In the Chicago Daily Herald, Kim Brown, v-p of merchandising for Barnes & Noble, and Kris Nugent, manager of Anderson's Bookshop in Naperville, Ill., discuss how to keep Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows "under wraps" until the magic retail hour on July 21.

"We take security very seriously," said B&N's Brown. "The books have to stay in boxes in the back room. They can't be opened. Employees can't be carrying the book around or handling them in any way. There is more attention paid to this than with anything else we carry."

According to Anderson's Nugent, "The books stay packed up here, and we have a warehouse location too. It's funny, people start asking about the book whenever they see boxes being unloaded outside the store. 'Can I just see it?' And we tell them no. But everyone is pretty good about it. They're willing to wait for the release date."

Nugent and Brown expressed doubts that we'll ever see the likes of the Harry Potter phenomenon again.

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Congratulations to Willow Bridge Books, Oakhurst, Calif., which is celebrating its first anniversary with a weekend open house beginning on Friday with a 5 p.m. Chamber mixer. A Friday evening party includes a bar, hors d'oeuvres, raffles and more. On Saturday and Sunday the store offers music, raffles and refreshments. There is also a coloring contest for children.

Willow Bridge Books has regular Friday author events, a Saturday lecture series, a weekly storytime, frequent-reader cards, in-store art exhibitions that change regularly, a "school bucks" program and more. The store has participated in such community events as the Southern Yosemite Film Festival and the Sierra Mountain Quilters Association's quilt show.

Willow Bridge Books, which offers new books, gifts, educational toys and cards, is located at 40015 Highway 49, Raley's Center, Oakhurst, Calif. 93644; 559-692-2665; willowbridgebooks.com.

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Politics and Prose, Washington, D.C., is expanding its partnership with C-Span2's Book TV. For one, the bookstore and npr.org are offering Book Tour, a weekly web feature and podcast that will present events filmed at the store that feature authors reading from and discussing current works. At npr.org/booktour or politics-prose.com, customers may either listen or download Book Tour. The first authors in the series are Jonathan Lethem and Kiran Desai.

In a similar vein, Fora.tv, the "Internet relative" of BookTV, is offering book talks, some taped at Politics and Prose, some at other bookstores around the country.

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The Southern California Independent Booksellers Association is holding another bookstore tourism trip, on Saturday, August 18. The Los Angeles to San Diego "I Feel the Need to Read" tour will visit Mysterious Galaxy, San Diego; Yellow Book Road, La Mesa; Bay Books, Coronado; Warwick's, La Jolla; Book Works, Del Mar; and the San Diego Museum of Art in Balboa Park.

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High gasoline prices and a weak housing market have led consumers to worry about the job market. As a result, the Conference Board's consumer confidence index slipped almost five points to 103.9, its lowest level since August 2006, the AP reported.

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The Paperback Exchange, which stocks some new titles and 25,000-30,000 used books, is having its grand opening today, which will include a ribbon cutting at 4:30 p.m. with members of the Chamber of Commerce and town selectmen. The 1,500-sq.-ft. store has an emphasis on mysteries as well as romance and sci-fi. Bought last year by Diane and Frank Krol and their son Michael, Paperback Exchange is located at 481 Boston Road, Billerica, Mass. 01821; 978-262-9999.

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Local used book dealers are welcoming the move of Antiquarium from Omaha to Brownville, Neb. "The more bookstores, the better for me, I think," Carl Ashford, co-owner of Jackson Street Booksellers, told the Omaha World-Herald.

Susan Siegel of the Book Hunter Press, a publisher of regional bookstore guidebooks, said used bookstores have an advantage over shops that sell new books: the diversity of their inventory can be a draw rather than a handicap. "The more there are, the better it is, because more book people coming through an area will say, 'Gee, it pays to stop,'" said Siegel.

Regarding the lure of online bookselling, Ashford added, "A lot of people have closed their doors in this business and done the Internet. I really enjoy meeting people and talking to them about books or whatever. . . . Theoretically we'd do better if we closed our door and just put everything online. And we'd spend our days answering e-mails and shipping books. . . . That's not how I want to spend my life."

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Effective July 5, Genia Patestides has joined Red Wheel/Weiser as sales director. She was formerly national accounts manager at Quayside Publishing and before that worked at Adams Media. She will be responsible for expanding both trade and non-trade accounts at Red Wheel/Weiser. 

