You've heard about spelling bees and crossword puzzle contests, but how does one Define-a-Thon? The New York Times recently offered the following definition: "Houghton Mifflin [publisher of the American Heritage Dictionary] created--and trademarked--the Define-a-Thon, which is modeled after a spelling bee but instead asks contestants to match words to definitions (and gives them a helpful list of words to choose from)."

American Heritage supervising editor Steve Kleinedler, "who has a tattoo of the phonetic vowel chart on his back" according to the Times, is currently holding Define-a-Thons across the U.S. To promote the competitions, Houghton Mifflin offers "a 70-page event planning kit that includes questions, rules and a certificate that can be presented to winners." Later this year the company will publish Define-a-Thon for the High School Graduate and Define-a-Thon for the High School Freshman.

And this coming Sunday, May 6, Define-a-Thons and the American Heritage College Dictionary will be featured on the television show CBS Sunday Morning.

In a piece on Santa Cruz, Calif., area bookstores, the Santa Cruz Sentinel states that indies' survival "requires going beyond best-sellers and classic novels. . . . They strive to become community spaces, stock books by local writers, host lecture series and author signings, all part of catering to loyal customers who value their hometown bookstores."

"It's adapt or die," said Bookworks of Aptos owner Traci Fishburn.

Logos Books & Records owner John Livingston said he has increased his online marketing efforts, which now account for 15% of sales, but added, "If I were 30 years old and just starting out, I'd say get out now or change the business."

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Borders will open two 22,000-sq.-ft. stores in the near future. Opening in July, one store will be located in the Windward Mall at Kamahamaha Highway and Mehana Street in Kaneohe, Hawaii, on Oahu.

The other is at Highway 159 and Governor's Parkway in Edwardsville, Ill., near  St. Louis. This one opens in August. 

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Standing Women, the group that was inspired by The Great Silent Grandmother Gathering: A Story for Anyone Who Thinks She Can't Save the World (Viking, $10.95, 9780670034604/0670034606)--about two grandmothers who silently stand together in a town square in a gesture meant to save the world--is celebrating Mother's Day, May 13, by encouraging women around the world to "stand with us for five minutes of silence at 1 p.m. your local time . . . in your local park, school yard, gathering place, or any place you deem appropriate" to show they want a peaceful, abundant world. For more information, check out standingwomen.org.

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Marketing Week regularly features an assessment of a "high-profile UK brand." Recently its marketing microscope focused upon Waterstone's, the British bookstore chain, and offered the following recommendations: "Target the occasional book buyers with stronger offers and promotions. Provide more reasons to visit the stores such as events. Create more themed displays to inspire back catalogue purchases. Install self-search computer terminals to ease pressure on the information points. Match some online prices in-store and make sure this is publicised."

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"Unless by some miracle someone comes along with some money to invest in the store," as co-owner Bonnie Aasness put it, the Bible Bookstore, in Albert Lea, Minn., will close this summer, according to the Albert Lea Tribune.

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Two recent news stories about bookstores--published half a planet apart--offer further evidence that the battle to attract more readers and save independent bookstores is an international one:

Although the Dominican government has declared 2007 to be "The Year of the Book," a general decline in book sales continues. Covering this year's Santo Domingo International Book Fair, Dominican Today cited familiar culprits, including disinterested youth, exorbitant pricing and the Internet. Josefina Santos, co-owner of the El Moreno bookstore, said "that reading levels have gone down because students don’t want to read, and that when they do buy books it’s because they have to, not because they have the reading habit." She warns that the Internet has had a role to play in this process, and that booksellers have had to change into stationery stores in order to survive.

In Australia, the Age featured an article that reads like an elegy to bookselling. Christopher Bantick recalls three Melbourne bookshops--two now gone and one recently sold--with fondness and a touch of melancholy: "The closure of Webber's was a deeply distressing event in my bibliographic life. It was a kind of death. . . . Anyone who has ever doubted that a reader can develop a relationship with a bookshop has perhaps not known the unique pleasure of personalised bookish attention. The closure of Webber's was like the leaving of a lover. There is a space where you remember and grieve, let alone long for their return."

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The RiverRun Bookstore, Portsmouth, N.H., is hosting an art display in its windows called Kaleidoskins, a kaleidoscope-like, automated projection of images created by Barbara Rita Jenny from macroscopic photos of human skin on hands and lips, the Portsmouth Herald News reported.

The display seemed to draw the attention of many passersby, according to the paper, even if some of them were not sure what they were looking at.
 

