A boost from the late Easter this year overcame rising fuel costs, resulting in strong retail sales for April, though some caution remained about future prospects. The 25 retailers tracked by Thomson Reuters showed an 8.9% sales gain for April at stores open more than a year, which was higher than the 8.2% analysts had predicted. It was the best performance since March 2010. The
Wall Street Journal reported that "combined March and April results rose 5.3%, the strongest result since November, Thomson Reuters analyst Jharonne Martis said, adding that about three-fifths of the retailers exceeded Wall Street estimates."
The
New York Times noted that Accenture's Chris Donnelly was positive but cautious: "It was expected to be a big jump--if you look at analyst expectations, and even the companies' own expectations, and frankly, some companies didn't jump as much as they were expected to do.... Everyone's pretty happy that April turned out so well, but looking forward, there's still a lot of concern."
E-commerce sales were up 19.2%. SpendingPulse attributed the highest increase since July 2007 in part to rising gas prices. "When the national average price of gasoline exceeds $3.20 a gallon, that's when we start to see indications of behavior change," said Michael McNamara, v-p for research and analysis at SpendingPulse. "People pump fewer gallons, and drive less, and that tends to have impact on retail because people cut back on Saturday driving.... Almost in conjunction with the lower pumping numbers, we've seen acceleration of the e-commerce growth."
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Tomorrow is the 10th annual
Free Comic Book Day, when participating comic book shops across North America and around the world give away comics to everyone who enters their stores.
Brian Hibbs, owner of
Comix Experience, San Francisco, Calif., told
USA Today, "Free Comic Book Day is the greatest day of the year, without a doubt. To see so many smiling faces coming in and picking up comics and being happy, it's an awesome thing."
Hibbs added that "80 to 90%" of the faces he sees on Free Comic Book Day are not his regulars, but "what happens, though, is it creates a positive image of comics and our comic shops in their minds. So the next time they're looking for a comic, they're much more likely to come back here than go someplace else."
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Books-A-Million will not be taking over the inventory of the closed Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Fredericksburg, Va., as originally announced. The
Free Lance-Star reported that while Books-A-Million is still going to move into the Village at Towne Centre location, it was not able to negotiate a deal with Gordon Brothers, the liquidation company that purchased the store’s inventory when Joseph-Beth was put up for bankruptcy auction last month.
"Unfortunately, they could not come to an agreement," said Joe Bell, spokesman for Cafaro Company, which owns the mall. "Therefore, Gordon Brothers has opted to conduct a liquidation sale, something we just learned about." When the remaining inventory is sold, Cafaro, "which has a pending agreement with Books-A-Million, will turn over Joseph-Beth's space to Books-A-Million for minor renovations," the
Free Lance-Star wrote.
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In a letter to South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, ABA CEO Oren Teicher thanked her on behalf of ABA's member bookstores in the state for last week's House defeat of an online sales tax incentive for Amazon.com. "The hard truth, however, is that more needs to be done," Teicher wrote. "Our member booksellers are still working at an unfair competitive disadvantage to any number of remote, online retailers that, like Amazon.com, have broad networks of online affiliates acting as sales agents in the state."
He called on the governor to support efforts in the state to "level the playing field for all Main Street retailers by clarifying existing South Carolina sales tax laws and requiring companies with broad networks of online affiliates to collect and remit sales tax to the state."
Teicher concluded: "While Amazon.com might boast about the 1,200 jobs it would bring to the state, continued sales tax inequity in South Carolina will only erode the very in-state business environment that creates and sustains many more thousands of jobs. While online sales grow, propelled in part by consumers' incorrect belief that Internet purchases are tax-free, many Main Street businesses, which are obeying the law, have been forced to lay off workers or, even worse, to close their doors."
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Neil Gaiman received an apology from the Minnesota politician who called him a "pencil-necked little weasel" earlier this week (
Shelf Awareness, May 5, 2011). The
New York Times reported that Rep. Matt Dean told Minnesota Public Radio his mother made him apologize to Gaiman: "She was very angry this morning and always taught me not to be a name caller. And I shouldn't have done it, and I apologize."
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DIESEL, A Bookstore, Oakland, Calif., recently hosted a community discussion during which customers were invited to participate in a "dialogue about the worth, and the future, of independent bookstores." Participants also included booksellers, a journalist, a librarian and a book distributor,
Bookselling This Week reported.
