Once again, BookExpo America, which ended yesterday in New York City, was a lovely mix of old home week, prospecting for book gems, a cauldron of news, party central, the chance to meet new people and a kind of survival challenge. The show was more bustling than ever, with too many intriguing programs and speakers to be able to attend all of them. As always, we felt enriched by all the people we met, stories we heard and new titles we encountered, but at the end of the show, we still felt there were another several thousand people and booths to visit . . .

Congratulations to BEA and the ABA for putting an excellent show and excellent educational program, respectively. And many thanks to Shelf Awareness staff, columnists and others who are contributing pieces that will appear throughout the week.

Michael Powell, owner of the amazing Powell's Books, Portland, Ore., has joined the board of directors of Graphic Arts Center Publishing Co., Portland, where he will serve as the outside director. He joins select company: the rest of the board consists of Graphic Arts Center president Michael Hopkins and Ingram Book Group president Jim Chandler.

Graphic Arts's imprints are Graphic Arts Books, Alaska Northwest Books and WestWinds Press. It also includes Haagen Printing and the book bindery Lincoln & Allen. Ingram, which has a minority stake in Graphic Arts, distributes the company, which emerged from bankruptcy earlier this year.

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In October, Borders will open a 23,243-sq.-ft. store at the Village of Merrick Park at Bird Road and South Dixie Highway in Coral Gables, Fla.  

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Tavia Kowalchuk has been promoted to marketing director for William Morrow, HarperEntertainment, Eos and Cookbooks. She was formerly associate marketing director at Morrow. She joined HarperCollins in 1998 in sales.

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Lissa Warren, v-p and senior director of publicity at Da Capo Press and Da Capo Lifelong Books, has begun blogging about publishing for the Huffington Post. Her first entry, called "The Decline and Fall of the Book Review Section . . . and What It Means to Publishers," is up, as it were.

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Holtzbrinck Publishers, which includes Holt, FSG, St. Martin's and more, has signed with Ingram Digital Group and Ingram Book Group for management of its digital content and delivery of digital and physical distribution services.

In a statement, Fritz Foy, senior v-p, strategic technology of Holtzbrinck, said, "This new alliance in North America complements our ambitious global digital initiatives which include internal digital content creation and Macmillan's BookStore, our internal digital content storage and delivery initiative."

Ingram Digital Group will manage Holtzbrinck's text, audio and promotional digital material; allow the search and discovery of Holtzbrinck published content; enable its e-book downloads in VitalSource, Adobe Reader, e-Reader and MS Reader; and power digital audiobook downloads through iofy corporation technology. Bedford, Freeman & Worth Group, Holtzbrinck's educational group of companies, has worked with VitalSource since 2004, and many of its textbooks are already available as VitalSource e-books. Holtzbrinck will also use Lightning Source POD services.
 

Perseus Books Group has filled in the last major piece involving its acquisition of most PGW publishers: international sales.

A new group that combines international staff from PGW and the Perseus Books Group will be responsible for worldwide sales through all channels outside North America for PGW client publishers and Perseus Books Group imprints, including Avalon Travel, Basic Books, Da Capo Press, PublicAffairs, Running Press, Vanguard Press and Westview Press.

Eventually the service will be available to "all interested independent publishers, including Consortium and Perseus Distribution clients."

Chitra Bopardikar, v-p, international sales, who had previously led PGW's international division, will head Perseus's international efforts. Suk Lee and Edward Benitez, both sales directors at PGW, have joined the international group.

Since January 2006, Perseus Books Group imprints have been represented abroad by Penguin Group International. Penguin will continue to represent Basic Books, Da Capo Press, PublicAffairs and Running Press through the end of this year.

Moira McCann, director of sales and marketing in the U.K. and Europe for the Perseus Books Group, will expand that London operation to include client publisher representation.

With his usual humor and grace, ABA president Russ Lawrence of Chapter One Book Store, Hamilton, Mont., opened the Celebration of Bookselling Thursday evening by saying that the awards being presented there might not have the same zip as the Oscars or National Book Awards "but what we do changes lives." Bookselling, he continued, "is a life-changing career, a life-changing service."

