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Kinokuniya, the Japanese bookstore with 75 stores in Asia, one in
Australia and eight in the U.S., is moving its New York City store from
Rockefeller Center to Sixth Avenue, across from Bryant Park, according
to Crain's New York Business.
The 24,000 sq.-ft. space will include three floors, a mezzanine and a
café. The new store will open in the fall; the old store will close
some six months later.
In recent years, the New York Kinokuniya store has attracted a greater range of
customers by offering more Japanese fashion magazines and graphic
novels. Two decades ago, 85% of the titles at the Rockefeller Center
store were in Japanese; now some 60% are Japanese. The Bryant Park
store will feature larger sections for fashion, anime and music.
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Good news from Beaumont, Tex.: 18 months after Hurricane Rita destroyed the store, Nu World of Books is about to reopen, the Houston Chronicle
reported. The store, which primarily serves the black community, will
have enhanced services, such as free wi-fi, a beverage bar and more
merchandise.
Owner Adekunle Odusanwo has been helped by a Small Business
Administration loan and lessons he learned at several jobs he's had
since the store was wrecked. "At the home furnishing store, he
developed an appreciation for lighting, store layout and efficient
records management," the paper wrote. "Working construction, he learned
the value of individual steps toward progress." The store's insurance
had lapsed before the hurricane hit.
Odusanwo also learned about the value of his store, saying, "I wouldn't
have known how the community embraced Nu World of Books if I didn't
experience the destruction of the old bookstore."
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Cook Inlet Book Co., Anchorage, Alaska, has closed, and owners Lynn and
Ron Dixon, who founded the store in 1993, have filed for bankruptcy,
the Anchorage Daily News reported. The 6,000-sq.-ft. space is still
partly occupied by A Novel View, the used bookstore that had moved in on February 1 (Shelf Awareness, January 26, 2007).
A Novel View owner Pat Tegtmeier said the landlord is allowing her to
stay through the month, and she is looking for new space. Since a
Waldenbooks has also closed, downtown Anchorage has no new bookstore,
so Tegtmeier is considering adding new books, magazines and newspapers,
although her first priority is finding a new site.
Bankruptcy court documents so far show that Cook Inlet Book's
assets are between $10,000 and $100,000 and it owes between $100,000
and $1 million to 203 creditors, according to the Daily News.
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Lone Creek by Neil McMahon, a HarperCollins mystery/thriller set in
Montana that appears April 3 (and is the first book edited by
marketer/sales guy/author and now editor Carl Lennertz!), was chosen by
more than 70 booksellers at the Pacific Northwest Booksellers
Association spring trade show last week as the BuzzBook of the show.
The booksellers voted after touring the show floor; PNBA called
competition "lively and tight."
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BEA's Saturday night benefit concert, to be held at Town
Hall on June 2, features Jon Bon Jovi and Amy Grant, both of whom have
books coming out later this year from Doubleday Broadway's Flying
Dolphin Press. Money raised at the concert goes to the Book Industry
Foundation, which is composed of the American Booksellers Foundation
for Free Expression and the Association of American Publishers' Get
Caught Reading Campaign. Tickets are $25 and may be purchased via BEA
registration form or at the Javits Center during the show.
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Laine and Alice Harling are closing the George Washington Bookstore
& Tavern, Concord, N.C., and leasing the space to the Natural
Harvest Food Store, which is adding a café, according to the Charlotte Observer.
The Harlings had founded the bookstore and tavern five years ago; their
daughter was the restaurant chef and their son a musician who played
sometimes at the tavern.
Alice Harling told the paper, "It's one of those old-timey family-run businesses, but we're all ready to do something else."
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The Second Story Book Shop, Chappaqua, N.Y., has been a favorite of the
town's most famous residents, Bill and Hillary Clinton, since they
bought a house there in 1999. Now the store has taken another step in
emphasizing the relationship, according to the Journal News. It offers
Clinton memorabilia that includes silk scarves, bookmarks,
commemorative coins, mugs, tote bags, CDs of speeches and watches with
prices ranging from $1.95 to $59.95--the items come from the Clinton
Museum Store in Little Rock, Ark., the only other place where they are
available.
