We've heard a rumor from a very credible source that Amazon.com will announce today that it is purchasing Brilliance Audio, Grand Haven, Mich., the country's largest independent audiobook publisher, which puts out 12-15 new audiobooks a month.

Whether or not the rumor is true it's worth hearing a little about Brilliance, which would make a striking addition to Amazon. Founded in 1984 by president and publisher R. Michael Snodgrass, the company has specialized in unabridged recordings but now also offers abridged versions of some of its titles, all of which are available on CD, on MP3-CD or as downloads. Brilliance has state-of-the-art studios, where it records and produces its own audiobooks as well as those of other publishers.

--- 

Valerie Plame Wilson, the former CIA covert operations officer whose identity was disclosed by the Bush administration when her husband, Joseph Wilson, was critical of the war in Iraq, will join the Saturday Book & Author Lunch panel on June 2 at BEA. She replaces Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, who is unable to attend.

Wilson's memoir, Fair Game (S&S), appears in October.

Sadly we also hear that Paulo Coelho, whose new book is The Witch of Portobello, is cancelling his upcoming U.S. tour, which means he won't be at the Sunday Book & Author Breakfast. 

---

The New York Times has a sad account of the auction for the contents of the defunct Gotham Book Mart, all of which wound up going to the landlord. His $400,000 bid was not matched by the total of the individual bids at the auction; he plans to sell the building.

--- 

"In 2006, librarians bought up 30 million in graphic novels for their patrons," John Shabelski told Bargain Book News. The graphic novels coordinator for Brodart was asked if the genre is misunderstood in the bargain book industry. "The challenge is in the perception," he said. "As kids we all used to read comics and so it's been a long time since we considered them anything else. I would challenge any storeowners to pick up Pride of Baghdad or Mom's Cancer and not find themselves drawn into an amazing storytelling format. I also see graphic novels as a brilliant opportunity for any bookseller to draw new customers into their stores. The big boxes don't understand these books the way librarians do. Until they figure it out, it's a golden opportunity for the independent bookstore to gain market share."

He also discussed a program he created called Kid Safe Graphic Novels. "It was in response to the need for many librarians to buy graphic novels that didn't have sex, foul language or intense violence," he said. "The demand is huge and the amount of titles out there is growing exponentially, so the librarians needed a baseline to start from and it had to be something they could trust. There are many great books out there but some are seriously adult content and need to be shelved appropriately."

---

Brett Brezniak, owner of the Little Old Bookshop, has relocated to a new, three-story building in Whittier, Calif. The Whittier Daily News reported that "since Bookland and Supercrown went out of business seven years ago, city leaders have been seeking a new bookstore. In 2001, former councilman Allan Zolnekoff led a petition drive, collecting "more than 2,000 signatures." The petitions were presented to Barnes & Noble and Borders, but "officials from both chains turned them down."

Brezniak said he is "looking to provide everything that Bookland had--a good, independent bookstore that has all of the new books and magazines, that's also modern."

---

First, you must learn to distinguish between secondhand (bukinisticheskiye) and antique (antikvarniye) books. In an entertaining report on secondhand booksellers, the Moscow Times introduced readers to characters like "Leonid Titov, the dog-eared, middle-aged manager of the secondhand section at Bookberry's Nikitsky Bulvar store." Titov recommended--as, of course, we'd want him to--that we "should begin with the classics. Get yourself the collected works of Pushkin, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky or Chekhov."

---

Both the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News paid tribute to Jennifer Bates, the owner of Germ Books & Gallery, who died last week after a 20-month battle with leukemia. In the Inquirer, Jeff Gamage wrote that Bates "sold only what she would like to read." When he first met her, "she was standing in the center of her just-opened bookstore in Fishtown, regarding me with an expression that landed somewhere between indifference and disdain. . . . She didn't care if I wrote about her store. She didn't care if I chose not to write about her store. In fact, she didn't care if I sprouted wings and flew away into the trees. It was completely refreshing."

 

 

Net book sales last year dropped 0.3% to $24.2 billion from $24.26 billion in 2005, according to the Association of American Publishers. The estimates are based on sales reports from 81 publishers and data from the Bureau of the Census. For religious books and e-books, data includes sales information from the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association and the International Digital Publishing Forum, respectively.

Sales of adult and children's trade books rose 2.9% to $8.3 billion. In this category, sales of adult paperbacks rose 8.5% to $2.3 billion and sales of adult hardcover grew 4.1% to $2.6 billion while sales of children's/YA hardcovers fell 2% to $2.1 billion and sales of children's/YA paperbacks slipped 0.6% to $1.3 billion.