In a similar vein, Mitchell Kaplan, owner of Books & Books, Coral Gables, Fla., which won the Lucile Micheels Pannell award for a general bookstore selling children's books, said, "Our highest calling is to develop the next generation of readers. We're developing the next generation of booksellers as well."

A humbled and emotional Gayle Shanks, co-owner with her husband Bob Sommer and Susie Brazil of Changing Hands bookstore, Tempe, Ariz., winner of PW's bookseller of the year award, thanked "all those who so generously taught me this business." She also acknowledged Cindy Dach and Brandon Stout, "a new generation. I'm so proud to call them, and all of you, my colleagues."

Kate McCune of HarperCollins, winner of PW's rep of the year award, said she had a "passion for books and systems and efficiency" and added, "I walked into bookstore for a part-time job and never looked back."

Book Sense Book of the Year children's winner Markus Zusak, author of The Book Thief (Knopf), thanked booksellers for selling his title, "a children's book set in the Holocaust, narrated by death, and 500 pages long," and thanked them for "loving books and actually reading them." He said he didn't take it for granted that he went "from a suburb in Sydney to New York City and a publisher named Chip."

Nora Ephron, wearing a low cut black top revealing a rather elegant neck, won the nonfiction award for I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman (Knopf). She recalled her early bookstore experiences after her family moved from New York to Beverly Hills when she was four years old. The family shopped regularly at Martindale's Bookstore--"all New Yorkers living in Beverly Hills went there." As a teenager, Ephron had her first job at Martindale's, where she was paid 75 cents an hour. She and the store parted ways, she said, when, after two years, she couldn't get a 10-cent-an-hour raise.

Ephron thanked the booksellers for their help since her book appeared: "It's been 42 weeks of pleasure. Next winter I'll be able to buy many many more turtlenecks."

Craig Hatkoff and his daughter Isabella won the Book Sense children's illustrated award for Owen & Mzee: The True Story of a Remarkable Friendship (Scholastic). Craig Hatkoff told the group that he had been at "award shows with more famous people but not more important people." Isabella added that she was really excited and happy about the award.

A deeply touched Sara Gruen, who won the adult fiction award for Water for Elephants (Algonquin), exclaimed, "What a difference a year makes." She remembered meeting booksellers at the first Winter Institute in Long Beach, Calif., in January 2006, and having her book named a Book Sense Pick, which was followed by the "the holy-mother-of-god tour" to 35 bookstores. "I am incredibly grateful to the ABA and independent booksellers and Algonquin," she continued. "I really do get what you all did for me. Elephants never forget and neither will I."--Susan L. Weis 

 

In today's New York Times, Motoko Rich emphasizes what she calls "the battering ram of technology" at the show, in other words, the effect of digital progress on the printed book. For a time, she conjures up a scary world of books appearing for free on the Internet but allows that there may yet be a role for traditional publishers and booksellers. Northshire Bookstore, Manchester Center, Vt., for example, will install one of Jason Epstein's Espresso Book Machines. General manager Chris Morrow commented: "There are lots of challenges in bricks-and-mortar bookselling, and I see this as a way of expanding our business."

The Times piece is perhaps most notable for its accompanying photograph, apparently intended to illustrate the "great divide." Unidentified and standing with his back to the Google booth and reading what looks like a good, old-fashioned book is John F. Baker, former editor-in-chief and editorial director of Publishers Weekly, now a literary agent at Barbara Braun Associates. We don't know his opinion of digital text, but we do know from personal observation that in past years at least, Baker had an amazing ability to read ARCs and make notes in them while walking on city sidewalks to and from work, a skill that could be seen as a forerunner to text messaging while walking. What's more cutting edge than that?

