"Every event for every other one of my books has all been in or through independent bookstores. From the beginning, that’s who advocated for my books. I don't tend to look at sales on a granular basis anymore, but I could look and see the kind of digitized map of where books were selling. Later I realized it’s one or two independent booksellers in that area who make it happen. I continue to have experiences like that, where one bookseller in one store has handsold pancake stacks of a book.

"I've made really good friends with a lot of booksellers, which is a blast. When I'm in St. Louis on tour, I'm in conversation with Shane Mullins at Left Bank Books. He's someone who I've known for years, and who at an early reading where hardly anyone showed up, handsold the hell out of the book afterwards. I get so excited when I get to see him at a conference or in St. Louis, just in the same way that I have friendships with authors that I've met along the way."

Poppy Books & Gifts, which opened in December in Spanish Fork, Utah, was featured in the Salt Lake Tribune, which reported that for co-owners Karin Smith and her daughter, Whitney Gallegos, "the bond with books formed when they read together when Whitney was a child--going through such volumes as Kevin Henkes' picture books."

Their bookshop at 56 W 200 N., just around the corner from Spanish Fork's eclectic Main Street, is located inside a house built in 1930. "We redid all the flooring," Smith said. "We took out a wall and added a wall, lots of things to make it more functional."

The teal-painted walls, open windows, wooden floors and towering shelves "create a space that gives off a welcoming feel," the Tribune noted. 

"It's a very warm space and I don't feel like you get that in most regular stores," Smith said. The owners hope to open a cafe area, and use the backyard space for pop-up markets and author signings when the weather warms up.

Their inventory features books ranging across many genres because they want something for everyone. "There aren't very many independent bookstores that just have new books," Smith said, adding that while there are used bookstores in the vicinity, the closest retailer selling new books is a Barnes & Noble in Orem, 15 miles away.

The bookstore prominently displays titles featuring diverse stories, characters and topics. Smith observed that it is important to diversify reading for the kids, to make sure to teach them to love everybody: "That's the fun thing about bookstores and the vibe that they give off is that everybody's different and everybody can have an opinion and feel the way they want to feel and that's okay."

Books have been a topic of controversy In Utah County recently. The Tribune reported that "last summer, the Alpine School District pulled 52 books from library shelves--many of them dealing with LGBTQ+ characters and topics. Some of those books are now on the shelves at Poppy Books & Gifts."

Smith and Gallegos said the community's reaction to their selection has been positive, and the store has attracted customers from all over Utah. Gallegos added that they have received only one piece of "hate mail," a negative Google review complaining about the store's "woke propaganda" selection.

"We're in Utah, it's very conservative, and book bans are happening all over the place," Gallegos said. "It's really important for people to have access to those kinds of books and see why they're being banned."

Peter Osnos

Peter Osnos, author, journalist, publisher, is no stranger to creative approaches to book publishing. More than 15 years ago, while heading PublicAffairs, he led the Caravan Project, a prescient program with the motto "Good Books. Any Way You Want Them," under which a group of nonprofit publishers released books simultaneously in print, digital and downloadable audio formats.

Now as head of Platform Books, at a time when Barnes & Noble is cutting back--or ending--new title purchases by all but celebrity and previously bestselling authors, Osnos has another interesting idea. The question for him is "how to get more of what for this purpose let's call sober, serious, or niche nonfiction into bookstores and readers' hands."

His proposal applies to three Platform Books spring titles--a new hardcover and two paperbacks. All orders of five copies or more of the hardcover and three copies each of the two paperback reprints will get an extra 10 point discount. All purchases will be fully returnable; the books are available from Ingram's Two Rivers Distribution.

The hardcover is Osnos's own Would You Believe... The Helsinki Accords Changed the World?: Advancing Global Human Rights and, for Decades, Security in Europe ($25.95, 9781735996899), and the paperbacks are In That Time: Michael O'Donnell and the Tragic Era of Vietnam by Daniel H. Weiss ($16.95, 9781735996844) and an updated and revised edition of The Jewish American Paradox: Embracing Choice in a Changing World by Robert H. Mnookin ($16.95, 9781735996837).

"This is a test not a stunt," Osnos emphasized, adding, "Years ago, in the heyday of chains and mall stores, nonfiction books of my sort at Random House and then PublicAffairs tended to be bought, ultimately, as wallpaper with returns reaching unsustainable levels. Now the opposite has happened. Initials are reduced to numbers so low that the frustration is as great as the returns problem was. Smaller publishers with books of consequence but niche readership need help in the marketplace. Is this a viable idea? Yes, it will reduce the take for publishers, which is better than no take at all."