In other areas, sales of mass market paperbacks rose 4.6% to $1.1 billion; religious book sales dropped 10.2% to $744.7 million; professional sales were up 2.3% to $3.4 billion; el-hi sales dropped 5.8% to $6.2 billion; and higher ed sales were up 2.8% to $3.5 billion.

In addition, e-book sales rose 24.1% to $54 million and audiobooks sales fell 11.7% to $182 million.

BookExpo America is in New York City! From now until BEA Frommer's and Shelf Awareness are offering tips on how to make the most of the long weekend in the Big Apple. Today the folks at Frommer's NYC Day-by-Day describe two attractions that make for a lovely afternoon in Brooklyn and are close to the Hotel ABA.

The attractions in and around Prospect Park are well worth the 25-minute subway ride from midtown. Expect gorgeous parkland, the city's second largest art museum and lovely 19th-century brownstones.  

Brooklyn Museum of Art

In any other city, this spectacular museum would be a star attraction, but in New York it's often overlooked because of its location outside Manhattan. The collection in New York's second-largest museum is well worth a trip, however. Highlights include the Ancient Egyptian collection, the Asian art collection (which specializes in both classic and contemporary works from Japan) and the Luce Center for American Art (an "open storage" annex holding 9,000 works, from Tiffany lamps to 19th-century furniture by local artisans). Designed by McKim, Mead & White in 1897, the museum received a new front entrance and a dramatic plaza complete with fountains in 2004. (200 Eastern Pkwy. at Washington Ave., 718-638-5000, $8 adults, $4 seniors and students, free for children under 12. Wed.-Fri., 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; Sat.-Sun., 11 a.m.-5:45 p.m.)

Brooklyn Botanic Garden

This tranquil, elegant retreat is next to the Brooklyn Museum of Art. It encompasses the Cranford Rose Garden, a Children's Garden, the Osborne Garden (three acres of formal gardens), the Fragrance Garden (designed for the visually impaired but appreciated by all) and the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden. In colder weather, you can investigate one of the world's largest collections of bonsai in the C. V. Starr Bonsai Museum and indoor plants (everything from cacti to orchids) in the Steinhardt Conservatory. If you come in April or May, seek out the lush carpet of bluebells and check the website for the timing of the Cherry Blossom Festival. (1000 Washington Ave. at Eastern Pkwy. 718-623-7200. $5 adults, $3 seniors and students, free for children under 16. Tues.-Fri., 8 a.m.-6 p.m., Sat.-Sun., 10 a.m.-6 p.m.)

For a Brooklyn Bite

The ground-floor Museum Café at the Brooklyn Museum of Art is a good place to refuel before you continue, but if it's nice out, wait until you get to the Botanic Garden and eat at the casual and moderately priced outdoor garden café.

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

As we get closer to BEA, Shelf Awareness is running a series of announcements, tips, party mentions, interesting panels and more that have struck us as useful and fun.

---

Sponsored by the ABA and PublicAffairs to celebrate PublicAffairs's 10th anniversary, Social Entrepreneurs: Changing the World will be held 3-4:30 on Saturday, June 2, in Room 1C02 and feature a panel of PublicAffairs authors. They consist of Teresa Heinz Kerry, co-author of This Moment on Earth; Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach for America and author of One Day, All Children . . . ; George Soros, head of Soros Fund Management and author of The Age of Fallibility; and James Wolfensohn, former president of the World Bank and author of A Global Life. Brian Lamb, founder and chairman of C-Span, moderates.

---

The National Association of College Stores is offering programming as part of the ABA's Day of Education on Thursday, May 31, at the Hotel ABA in Brooklyn. The schedule begins at 11:45 a.m. with a literary luncheon featuring Elizabeth Gilbert, whose latest book is Eat, Pray, Love, and Charles London, author of One Day the Soldiers Came, to be published in October.

Afternoon panels run from 1:30-5:15 and include College Store, Digital Content and Innovation, at which Mark Nelson, NACS's digital content strategist will speak; and Winning Solutions . . . Big and Small!, a two-part panel that will touch on a range of issues, including general book store management, sales and marketing, at which Jon Bibo, v-p, sales and marketing, of NACSCORP, and a panel of booksellers will speak.

To RSVP (particularly for lunch!), contact NACS's Cindy Thompson at cthompson@nacs.org.

--- 

Mark Rifkin, whose day job is managing editor of hardcovers at HarperCollins children's books, is also the managing director of This Week in New York, which, every two weeks features walking tours, pairing museums with restaurants, outdoor art and other "cool elements of New York City." The site includes listings of events, including book signings, and at least one book review.