This morning on Good Morning America: Michael Gurian, author of Nurture the Nature: Understanding and Supporting Your Child's Unique Core Personality (Jossey-Bass/Wiley, $24.95, 9780787986339/078798633X).

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This morning's Book Report, the weekly AM radio book-related show organized by Windows a bookshop, Monroe, La., has the theme "children and teenagers" and features an interview with Daniel Pinkwater, whose new book is The Neddiad: How Neddie Took the Train, Went to Hollywood, and Saved Civilization  (Houghton Mifflin, $16, 9780618594443/0618594442).

The show airs at 8 a.m. Central Time and can be heard live at thebookreport.net; the archived edition will be posted this afternoon.

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Today on the Diane Rehm Show: actor Don Cheadle and human rights activist John Prendergast, authors of Not on Our Watch: The Mission to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond (Hyperion, $14.95, 9781401303358/1401303358).

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Today on the Oprah Winfrey Show, two celebrity scribes judge the talk show maven's "next big idea" contest: Paula Deen, author of It Ain't All About the Cookin' (S&S, $25, 9780743292856/0743292855), and Carson Kressley, author of Off the Cuff: The Guy's Guide to Looking Good (Plume, $16, 9780452286115/0452286115).

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Today on NPR's Fresh Air: more from George Tenet on At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA (HarperCollins, $30, 9780061147784/0061147788).

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Tonight on the Colbert Report: Gina Kolata, New York Times reporter and author of Rethinking Thin: The New Science of Weight Loss--and the Myths and Realities of Dieting (FSG, $24, 9780374103989/0374103984).

 

Starring Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst and directed by Sam Raimi, Spider-Man 3 swings into theaters across the country on Friday. Besides the Marvel Comics series by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko on which it was based, there are several tie-in titles:

The Spider-Man Chronicles: The Art and Making of Spider-Man 3 (Chronicle, $50, 9780811857772/0811857778) is by Grant Curtis, one of the producers of the movie. His title includes concept art, sketches, models and his own photographs as well as an account of how the film was made.

The novelization is Spider-Man 3 by Peter David (Pocket Star, $7.99, 9781416527213/1416527214)

For kids:

Spider-Man: The Visual Guide to the Complete Movie Trilogy (DK Publishing, $19.99, 9780756627058/0756627052) and a range of HarperEntertainment titles for young children, among them Spider-Man 3: The Movie Storybook by Kate Egan (HarperEntertainment, $8.99, 9780060837235/0060837233).

During the taping of the Chuckanut Radio Hour, sponsored by Village Books, Bellingham, Wash., Sherman Alexie (far r.) is interviewed by newsman Floyd McKay (second from r.) in front of an audience of 700 at Bellingham High School. Looking on (from l.) are Joe Young and Chuck Dingee of the show's house band, the Walrus; Chuck Robinson, co-owner of Village Books and the show's host; and Rich Donnelly, the show's announcer.

 

Often the longest leg of a trip is the journey from the airport to hotel. With these tips from Pauline Frommer's New York City (Wiley), you can be sure your ride to your BEA hotel will be a smooth one.  

Unlike other major world cities, a series of shortsighted, highly political decisions have left New York with no easy, logical way to get to and from two of its three major airports. (Note: If you're staying at the ABA Hotel in Brooklyn, you're best off flying in to JFK or La Guardia, though Newark Airport is an option if you are staying in Manhattan or New Jersey.) Travelers have to battle gridlocked traffic in cars, taxis and private shuttle buses. The picture has changed recently, a little for the better.

John F. Kennedy International Airport has an AirTrain system that links the airport to the subways, but it's not the quickest or easiest option. It connects with the subway, either the A at Howard Beach or the E, J, or Z at Jamaica Station. (Going to the airport is harder because signage at those stations to AirTrain is poor.) With the subway fare and the AirTrain fare, this option costs $7 total. It's also possible to take the Long Island Rail Road to and from Pennsylvania Station and Jamaica Station, but it's difficult to navigate and is $12. Another dissuasion: the ride averages a stiff 90 minutes thanks to the vagaries of subway service this far out in Queens.

A better option is the New York Airport Service (718-875-8200; nyairportservice.com), a private bus company that drives passengers to the Port Authority Bus Terminal (42nd St. and Eighth Ave.), a spot just above Grand Central Terminal (at Park Ave., between 41st and 42nd Sts.) and a scattering of Midtown hotels between 27th and 59th streets, for $13 one-way, $23 round-trip. Its buses leave every 30 minutes, 6:15 a.m. through 11:10 p.m. On the downside: Because it takes so long to load the buses, the company tells passengers to expect a commute of between 60 and 80 minutes from the airport to their home terminals.