"As a society we've gotten stuck in binary thinking. You're either racist or you're not. You're sexist or you're not," said Michelle MiJung Kim, author of The Wake Up: Closing the Gap Between Good Intentions and Real Change (Hachette Go). "But we all fall in the messy middle."

At the Wi2023 Tuesday breakfast keynote, Hannah Oliver Depp, founder and co-owner of Loyalty Bookstores, Washington, D.C., told Kim, "For 10 years in bookselling, I've been asked to speak about diversity." She'd started saying no, but then she read The Wake Up. "This is the book that I've been wanting to talk about. This speaks to the work of community building," Depp said. "That is what booksellers do. The reason we get tired and broken is that we don't push past the surface."

Michelle MiJung Kim and Hannah Oliver Depp

Kim was born and raised in South Korea and moved to the U.S. when she was 13. "I still remember the first day of middle school. A white boy came up to me and waved a banana, 'Do you know what this is?' he said, 'It's a ba-na-na.' The sense of powerlessness I felt, of not knowing the words." Kim described herself as a voracious reader in South Korea, but when she got to the U.S., she didn't know the language and she stopped reading. "I never dreamed I'd write a book. This moment feels sacred to me."

In order to earn enough money to bring her mother to the U.S. from South Korea, Kim became a management consultant, her first exposure to DEI work. She felt a "cognitive dissonance." From there, she moved to tech, thinking it had to be better; "the cognitive dissonance continued," she said.

"With surface allyship," Kim said, "People ask for best practices before the why." They focus on the "what": What can I do? They want a checklist. "As someone who loves a checklist," Depp said, "that's not where it happens. The magic happens person to person. The internal work of grounding comes first." Kim agreed that if we could dismantle racism with a checklist, we'd have done so by now. Diversity of all kinds--age, gender, race, culture, means greater profitability and greater return on investment. But too often, Kim said, "We do the work because 'it's the right thing to do,' which presents us as saviors rather than looking at where we are all complicit in the problem. The why that's important is that all of our liberation is tied together."

Depp asked, "How do we get beyond the knowing? Interpersonally, we are good. Why isn't it spreading at the industry level?" Kim pointed to the HarperCollins union strike as an example of this challenging work. "That was not an easy fight," she said. "We have to ask ourselves, 'What are we willing to give up to make the change happen?' What is the industry ready to give up to make the change happen? It doesn't have to be all or nothing," she continued, "Is it money? Is it time? Is it social standing? Just be honest so it minimizes the effect on marginalized people and the cynicism that grows out of broken promises."

Depp acknowledged that the composition of the audience of booksellers looked very different from when she started in bookselling a decade ago. These are steps forward. Yet there's more work to do. " 'Hiring for diversity'--That's not the issue," Depp said. "What happens when that person clocks in on their first day? Everything we do has intentionality. If you want to systemically change something, you have to look at the system." Depp asked Kim what people need to do about "the tensions and contradictions that erupt when people say, 'We'll have the hard conversations'?" Kim said change must go from the personal to the interpersonal to the organizational to the systemic. "We see ourselves as good people, but good people do harm all the time. We need to be accountable. I want us to build the capacity to be in the messy middle."

At the end of 2020, Kim burned out and was in a deep depression. She came to realize that although she was doing the work for the movement, she had been seeing herself as expendable. "If this work is not about our joy, our wholeness, our freedom, then what is it for?" she asked. "I need everyone to commit to creating the right conditions so the same people are not making the sacrifice."

When Kim moved to the U.S., her desire to read vanished. She dreaded reading aloud. She didn't want to be embarrassed. "I had an intense desire to assimilate," Kim said. "I wanted to fit in." When she published this book, she reclaimed her Korean name, given to her by her grandfather. She didn't want the book to go into the world without her Korean name.

When Kim's participation in a Black Lives Matter protest turned violent, with police officers deploying tear gas into crowds that included seniors and children, Kim turned to her friend and lifelong activist Kalaya'an Mendoza with her anger and sadness. He told her, "I love you more than they hate us."

As we all navigate the "messy middle," Kim asked that we "strive for progress not perfection.... Here's to being more alive, together." --Jennifer M. Brown

Jack Macrae

John "Jack" Macrae III, "a dashing publisher who gambled on groundbreaking books and dauntlessly defended authors who defied injustices committed by their own governments," died February 1, the New York Times reported. He was 91. 