"A lot of people drive up to Chappaqua to see where the Clintons live,
and wish they had something to take back to mark their trip," Connie
Fails, director of the Museum Store, told the paper. "I heard that from
so many people visiting the museum."
She wanted to find an outlet for the memorabilia near his home and
started first with Second Story. The former president "loves small,
independent bookstores [and owner Joan Ripley immediately agreed to the
proposal], so I didn't have to look any further," she said.
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In October 2008, Barnes & Noble plans another simultaneous opening
and closing. When it opens a new store in the Streets
at Southglenn center at the corner of Arapahoe Road and University
Boulevard in Centennial, Colo., it will close its store at 8555 East
Arapahoe Road in Greenwood Village.
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National Book Network has added the following former PGW publishers to its stable:
NBN said that inventory of many of these publishers is already in its warehouse and is shipping. NBN is working with PGW to pick up the remaining titles as quickly as possible.
This morning on the Today Show: Senator John Kerry and Teresa Heinz Kerry, authors of This Moment on Earth: Today's New Environmentalists and Their Vision for the Future (PublicAffairs, $25, 9781586484316/1586484311). The Kerrys will also be on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart tonight.
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Today on the Martha Stewart Show: Kirk Douglas keeps going with Let's Face It: 90 Years of Living, Loving, and Learning (Wiley, $22.95, 9780470084694/0470084693).
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Today the Rachael Ray Show receives advice from Mariel Hemingway, author of Mariel Hemingway's Healthy Living from the Inside Out: Every Woman's Guide to Real Beauty, Renewed Energy, and a Radiant Life (HarperSanFrancisco, $26.95, 9780060890391/0060890398).
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Today the View turns the spotlight on actor Gene Wilder, whose debut novel is My French Whore: A Love Story (St. Martin's, $18.95, 9780312360573/0312360576).
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Today on the Diane Rehm Show, field scientist Caitlin O'Connell sheds light on The Elephant's Secret Sense: The Hidden Life of the Wild Herds of Africa (Free Press, $24, 9780743284417/0743284410).
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Tonight on the Charlie Rose Show: former Senator and Knick star Bill Bradley whose new book is The New American Story (Random House, $25.95, 9781400065073/1400065070).
Porn for Women by Susan Anderson (Chronicle Books, $12.95 Paperback, 9780811855518, May 2007)
What turns you on? The CWPC think they know, and are pretty much on the money: sexy guys, tight T-shirts, worn denims and an ironing board. As they say in the introduction, this is "porn unlike any porn you've seen before. It's so provocative, so incendiary, that we advise each of our readers to find a safe place to sit down before opening these pages." Place it near the cash register with a warning.
The Caravan Project,
which aims to make serious nonfiction books available to consumers in a
variety of physical and digital formats--traditional book, POD book,
large print, e-book, online download, audio CD, audio download--and
involve all parts of the industry, including publishers, wholesalers,
booksellers and libraries, is rolling out this week. The Project makes
available 23 titles from seven publishers through eight independent
bookstores and 10 Borders stores. In addition, Caravan is working with
the New York Public Library to provide digital copies of the titles
through OverDrive, and BookSense.com will also begin making digital
copies of the books available soon. Ingram is providing major technical
and fulfillment support for the project.
The key to the program is Caravan's Web site, which allows customers to
order books in-store in any format and either take them with them, have
them mailed to their home--or downloaded to their computers or PDAs.
Caravan founder Peter Osnos, founder and editor-at-large at
PublicAffairs, called the site "as simple to use as any other means of
ordering." (The site was built by designer Janet Tingey, Kent Freeman
of Ingram Digital Services and Praffull Subhash Kotecha of Infosys.)