In his BEA coverage today, Bob Thomson of the Washington Post explores a decidedly dated question: if many booksellers at the show aren't placing orders, what are they doing? Trailing Alexis Akre, head book buyer at Olsson's Books and Records, which has six stores in and around the capital, he finds that the show is "all about face-to-face contact, about sharing ideas and forging connections that will help you later on. These connections, one editor in attendance explained, tend to be made and maintained through serendipity, 'and if the serendipity doesn't happen for you, BEA is a waste of time.' "

In the New York Sun, Otto Penzler, bookseller, publisher and author, offers a personal account of the show, which he has been attending for 30 years. The Javits Center, he writes, "was temporarily transformed into a veritable cathedral, filled with worshipers and supplicants to the god of the printed word."

Just back from a trip abroad, Ann Christophersen didn't come to New York, but the co-owner of Women & Children First, Chicago, and former president of the ABA made a splash in the Big Apple anyway: Booklog said that she has joined the computer inventory control system company as coordinator of customer services and in-house bookseller advisor for new program features and enhancements. Booklog said that Christophersen's "wealth of experience and expertise has proven invaluable to the organization thus far and Booklog welcomes her services."

Christophersen remains co-owner of Women & Children First, but will work there only part-time. She will be at Booklog four days a week; its headquarters are only a block and a half from the bookstore, so in geographical terms at least, the move is not far.

The store recently overcame severe financial problems with the help of customers and MyPage (Shelf Awareness, May 23, 2007). Christophersen's new job also helps. As she put it in Booklog's newsletter, booklog news, "After much thought, my business partner, Linda [Bubon], and I decided that our 27-year-old store could manage just fine without the daily presence of both full-time owners. The savings could help return the store to more solid economic footing. . . . It would provide me the freedom to focus on big-picture and longer-range issues while Linda oversees the daily operations. Although I really miss being in the store as much as I used to be, I'm enjoying my new combination work life."

Christophersen has already been teaching online training classes and written a supplement to the user's manual.--John Mutter

 

The banter between Andrea Mitchell and Alan Greenspan at Friday’s keynote event was as entertaining as the details he revealed about his memoir, The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World, to be published in September by Penguin Press. "This is the first time I've had the privilege of interviewing my husband," Mitchell, chief foreign affairs correspondent for NBC News, said. "You can imagine how eagerly I've been waiting for the opportunity."

Former Federal Reserve Bank chairman Greenspan talked about topics ranging from the presidents he's advised to the future of the U.S. and world economies, his musical ability (he plays the saxophone) to his writing habits (he drafted much of the book longhand while lounging in the bathtub). He was humorous and candid--and promised to be in The Age of Turbulence.--Shannon McKenna

 

Ecco publisher Daniel Halpern kicked off the Editors' Buzz Forum on Friday by talking about a title he called "certain to avoid any bestseller list" but noteworthy nonetheless: Time and Materials: Poems 1997-2005 (October), the first book of poetry in a decade from former U.S. poet laureate Robert Hass.

Riverhead Books publisher Geoffrey Kloske touted a memoir by Shalom Auslander. "He was one of the funniest and angriest people I'd ever met," said Kloske about first making the scribe's acquaintance 12 years ago. Foreskin's Lament (October) is Auslander's story of growing up in an Orthodox Jewish family in upstate New York. Despite some opposition, Kloske noted, the title will not be changing.

Mira Books executive editor Margaret Marbury's primary message to booksellers about M.J. Rose's forthcoming thriller, The Reincarnationist (September), is that it will appeal to a broad audience, including historical fiction fans, suspense readers and those with an interest in Eastern and Western religions. Rose's ninth novel has received a slew of advance praise, including a nod from Shelf Awareness's Marilyn Dahl, who deemed it "exhilarating."

After declaring historical fiction "a genre made in heaven," Ballantine's Susanna Porter talked up Loving Frank by Nancy Horan (August). The novel is told from the perspective of Mamah Cheney, an Illinois woman who caused a controversy in 1909 by leaving her husband and two young children to live in Europe with architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

There was extra pressure on Simon & Schuster executive editor Mary Sue Rucci: A.J. Jacobs, whose book she was buzzing, was in the audience. Jacobs' tome The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible (October) is "as hilarious, as compelling, as ingenious" as his previous book, The Know-It-All, said Rucci, "but more saleable" because the market "is all of us." Quoting the author, she added, "Thou shalt not be able to put it down."