Macrae was president and publisher of E.P. Dutton from 1968 to 1981, representing the third generation of his family to run the company, the Times noted. His grandfather, John Macrae Sr., started working for Dutton as a 19-year-old clerk in the company's New York City store, rose through the ranks to become president when the company's founder, E.P. Dutton, died in 1923. Jack Macrae's father, John Jr., joined the company in 1921 as marketing director and retired as president in 1974, when Dutton was sold to Elsevier. 

After the publisher was sold a second time, Jack Macrae joined Henry Holt & Company, where he worked for 35 years as editor in chief and later had his own imprint. He retired in 2018. With his wife, gallerist Paula Cooper, he also owned 192 Books in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood. 

Among the noteworthy books Macrae published were Gail Sheehy's Passages; David Levering Lewis's Pulitzer Prize-winning W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919; the American edition of Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall; and titles by Edward Abbey and Jorge Luis Borges.

Macrae was chairman of the International Freedom to Publish Committee of the Association of American Publishers, and was among those who urged his fellow publishers to boycott the Moscow Book Fair in 1983 to protest the Soviet Union's treatment of dissidents. He also championed Salman Rushdie.

"Jack traveled to Cuba and Iran on human rights missions," said Jeri Laber, a founder of Human Rights Watch, adding that in addition to making "several trips on his own to Communist Poland," Macrae went to Communist Czechoslovakia to meet with dissident playwright Vaclav Havel.

"It was Jack who got me to go to San Francisco and meet Eric Hoffer, the longshoreman-philosopher whose book The True Believer had become a surprise bestseller," writer Calvin Tomkins said. "Jack published my biography of Hoffer in 1965. Not many people read it, but that didn't discourage Jack.... Publishing was not about making money, he thought. It was about ideas, and we both felt that Hoffer's True Believer was one of the important definitions of how totalitarian regimes take root."

"He was probably the last of the old-time, gentleman WASP publishers--born into the business. He had immense personal charm, and it was hard not to get swept up by him," said Charles McGrath, a former editor of the New York Times Book Review, adding that late in life, Macrae "found out he had multiple sclerosis, but didn't let that slow him down. He zipped around the office--and the city, for that matter--in a motorized wheelchair, as cheerful as ever."

BookPeople in Austin, Tex., hosted two-time Newbery Medalist Lois Lowry (r.) in conversation with three-time Newbery Honor-winner Christina Soontornvat for a conversation about Lowry's new book, The Windeby Puzzle: History and Story (Clarion).

Abalabix Books, Crystal Lake, Ill., posted on Instagram: "We have power, we have internet, the sun is out and George is looking for you! It's a beautiful day at the bookstore!"

"We're trying out a new thing," Birdie Books, Westerville, Ohio, noted on Instagram, introducing the shop's "Mystery Play Dates for the kiddos! Each package includes one book and one activity for a fun afternoon! Read the clues on the package and pick one that sounds fun to you and a kid you love, take home and enjoy!"

Today:
Good Morning America: Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt, author of Wake Up With Purpose!: What I've Learned in my First Hundred Years (Harper Select, $28.99, 9781400333516).

Today Show: Cyndie Spiegel, author of Microjoys: Finding Hope (Especially) When Life Is Not Okay (Penguin Life, $26, 9780593492222).

Tamron Hall: Brent Yates, author of The Gravity of Up: Unlocking Your Potential So No One Can Hold You Down (Forefront Books, $26, 9781637630075).

Tomorrow:
MSNBC's Morning Joe: Heather McGhee, author of The Sum of Us (Adapted for Young Readers) (Delacorte Press, $17.99, 9780593562628). She will also appear on Alex Wagner Tonight.

Good Morning America: Shefali Tsabary, author of The Parenting Map: Step-by-Step Solutions to Consciously Create the Ultimate Parent-Child Relationship (HarperOne, $29.99, 9780063267954).

Also on GMA: Nedra Tawwab, author of Drama Free: A Guide to Managing Unhealthy Family Relationships (TarcherPerigee, $28, 9780593539279).

Today Show: Brian Baumgartner, author of Seriously Good Chili Cookbook: 177 of the Best Recipes in the World (Fox Chapel Publishing, $24.99, 9781497102019).

Late Show with Stephen Colbert: Prince Harry, author of Spare (Random House, $36, 9780593593806).