To and from LaGuardia

The nearest airport to the city (about eight miles from Manhattan), LaGuardia also has the worst panoply of options for public transportation: three turtle-slow public buses (they've been known to clock in at 100 minutes for a trip that should take 45 at most). Your time is not worth the savings you may garner. Instead, turn to the New York Airport Service (see above). It charges a reasonable $12 one-way, $21 round-trip--a good deal for solo travelers (though couples may simply want to bite the bullet and take a cab).

For more city travel tips, check out your official BEA travel guide, Pauline Frommer's New York City, celebrating 50 years of world travel.  Listen to Pauline and other Frommer's writers share their favorite travel stories online.

 

There are plenty of bookstore websites on the Internet and innumerable hyperlinks, but the link to the Bookloft's intriguing Thomas Pynchon Beer Bet is my current favorite. It needs an update (inquiring minds want real-time scoring as the deadline looms), but it also illustrates how a bookstore's online presence can be at once serious business and pure entertainment.

Even when we're just entertaining ourselves.

Any visit to a bookstore's website begins on the front porch--the home page. A good porch invites people to stop by and pull up a chair, but that's not enough to keep them around. You have to build a house, room opening upon room, behind that porch so visitors can enter and spend time . . . and money.

The Bookloft's website lets you know just how big its virtual house is with the first words you see on the home page: "Welcome! See that search bar just above? Through that portal you can find all the books in print in the USA!" And just in case you don't find your book in print, the BerkshireBooks.com link nearby takes care of out-of-print alternatives.

"We are paying more attention to linking," said the Bookloft's owner Eric Wilska. In addition to offering a series of portals between thebookloft.com and BerkshireBooks.com, the Bookloft creates hyperlinks that encourage visitors to move through and even beyond the website to complementary national or regional sites. 

Nationally, consider the pigeon book.

Wilska has made a concentrated handselling commitment to Pigeons: The Fascinating Saga of the World's Most Revered and Reviled Bird by Andrew D. Blechman, a local author. "We're making a big push on the pigeon book," Wilska said, pointing to his own Staff Pick.

The bookstore offers signed copies and free shipping on the title. A series of links promote the book nationally while directing potential buyers back to the Bookloft's website.

A link at the bottom of Wilska's Staff Pick directs you to an interview with the author at the website for The Humane Society of the United States, where a box-link at the end of the interview returns the favor, stating: "Copies of the book signed by the author are available only through Blechman's hometown bookstore, The Bookloft. Because The Bookloft supports HSUS efforts to protect pigeons and all animals, the store is offering signed copies for customers ordering online."

That's not all. "If you go to Andrew's site, he refers people back to the Bookloft," said Wilska. Clicking on a Buy the Book link brings you to a page where Bechman offers his own recommendation to "buy signed copies of Pigeons at the author's hometown independent bookstore."

On the local and regional level, the Bookloft's Community Services link highlights programs for local teachers, insitutions and authors (the latter with a link out to Wilska's book-on-demand company, The Troy Book Makers). Also featured is another link out of the website to an innovative "shop local" program called BerkShares.

Locally, regionally or nationally, the goal for thebookloft.com remains the same--to increase customer interest, loyalty and sales while retaining an independent identity for the bookstore.

Wilska cites a redesigned bookmark that makes a clear statement of the Bookloft's online intentions. He believes this effort will pay major dividends over time. "It will happen," he said. "We had a couple of orders from Michigan recently. Getting an order like that is absolute gravy."

As he continues to search for improvements and opportunities online, Wilska also looks forward to a planned upgrade for the Booksense.com shopping cart. This will permit him to sell sidelines on the website, including his Sticky Fingers Farm maple syrup, which is currently sold in the bookstore and at two local B&Bs whose links are featured the bookstore's home page.

"The changes Booksense.com is making are going to allow non-book items on the site, which is great," said Wilska. "I'm so into that." He added that this could open up many other possibilities for thebookloft.com, including working with some Berkshire region artists and photographers.

Rooms opening upon rooms. The evolution of a dynamic bookstore website hinges on the eternal search for the missing link.  

Oh, and the latest Thomas Pynchon Beer Bet score? Bookloft has sold 32 copies. In a last gasp promotion, manager Mark Ouilette is now offering customers "a coupon good for a beer at our local micro brewery, Barrington Brewery," with each book sold. "Customers get involved with the whole bet story," said Wilska. "Kinda funny. Not looking good for Mark, though."--Robert Gray (column archives available at Fresh Eyes Now)