Grove Atlantic's Elisabeth Schmitz rounded out the buzz forum with two nonfiction titles. The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed the Bishop? by Francisco Goldman (October) delves into the chilling circumstances surrounding the murder of Bishop Juan Gerardi, Guatemala's leading human rights activist. In Sick Girl (October), Amy Silverstein recounts her life during the 17 years since having a heart transplant at age 24 and being told she had only a decade to live.--Shannon McKenna

This morning on the Today Show, relationship expert and bad boy Steve Santagati offers insight from The Manual: A True Bad Boy Explains How Men Think, Date, and Mate--and What Women Can Do to Come Out on Top (Crown, $21.95, 9780307345691/0307345696).

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Today on the Martha Stewart Show: Amy Sedaris, author of I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence (Warner, $24.99, 9780446578844/0446578843).

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Back again on the Rachael Ray Show: Desperate Housewives' Felicity Huffman, co-author with Patricia Wolff of A Practical Handbook for the Boyfriend: For Every Guy Who Wants to Be One/For Every Girl Who Wants to Build One (Hyperion, $22.95, 9781401302917/1401302912).

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Today the Oprah Winfrey Show re-airs the episode "Great Women and Their Anti-Aging Secrets" featuring Nora Ephron, author of I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman (Knopf, $19.95, 9780307264558). Also on the show is Susan Love, who offers advice from Dr. Susan Love's Menopause and Hormone Book: Making Informed Choices (Three Rivers Press, $16.95, 9780609809969/0609809962), and Gail Sheehy, author of Sex and the Seasoned Woman: Pursuing the Passionate Life (Ballantine, $15.95, 9780812972740/0812972740). This is the second time this is re-airing.

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Today on WAMU's Diane Rehm Show: John Hemingway, grandson of Ernest and author of Strange Tribe: A Family Memoir (Lyons Press, $24.95, 9781599211121/1599211122).

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Tonight on the Charlie Rose Show: Carl Bernstein, whose new biography, A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton (Knopf, $27.95, 978-0375407666/0375407669), has its official on-sale date tomorrow.

From last week's Book Sense bestseller lists, available at BookSense.com, here are the recommended titles, which are also Book Sense Picks:

Hardcover

The Shadow Catcher by Marianne Wiggins (S&S, $25, 9780743265201/0743265203). "Marianne Wiggins' latest novel is a fictionalized account of photographer Edward S. Curtis, full of both beautiful and lyrical writing about love and loss and art and wonderful accounts of the road trips of the character 'Marianne Wiggins,' accounts which complete the story in a unique and impassioned manner. A literary delight."--Kathleen Dixon, Islandtime Books & More, Washington Island, Wis.

Land of Lincoln: Adventures in Abe's America by Andrew Ferguson (Atlantic, $24, 9780871139672/0871139677). "With grace, insight, and great good humor, Ferguson travels the blue highways to discover the stories behind our fascination with the 16th president. During the course of the journey, readers come to know a Lincoln who was an icon, an enigma, an intimate, and an enemy. And it is a journey well worth taking, honest!"--Joe Drabyak, Chester County Book & Music Company, West Chester, Pa.

Paperback

Miss American Pie: A Diary of Love, Secrets and Growing Up in the 1970s by Margaret Sartor (Bloomsbury, $11.95, 9781596912014/1596912014) "This wonderful memoir is a coming-of-age tale set in 1970s Louisiana. Sartor draws on her diaries and letters to tell her own story--and in many ways, she has told the story of us all."--Elisabeth Grant-Gibson, Windows a bookshop, Monroe, La.

For Ages 9 to 12

The White Giraffe by Lauren St. John (Dial, $16.99, 9780803732117/0803732112). "After 11-year-old Martine's parents die in a fire, she leaves England to live on a game preserve in South Africa--with the grandmother she never knew she had. The kindness of Zulu gamekeeper Tendai, the amazing wildlife, and the mystery of the legendary white giraffe sustain Martine. An exciting, exotic, and magical story."--Tegan Tigani, Queen Anne Books, Seattle, Wash.

[Many thanks to Book Sense and the ABA!]