Sweden's Jens Jonsson (Young Wallander, Blinded) will direct The Doctrine, a six-episode TV series adapted from the novel Eight Months by Magnus Montelius. Screen Daily reported that Erik Magnusson of Anagram Sweden is producing the project, which begins shooting in late March for a 2024 launch. The cast includes Anna Sise, Josefine Neldén and August Wittgenstein.

Jonsson said the series was a spy thriller about "how Russia could infiltrate Swedish politics." He added that he hopes it will feel "very contemporary, very tense and portraying things as realistically as possible. Not looking down at characters, but looking eye level perspective on cold war politics."

The Association of American Publishers has announced the Excellence winners of its annual PROSE Awards--recognizing best-in-class scholarly publications--as well as the R.R. Hawkins Award, the overall prize.

The winner of the Hawkins Award--and winner of the Excellence in Social Science Award--is Spiderweb Capitalism: How Global Elites Exploit Frontier Markets by Kimberly Kay Hoang (Princeton University Press)

The other three Excellence winners are:
Biological and Life Sciences: The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human by Siddhartha Mukherjee (Scribner)
Humanities: Necropolis: Disease, Power, and Capitalism in the Cotton Kingdom by Kathryn Olivarius (Harvard University Press)
Physical Sciences and Mathematics: Cosmology by Daniel Baumann (Cambridge University Press)

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Finalists have been named for the 2023 Audie Awards, sponsored by the Audio Publishers Association. Winners will be announced at the Audies Gala on March 28. See the finalists in 26 categories here.

LibraryReads, the nationwide library staff-picks list, offers the top 10 March titles public library staff across the country love:

Top Pick
Lone Women: A Novel by Victor LaValle (One World, $27, 9780525512080). "A homestead far from prying eyes offers Adelaide a fresh start in 1915 Montana. She makes a few female friends--after all, lone women need to stick together. But a secret that won't be contained or silenced soon threatens her new life. Horror mixed with resilient characters in complex relationships make this a must-read for fans of A Dangerous Business and When Women Were Dragons." --Kimberly McGee, Lake Travis Community Library, Austin, Tex.

All That Is Mine I Carry With Me: A Novel by William Landay (Bantam, $28.99, 9780345531841). "The Larkin siblings face years of sadness and questions after their mother disappears. Many speculate their father killed her, but he's always maintained his innocence. What is the truth? The story spans several decades and features multiple narrators, including the mother. The characters are deftly explored and are very raw and real. For readers of suspenseful fiction and family dramas." --Cyndi Larsen, Avon Free Public Library, Avon, Conn.

Clytemnestra: A Novel by Costanza Casati (‎Sourcebooks Landmark, $26.99, 9781728268231). "This triumphant retelling of Greek legend traces Clytemnestra's life through her childhood in warring Sparta to her marriage and the end of the Trojan War. Casati fully fleshes out the mythical queen's character--fierce and unyielding but also soft and mournful. For readers of Madeline Miller's historical fiction." --Magen Hill, Braswell Memorial Library, Rocky Mount, N.C.

The Gospel of Orla by Eoghan Walls (Seven Stories Press, $16.95, 9781644212820). "Orla manages the best she can with a little sister and an alcoholic dad, but she misses her mother, who died too soon. When she meets a man who seems to have the power of resurrection, she plans to bring him to her mother's grave, beginning a heartbreaking journey into adulthood and acceptance. Readers of this lyrical debut will wish spunky Orla all the best." --Katharine Phenix, Boulder Public Library, Boulder, Colo.

Hang the Moon: A Novel by Jeannette Walls (Scribner, $28, 9781501117299). "Walls' latest coming-of-age novel about love, loss, and the grey areas of the law is set in Prohibition-era small-town Virginia. This is a must-read for anyone who craves fiction that has unforgettable characters, a relatively quick pace for literary fiction, and a well-researched background. For fans of Sue Monk Kidd and Kaye Gibbons." --Jennifer Schultz, Fauquier Public Library, Warrenton, Va.

Hello Beautiful: A Novel by Ann Napolitano (The Dial Press, $28, 9780593243732). "A man's tragic past and the intersection of his relationship with the sisters of the Padavano family is at the heart of this story. Napolitano skillfully creates a believable narrative to show the effects of trauma, depression, and broken relationships on those around us. The novel has a hopeful message that is full of love." --Michelle Williams, Carlsbad City Library, Carlsbad, Calif.

