Shelf Awareness for Friday, July 29, 2005
Quotation of the Day
News
Indigo Sees a Little Less Red Ink
Sales at superstores open at least a year rose 5.5%, but sales at mall and "small-format" stores rose "just under 1%." Sales at Indigo's online branch, chapters.indigo.ca, rose 36%.
The company attributed part of the gain in earnings to "improved supply chain management." Sales rose for a variety of reasons, CEO Heather Reisman said: a refinement of assortment on a store-by-store basis; the relaunch of gifts, with "a more strategic assortment"; and a new experts recommendations program, under which, for example, "leading physicians on major diseases" recommended specific books, which boosted sales of health titles.
Bookselling Notes: New Stores; BAM Boom
---
Next year Barnes & Noble will open and close stores in Pineville, N.C., a Charlotte suburb. When a new store opens in August 2006 in the Carolina Place Mall, the company will close its store at 10701 Centrum Park.
B&N also plans to open a store in Allen Park, Mich., near Detroit. The store, which opens next March, will be in the Fairlane Green shopping center on I-94.
---
Books-a-Million, which had several stores heavily damaged by hurricanes last year, can't seem to get a break.
A severe windstorm caused the façade of a BAM store in Fayetteville, N.C., to collapse yesterday, according to the Associated Press. About 30 people were in the store when the crash occurred and power went out. "The first thing we saw was the horizontal rain," assistant manager Andra Hyde said. "Then the wind. Then a big boom."
|
Media and Movies
Film Reviews: Dogs Day; Balzac; Tony T.
---
On the other hand, A.O. Scott in the Times called Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress a "tender, touching adaptation. . . . There is very little bitterness in [Dai Sijie's] reconstruction of the Cultural Revolution, but rather a sense of resilience touched with sentimentality, and a suffusing fondness for youth, beauty and literature."
---
Also in the Times, Manohla Dargis described Tony Takitani as "a delicate wisp of a film with a surprisingly sharp sting." Incidentially the Haruki Murakami short story the movie is based on appeared in the New Yorker three years ago but apparently has not yet been published here in book form.
Books & Authors
A Handful of Handsells
[Note to booksellers and librarians: Please tell us about the books you are specially recommending. Thank you!]
More...
A Romantic 10 Years: Turn the Page
Drawing 275 people, Nora Roberts, best-known for her romances but a versatile writer whose titles have about 270 million copies in print, appeared with several other authors and signed copies of her latest title, appearing under her J.D. Robb name, Origin in Death (Putnam, $24.95, 039915289X). She also helped celebrate the 10th birthday of the event host, Turn the Page, the small bookstore in Boonsboro, Md., in the western part of the state where the prolific author usually begins her tours.
Turn the Page? Boonsboro, Md.?
Bruce Wilder, Roberts's husband for 20 years, explained to Shelf Awareness: "A decade ago, I had been doing carpentry, but that got to be too much for me so I was looking around for something else to do. I had done retail before, and a bookstore seemed logical." Besides, he continued with a laugh: "Nora wouldn't let me hang around the house."
He found a spot in a house in "downtown" Boonsboro, a small town 10 miles from home, and started selling books in two rooms. Three years ago, he bought the building next door and broke through the wall, adding two more selling rooms.
Most nonfiction is related to the Civil War and the Revolutionary War. (Boonsboro is near the site of the battle of Antietam.) Because of Wilder's personal interest in the subject, he carries some photography books, but they tend to be too expensive for the store's clientele. Sidelines include stained glass and pottery done by one of Turn the Page's booksellers. One room is devoted to children's books. Beyond that, the store carries "all the genres," including horror, mysteries, general fiction and romance, but not so much science fiction since, as Wilder put it, "it's so broad and needs a strong client base."
The big specialty, of course, is Nora Roberts, who has a room dedicated to her many works. In fact, "about 80%" of the store's customers are Roberts fans. Here they can find everything of hers that's in print from her three publishers, none of which are used because the store stocks only new titles. Many of her books are autographed. ("I take home tons of books to her every day and she signs them," Wilder says with admiration.) Sales on the Internet are so important that Wilder commented, "Walk-in traffic is picking up, but if it weren't for the Net, I don't think we'd be here."
Events like the one on Harry Potter day are also important. "We do about five big events a year and they always feature Nora," Wilder said. For each of her new books, "we're the kickoff event and sometimes we get the book early since Nora's gone on tour by the time the book is released."
Some events are done in conjunction with the Washington Romance Writers, the regional chapter of the Romance Writers of America, which has a retreat every spring at Harpers Ferry, W.V. As many as 15 WRW writers appear at the store with Roberts, "a madhouse," as Wilder put it.
In addition, a fan group called ADWOFF or A Day Without French Fries (from a line Roberts wrote), have been visiting regularly for nine years. Each summer the group's members from around the country take blocks of room in nearby hotels, mob the store and have a big party.
The events have made Wilder and his staff of one fulltimer and four parttimers veterans at event management. (One tricky aspect is limiting the amount of books people can bring from home to two per person for the first hundred people. "For a time, Nora was signing so many books people were bringing from home that she stayed hours beyond what we'd scheduled," Wilder said.) Events are held in one of the store's four rooms. "We give out 25 tickets at a time, marked A, B, C and so forth," Wilder explained. "This gives us time to check books and let the previous group go through before we let them in." We hardly have any problems because they're fans. They wait and and wait."
Wilder likes to have multiple authors at the events, usually five, because "advertising costs the same" and "it's more people for the attendees to see."
By the way, despite its paperback emphasis and Nora Roberts's presence on Harry Potter day, Turn the Page has sold 49 of the 50 copies of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince that it ordered.
Turn the Page is located at 18 N. Main St., Boonsboro, Md. 21713; 301-432-4588; www.ttpbooks.com.