"The customer support was strong and heartfelt," said co-owner John Evans. "Nearly everyone spoke, engaging with passion, thoughtfulness, and articulateness, the issues of the day. The meeting lasted about two hours, with hands up the whole time and could’ve gone longer.... It was one of those special, magical events independent bookstores somehow catalyze, where everyone is so intelligently and fully present and listening to each other."
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Jeremiah's Vanishing New York reported on the imminent demise of Atlantic Book Shop, "the second incarnation of 12th Street Books, which you may recall left Manhattan in the summer of 2008 when its lease was not renewed so that neighbor Strip House, a steakhouse chain restaurant, could expand. It was a favorite stop of mine, and I was upset to see it go, but it happily reopened as Atlantic Book Shop in the fall of that year in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn."
While no closing date has been set, store manager Jed Hershon told
Gothamist: "We'll see how the sale goes, but I doubt we'll make it. I'm probably going to end up selling on the street with the record guy in front of Trader Joe's for a few weeks." Hershon's dream would be to get Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz involved: "What I think he should do is take a city building here in Brooklyn and give it to us and four or five other small booksellers. Together we'd turn it into Brooklyn's book destination! I need to get over to Marty's office and talk to him."
Gothamist later provided an update in the form of a statement from Markowitz's office: "It’s unfortunate any time Brooklyn--the literary epicenter of New York City and home to the renowned Brooklyn Book Festival--loses one of its indie book stores or any of its 'mom and pop' businesses. We welcome Mr. Hershon contacting our office to discuss his ideas and to see if we can assist in any way."
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Bookselling This Week featured a q&a with author Laurie Halse Anderson, who spoke with ABFFE President Chris Finan about her role as this year's honorary chair of the ABC Children's Group Silent Auction at BEA, as well as "the challenges to her books and the effects these have had on her, on kids, and on other writers."
Anderson said her role as auction chair "combines several of my passions: children's literature, freedom of expression, independent booksellers, and art. Does it get any better than that? No, it doesn't! When my books have been censored, I've been supported by all aspects of the publishing community. I want to make sure that other authors and illustrators (and teachers and librarians!) who have to deal with censorship attempts feel that same level of support and care."
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The owners of Books & More, Madison, S.Dak., have tentatively set August 1 as the closing date for their bookshop, the
Daily Leader
reported. Co-owner Terri Bourne cited economic reasons for the
decision. "It's really rather sad that we've had to do this," she said.
"We've always viewed Madison as a really nice town to operate in. Part
of the difficulty has come from an overall change in shopping habits. A
lot of retail outlets in downtown areas are struggling in the current
economy."
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At last week's PEN World Voices panel, Rebecca Stead (When You Reach Me ), Peter Lerangis (Smiler's Bones) and Gioconda Belli (The Country Under My Skin) engaged in a
lively discussion of the influences on their writing processes. You can see a
video of the conversation here.
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Filmmaker and author John Sayles is hitting the road in a rented Toyota Prius for a DIY book tour promoting his new novel
A Moment in the Sun, the
Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
"I'm
looking forward to it," he said. "A reading is like theater, an
immediate connection with people. And I love the idea of doing only
libraries and independent bookstores. Maggie [Renzi] and I like to take
long road trips. We'll have five to eight hours of driving a day, more
in Texas."
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Oprah Winfrey recommended
16 Books to Watch for in May.
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For NPR's Three Books series, Rae Meadows, author of
Mothers and Daughters, shared her choices for
books about moms who make your mothering seem perfect, noting that "motherhood is complicated, at times baffling. These three books about mothers with daughters made me feel I was not alone in my bewilderment, and perhaps I was even doing better than I thought."
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Flavorwire offered a
peek inside famous writers' homes.
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The Family Corleone, an "all-new prequel" to the late Mario Puzo's bestseller
The Godfather, will be published by Grand Central in June 2012.