A House With Good Bones by T. Kingfisher (Tor Nightfire, $26.99, 9781250829795). "Readers should eagerly await this phenomenal book. It's deliciously creepy with a shocking twist, but also has incredibly sweet family dynamics (not including the haunting grandmother), an excellent level of humor to balance the tension, and, as a former archaeologist, I can say it has one of the best fictional portrayals of an archaeologist that I've come across." --Matthew Galloway, Anythink Libraries, Thornton, Colo.

The London Séance Society: A Novel by Sarah Penner (Park Row, $30, 9780778387114). "Lenna Wickes came to Paris in 1873 to apprentice for Vaudeline D'Allaire, a renowned spiritualist. Vaudeline is called back to the London Seance Society. Lenna joins her to find out who murdered her sister Evie. Can they figure out what happened before they wind up dead too? Penner clearly researched the spiritualism movement of the Victorian era and spun a suspenseful tale." --Shari Suarez, GDL-Johnson Memorial, Genesee, Mich.

The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen by KJ Charles (Sourcebooks Casablanca, $16.99, 9781728255859). "This poignant romance is an absolute joy! The story incorporates Joss's identity as a biracial Black man but doesn't make it a hurdle that the romance has to surmount. Gareth's understanding of himself, and his honesty, was really refreshing to read in a Regency. And it has been far too long since there was a landed gentry/smuggler romance!" --Dontaná McPherson-Joseph, Oak Park Public Library, Oak Park, Ill.

Weyward: A Novel by Emilia Hart (St. Martin's Press, $27.99, 9781250280800). "Men are always trying to dominate the Weyward women, but they always fail, because the Weyward women can call birds to their aid. This matriarchal clan of witches is almost broken until Kate, who stars in the most recent of the three timelines. Practical Magic meets Margaret Atwood in an unflinching feminist fantasy that is boiling over with rage and loaded with empowerment." --Jill Minor, Washington County Library, Abingdon, Va.

In her hypnotic debut novel, Y/N, Esther Yi shrewdly manages both to expose and celebrate the effects of South Korean pop-culture domination, with brilliantly placed jabs at Korean transracial adoption, cosmetic surgery and the wellness industry. "Gangnam Style" was the first video to surpass a billion views on YouTube. The streaming series Squid Games and, more recently, Extraordinary Attorney Woo set all manner of international watching records. Time magazine named Blackpink 2022 Entertainer of the Year. BTS remains ubiquitous. Hallyu--the Korean wave--shows no signs of diminishing.

Yi's narrator, an unnamed Korean American woman in Berlin, can't ignore the staggering popularity of a Korean boy band comprised of "performers of supernatural charisma whose concerts could leave a fan permanently destabilized, unable to return to the spiritual attenuation of her daily life." She has, however, managed to remain detached, even derisive, of such brainwashing, until she accompanies her roommate to a concert. Her inexplicable obsession is immediate, attaching herself to bandmember Moon: "Each boy was named after a celestial body; it went without saying that none of them was named Earth." The quotidian falls away as she surrounds herself with fellow devotees. Beyond reality, writing fanfiction further feeds her frenzied devotion. She discovers the welcoming portal of "Y/N"--as in "your name": "Wherever Y/N appeared in the text, the reader could plug in their own name, thereby sharing events with the celebrity they had no chance of meeting in real life." This woman yearns to be the outlier: when Moon announces his sudden retirement, she flies to Seoul in search of her idol.

Yi is an inventive writer, eschewing labels, genres and, most certainly, expectations. Born of Korean heritage in Los Angeles, raised internationally and living in Leipzig, Germany, her wanderings seem to provide a wide perspective for observing the global phenomenon of fan-made "idols" to be worshipped by anyone anywhere--a strangely ironic equalizing of striated, divided humanity. Yi's protagonist here may be specific--an American of Korean ancestry living in Europe--but she quickly becomes one of the masses, gravitating toward her elusive god. Being any sort of obsessed fan (as in "Your/Name") is like a Yes/No decision, and Yi's mesmerizingly clever literary performance should garner plenty of yeses worldwide.  Consider pairing this with Rin Usami's Idol, Burning, Japan's bestselling novel in 2020. --Terry Hong, BookDragon

Shelf Talker: Esther Yi's strangely mesmerizing debut features a woman who initially dismisses K-pop idolatry, but then follows a sudden obsession from Berlin to Seoul, seeking an impossible connection.