Rifkin also writes for TimesSquare.com, for which he is putting together a column about key book discoveries at New York Comic Con and what to look for at BEA.

This morning's Book Report, the weekly AM radio book-related show organized by Windows a bookshop, Monroe, La., has the theme "book group books" and features two author interviews and a discussion of Book Group Expo, which will be held in San Jose, Calif., June 9 and 10:

• Susanne Pari, a Book Group Expo organizer and author of The Fortune Catcher (Edgework Books, $16.95, 9781931223089/1931223084)
• Debra Dean, author of The Madonnas of Leningrad (Harper Perennial, $13.95, 9780060825317/0060825316)

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.

---

Today on the Martha Stewart Show: chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten, author of Jean-Georges: Cooking At Home with a Four-Star Chef (Broadway, $40, 9780767901550/076790155X).

---

Today the Diane Rehm Show talks with Walter Isaacson, author of Einstein: His Life and Universe (S&S, $32, 9780743264730/0743264738).

---

Tonight on the Colbert Report: Bob Deans, a national correspondent for Cox Newspapers, talks about his book about Virginia's James River, The River Where America Began: A Journey Along the James (Rowman & Littlefield, $24.95, 9780742551725/0742551725).

 

On December 31, 2006, Deb Andolino and Gary McCammon closed the doors of Aliens & Alibis Books. While her faith in bookselling remains strong as she works to build an online business, Andolino is frank about why faith alone wasn't enough.

She says the strengths of her bricks-and-mortar operation included appearance, great handselling and a carefully selected inventory. She tried to stock "as many titles as we could from the smaller presses and highlight some of the midlist authors from the major presses. Our customers liked our ability to recommend new authors based on what the customer had read before. The store looked good. We used oak bookcases and had a couple of comfortable recliners. We tried not to use the bottom shelf of the bookcases so customers didn't have to sit on the floor to see what books we had there."

She admits, however, that lack of business acumen proved to be a major liability: "We should have gone to some classes to learn more about inventories, budgets, etc. Unfortunately, a love of books is not enough; you also have to have a solid grounding in finance. I wish I knew then what I know now, which is the cry of any failed business person."

Andolino regrets "not listening to my 'inner voice.' That little voice kept telling me we were in trouble, but I ignored it for a long time. I told myself that we were so good we couldn't fail. And arrogance was a factor because we were the only store of its kind in the Southeast. I listen in my mind to some of the things I said and shudder."

She advises anyone planning to open a bookstore to "get the best grounding you can in business and finance if you don't have it already. Plan to have at least three times what you currently have in savings to tide you over the rough times."

Despite her rocky ride, Andolino's optimism for the bookselling life is undiminished: "If you can, go ahead and do it. So many people say, 'I've always wanted to open a bookstore but . . . .' Gary and I can say, 'When we opened our bookstore . . .' and remember all the people we met--customers and authors. The Independent Mystery Booksellers Association (IMBA) is especially supportive, as are the science fiction booksellers."

Andolino hopes that over time she can establish a strong bookseller's presence online: "We haven't had a large number of buyers yet, but the ones who do buy are either getting the collectibles or new books. I think the new book buyers are not close to an independent mystery or science fiction dealer. There aren't a lot of us out there either as regular stores or Internet stores."

To attract that targeted readership, "Web Maven" Kim Malo says she designed the Aliens & Alibis website so that "maximum accessibility" takes precedence "over pretty but often annoying bells and whistles. I'm not a big fan of a lot of Flash, JavaScript, etc. Too many of those sites look like a web designer trying to justify their fee rather than something to benefit the person browsing the site. I have a high speed connection and I still sit there tapping my fingers as some sites' dozens of images load, having to wait too long just so I can navigate their site . . . or, as is often the case, not waiting."

Malo's design goal for Aliens & Alibis was to create a site that was "clean and accessible, not requiring too many clicks to find things. I've added a bunch of appropriate terms in the metaheaders to get the site picked up on searches. Listing the books on the pages where they are crawlable--particularly rare collectibles--is a way of getting people to the site through their searches for books and authors."

Andolino believes that her bookstore can have a successful future online. "I would like for Aliens & Alibis to become known for good quality, collectible books," she says. "I also would like our newsletter to be considered a good source for new and midlist authors to talk about their books. They need all the publicity that they can get. Beyond that, we are just taking things as they come. Who knows what technology will show up in the next few years that might change our direction? I've learned it's not wise to set anything in stone."--Robert Gray (column archives available at Fresh Eyes Now)