Both Osnos and Freeman stressed that the ordering site is not a kiosk,
includes no special equipment and can be used on any computer at stores
with Ingram accounts. For each title, the site lists the various
edition options and prices, which include chapters available by digital
download. Consumers who buy digital versions of books receive an e-mail
with a link to the order and an authorization code that allows them to
download the material. Digital downloads are available in Adobe PDF,
Microsoft Reader and Palm but not onto Sony and Amazon's proprietary
readers. Customers pay for their orders in the store, regardless of the
kind of edition they want. Some stores plan to do the transactions at
their information desk.
In most cases, print on demand, large print, audio CDs and any
traditional titles not in stock will be shipped by Ingram in 24 hours
after the order is placed, Freeman said.
Caravan is distributing a countertop display with information about the
program, including sample books, audio clips and brochures. Caravan has
also made shelftalkers for its books. Osnos and others involved in the
project recently visited many of the participating stores,
demonstrating the Web site and explaining how the program works.
One participating bookseller, Chris Morrow of Northshire Bookstore,
Manchester Center, Vt., called the Caravan Project "an excellent
experiment. Northshire looks forward to being a part of this proof of
concept program that will hopefully evolve into broader and easier
access to the written or spoken word for our customers. Anything that
pro-actively pushes the envelope--even a little--in this industry is
welcome."
Saying that returns "bedeviled" him when he was a publisher, Osnos stated that
Caravan's goal is "for publishers to sell more books by having more
diverse formats, reduce the rate of returns and reduce the cost of
manufacturing books in increments."
Osnos first outlined what became the Caravan Project here a year and a half ago (Shelf Awareness,
August 19, 2005).
Osnos also said that "the notion that buying books is hard and an
obstacle for consumers to overcome bothered me," particularly at a time
when, for example, people can easily download videos and TV shows onto their cell
phones and iPods.
And even though the program includes just 23 titles, "the implications
are great," Osnos said. "The mission here is to take what's happening
in news, entertainment and movies and apply it to books so that we take
a single entity--a book--and make it available a dozen ways and hope
the consumer will come to it in a dozen ways. And our approach enables
booksellers to be a part of the experience. Stores will be more a
showroom than a repository. We will enable people to have what they
want, where they want it, when they want it and how they want it."
Both Osnos and Freeman emphasized that for many of the participating
publishers certain formats Caravan is offering are usually uneconomical
for them. For example, some of the publishers had never done an audio
edition of their books and had avoided large print editions because of
costs--and so they are unsure of the market size and are inexperienced
doing such editions. (For audio editions, Caravan used freelancers or
the authors to narrate the books and had them record in public radio
studios around the country during station downtimes. Brian Morris
directed the audiobook productions from Cape Cod.)
The Caravan Project has funding for a two-year program and has received
grants from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the
Carnegie Corporation of New York. "We're not measuring its success in
terms of profitability," Osnos said. "We want to create a system to
show what can be done and show
everyone how to do it."
Who and What
Participating publishers for the pilot program are Beacon Press, the
Council on Foreign Relations Press, the New Press, the University of
California Press, the University of North Carolina Press, Yale
University Press and Island Press. Harvard, Columbia and Michigan
university presses have joined the group, and several other publishers
are expected to join soon. The spring list includes such titles as From the
Palmer Raids to the Patriot Act: A History of the Fight for Free Speech
in America by ABFFE president Chris Finan (Beacon); The Most Important
Fish in the Sea by H. Bruce Franklin (Island); Opting Out?: Why Women
Really Quit Careers and Head Home by Pamela Stone (California); and
Jasmine and Stars: Reading More Than Lolita in Tehran by Fatemeh
Keshavarz (North Carolina). The fall list should include at least 50
titles.
Participating independent booksellers are Politics & Prose,
Washington, D.C., R.J. Julia Bookseller, Madison, Conn., Just Books,
Greenwich, Conn., the Book Stall at Chestnut Court, Winnetka, Ill.,
Vroman's, Pasadena, Calif., Books & Books, Coral Gables, Fla.,
Tattered Cover, Denver, and Northshire.--John Mutter