Jacket Copy
reported that the task of bringing the story, based on an unproduced
screenplay written by Puzo, to life was given to author Ed Falco, who
"grew up Catholic in Brooklyn; his writing has dealt with violence; the
Virginia Tech shooter, who killed 32 people in 2007, was one of his
students. And on the more frivolous side, he is the uncle of actress
Edie Falco, who starred in the modern-day mafia hit
The Sopranos." Falco's previous work includes novels
St. John of the Five Boroughs,
Wolf Point and a story collection,
Sabbath Night in the Church of the Piranha--all from Unbridled Books--as well as and his most recent book,
Burning Man: Stories (SMU Press).
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For your weekend viewing pleasure:
Jean Paul Sartre meets Star Wars. The classic sci-fi movie gets a "French existentialist twist."
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Book trailer of the day:
The Meowmorphosis
by Franz Kafka and Cook Coleridge (Quirk Classics). Opening line: "One
morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that
he had been changed into an adorable kitten." Oh the horror.
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ScrollMotion and
Smashwords
will join forces to create individual mobile applications for
Smashword’s Premium Catalog of more than 30,000 original e-books for a
variety of platforms, including Apple iOS, Android, Windows Phone 7 and
WebOS. Through the partnership, ScrollMotion will create, promote,
merchandise and distribute Smashwords e-books as mobile apps across
multiple application marketplaces such as Apple's App Store, the Android
Market and the HP App Catalog.
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Lauren Flower has joined HarperCollins
Children's Books as director of integrated marketing. She had spent eight years
at Random House Children's Books New Media, where she was most recently senior
manager, new media marketing.
"I'm not an economic priest. My bookstore is not a confessional. I'm tired of handing out 'Hail Locals' to guilt-riddled shoppers. If you bought a Kindle as your sole reading device, you have cut out your local bookstore when there are options for e-readers that don’t eliminate indies. It's your choice, but don't come whining to me that you really want to shop local, but you have to be 'smart about your money.' I agree, you should be smart about your money. You should know that local businesses hand out thousands of dollars worth of donations and items to schools, organizations, and clubs throughout your community every year. Maybe shopping local isn't a priority for you. Fine. Talk to Amazon about donating a silent auction item for your son's school trip to D.C. and ask for a discount on books purchased for your school district. I’m sure Wal-Mart would sell your dance recital tickets or put a bucket on the counter for summer camp applications. Maybe Costco will supply the food for a fund-raiser, but I doubt it."
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Your top five authors:
John Donohue
has combined 21 writers and chefs, 13 "civilians," 21 New Yorker cartoons, to get a tasty mix
of more than 60 recipes, cookbook recommendations and 34 sweet, funny stories
about men cooking. Mark Bittman talks about parenthood and the necessities of
daily life that taught him to cook. Shankar Vedantam reminisces about a potato
dish a departed aunt made for him, and his search to replicate the dish for his
daughter. Jim Harrison, delightfully opinionated, proclaims, "Currently
the overuse of rosemary among bad cooks in America must be viewed as a capital crime."
Omar Valenzuela, a Brooklyn carpenter, keeps the fact that he does most of the
cooking a secret from his construction crews, but says, "Good cooking, I
have learned, is the secret to a happy marriage." 
These were some of the questions readers asked Barbara Delinsky, who was the guest on Monday night's live 
"We've had some wonderful suggestions and responses from book clubs about how they would like to incorporate these chats into their book club plans," said Rose, who also serves as marketing v-p for BookMovement. "Cecilia from the Decatur, Tex., Public Library asked how she could put the chat up on a TV screen so her library could schedule a get-together; Carrie from Berlin, Conn., suggested we set up later chats so readers could participate after work--which we did with Barbara Delinsky; and another e-mail suggested we announce these chats further in advance so book clubs have a chance to make the book their book selection."
BookMovement was started by Pauline Hubert in 2001 and now has more than 29,000 registered book clubs (as of March 2011), representing 290,000 readers. She said she considers herself "an advocate for book clubs and from what they have been telling me, they want to hear from authors they normally don’t get to have a conversation with. It’s one thing to see an interview on television or in print, but it’s quite another thrill to be able to talk about the unspoken challenges of motherhood with Anna Quindlen, as we did when we spoke about her novel Every Last One (and with Barbara Delinsky as well). These chats are a way for clubs to be able to have conversations with these authors, not just sound bites. And so far, the authors have really loved it--as have the clubs. I think we’ve been able to have some insightful conversations that help book clubs get to know the book and the author in a new way."