in Review, will carry essay-style pieces on big ideas and events, with a pullout section inside devoted to book reviews.... The Off Duty lifestyle section will hew more toward high-end consumer reporting."
Robert Thomson, the Journal's editor, dismissed the idea that this was a direct challenge of the Times, telling the AP: "Nationally, there's no contest now. We're more than twice as big as The New York Times. They're not a serious competitor."
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For 57 years, the
Country Bookshop, Southern Pines, N.C., "has continued that time-honored tradition of offering 'good books, good staff and good service' to the people of the Sandhills. And in that time, it has become an important part of the fabric of the community," the
Pilot reported in its retrospective on the indie bookstore.
Bobbie Bicket, who purchased the store in 2006, added new computer systems and equipment, a website featuring 24-hour online shopping, customer loyalty programs and social media options. "But the greatest asset of the shop is the employees," she said. "They provide customer service beyond compare."
Children's section manager Angie Tally shared one of the keys to the shop's future success: "If I can get just one book into a child's hands, it will be the first of many. And if I can bring authors to schools to share their books and inspire kids to read, I've done my job."
Still, she worries "about the future of independent bookstores. I worry that if people continue to support big box or Internet giant corporations rather than small shops, young readers will forever lose the opportunity to experience the joy of sitting on a wood floor in their favorite section of the bookstore, thumbing through the pages of an interesting new book. I worry that those obscure titles by unknown authors that booksellers discover will remain in obscurity and only authors whose name has already become a commodity will make appearances on the bestseller list."
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A celebration of the life of David Thompson, the bookseller and
publisher who died suddenly on Monday, September 13, will take place
Sunday, September 26, 2-5 p.m., at the Briar Club in Houston, Texas.
There will be margaritas and Mexican hors d'oeuvres--Thompson's
favorites--along with other drinks. No RSVPs are necessary.
For
those who want to make donations in Thompson's memory, Alafair Burke has
set up a fund that will go to a charity that will be determined later.
Send a check to the order of "In Memory of David Thompson" to 7 E. 14th
St. #1206, New York, N.Y. 10003. To make a direct payment, please
contact alafair@alafairburke.com for account information. To make a
donation through PayPal, please mark recipient as
inmemoryofdavidthompson@hotmail.com.
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In a
Wall Street Journal piece headlined "The Internet Might Save Main Street," Peter Funt imagined a sequel to
You've Got Mail, the 1998 film in which chain bookstore baddy Joe Fox (Tom Hanks) helps drive Kathleen Kelly's (Meg Ryan) indie children's bookstore out of business.
In the new version, Joe and Kathleen are married, the Fox & Sons bookstore chain files Chapter 11, and "in the end the Foxes sell Joe's yacht and use the money to reopen The Shop Around the Corner, which now has a coffee bar and free wi-fi. Profits are modest, but the couple lives happily ever after because sales, while too small to sustain the big-box store, are just right for the needs of a hard-working, book-loving, Internet-addicted couple."
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Although "excellent authors avoid writing clichés," the same discipline does not always apply to their promo photographs. "In an attempt to look uniquely profound yet accessible, or convey some novel combination of deep thoughts with good times, a lot of writers end up looking exactly the same as their peers," according to
Flavorwire, which offered "a critical look at five categories of promotional-author photography as a warning for all future writers who want to break out of the formula."
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Two handwritten manuscript pages featuring J.K. Rowling's "The Ballad of Nearly Headless Nick" will be on display for 10 days at
Reading Lasses Bookshop during the Wigtown Book Festival in Scotland, beginning September 24.
BBC News reported that "the story was originally written as part of
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets but edited out before publication.... Now in the hands of prominent book collector and owner of
Asia Literary Review, Ilyas Khan, the manuscripts have not previously been displayed in public."
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Unexpected perils on the e-highway. In Portland, Ore., a TriMet bus driver's lawyer claimed his client was not reading a Kindle while driving despite video evidence, but "the passenger who filmed the video told
KGW [Lahcan] Qouchbane was definitely reading and added, 'from our perspective, it was kind of the worst time to be doing something like that.' "
TriMet's Mary Fetsch told KGW "they had received several complaints about Qouchbane before the Thursday morning incident... [and] said eight operators this year have been suspended for violating TriMet's electronic device policy."
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Irresistible objects: book division.
Incredible Things featured "20 brilliant bookcases," noting: "While it becomes easier to store digital media, it seems to become more interesting to store the real deal. Your book collection in particular says a lot about your personality, so why shouldn't your bookshelf do the same?"
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The future--of a sort--has arrived for University of Texas at San Antonio's Applied Engineering and Technology Library, which offers an on-site collection that includes no bound books.
Inside Higher Ed reported that the university "says it now has the first actual bookless library. Students who stretch out in the library's ample study spaces--which dominate the floor plan of the new building--and log on to its resource network using their laptops or the library's 10 public computers will be able to access 425,000 e-books and 18,000 electronic journal articles. Librarians will have offices there and will be available for consultations."
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The
Toronto Globe & Mail featured "10 books you have to read this fall."
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Book trailer of the day: the
Shadow Keepers series by J.K. Beck (Bantam).
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To celebrate Fiction Week, starting today, the
American Scholar is posting a new short story each day at
theamericanscholar.org.
Prelude to Morning
Born in Savannah, Ga., and raised there by parents who had emigrated from Lithuania, Al Jaffee (later to be celebrated as one of the funniest creators with MAD magazine) remembers a home echoing with endless un-funny arguments. Traveling with his mother and younger brothers on a trip back to Lithuania in 1927 was no great shakes, either: she left her four boys unattended in a Hamburg, Germany, railway station as if they could handle themselves in a foreign country in her absence. That was not funny at all to six-year-old Al. "I realized [then] that I must not rely on this woman for my survival," Jaffee confides to Mary-Lou Weisman in this authorized biography that traces his rise from this chaotic, disconcerting childhood.