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USA Today's Web Watch noted that excerpts from recent graphic novels are now being posted at New York magazine's Comics Page.

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Dutch retailer Bruna, which markets books, magazines, office supplies, newspapers, greeting cards and multimedia products, plans to "open a retail chain of a few hundred stores in the fast growing virtual world of Second Life."

"We are constantly innovating the concept of our 375 Dutch stores," said Bruna CEO Hans Gelauff. "Second Life is a new virtual world and we expect to find our customers there as well!"

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To POD or not to POD. O'Reilly Radar replayed a brief exchange between Idea Logical's Mike Shatzkin and Jim Lichtenberg of Lightspeed Publishing regarding the recent news that the New York Public Library has installed an Espresso Book Machine POD unit.

 

This morning the Today Show hears from Pepper Schwartz, author of Prime: Adventures and Advice on Sex, Love, and the Sensual Years (Collins, $24.95, 9780061173585/0061173584).

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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 "Summer Potpourri" and features interviews with:

• Karen Essex, author of Leonardo's Swans (Broadway, $12.95, 9780767923064/0767923065)
• Sandy Tolan, author of The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East (Bloomsbury, $14.95, 9781596913431/1596913436)

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 the View re-airs an episode featuring Jane Seymour, actress and author of Making Yourself at Home: Finding Your Creativity and Putting It All Together (DK, $40, 9780756628925/075662892X).

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Today WAMU's Diane Rehm Show welcomes Jon Katz, author of Dog Days: Dispatches from Bedlam Farm (Villard, $23.95, 9781400064045/140006404X).

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Today on the 700 Club's "Skinny Wednesday" segment: Jennifer Chandler, author of Simply Salads: More than 100 Delicious Creative Recipes Made from Prepackaged Greens and a Few Easy-to-Find Ingredients (Thomas Nelson, $24.99, 9781401603205/1401603203).

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Today on NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross: Jeff Gammage, author of China Ghosts: My Daughter's Journey to America, My Passage to Fatherhood (Morrow, $25.95, 9780061240294/006124029X).

Also on Fresh Air: Asra Nomani, author of Standing Alone: An American Woman's Struggle for the Soul of Islam (HarperSanFrancisco, $14.95, 9780060832971/0060832975), talks about feminist activism in the Islamic world.

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Today on NPR's All Things Considered: Connie Schultz, a Cleveland Plain-Dealer columnist, wife of Senator Sherrod Brown and author of . . . And His Lovely Wife: A Memoir from the Woman Beside the Man (Random House, $24.95, 9781400065738/1400065739).

Also on All Things Considered: Aurelia C. Scott, author of Otherwise Normal People: Inside the Thorny World of Competitive Rose Gardening (Algonquin, $22.95, 9781565124646/1565124642), along with Clarence Rhodes, a rose grower featured in the book.

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Tonight on the Colbert Report, Daniel Gilbert talks about Stumbling on Happiness ($14.95, Vintage, 9781400077427/1400077427).

Also on the Colbert Report: Tom Blanton, author of How to Read a Secret Document: From Spy Photos and Wiretaps to Offshore Balance Sheets (New Press, $23.95, 9781565849013/1565849019), who will talk about the CIA's "family jewels" report, declassified this week.

 

At a recent fundraiser at the Montclair Library in Montclair, N.J.: (l.) Debra Galant, author of Rattled (St. Martin's, $13.95, 9780312366582/0312366582), now out in paperback, and founder of baristanet.com, with Pamela Redmond Satran, the author of, among other titles, Suburbanistas (Downtown Press, $13, 9781416505594/1416505598), and co-author of The Baby Name Bible: The Ultimate Guide By America's Baby-Naming Experts (St. Martin's Griffin, $9.95, 9780312352202/0312352204), the latest of the Beyond Jennifer and Jason, Madison and Montana baby naming series.

 

Just before heading to BEA last month, I met with several international publishing professionals, who were staying briefly at Ledig House as part of the Frankfurt Fellowship Program. My hosts for this excellent conversation were Christina Knight, interim director of the German Book Office, and Ledig House executive director DW Gibson.

The fellowship group around our conference table included representatives from France, Argentina, the Netherlands, Romania, Denmark, India, Brazil, South Korea, Spain, Mexico, Greece and Portugal. After our meeting, some of the international writers in residency joined us for dinner, as did Dennis Johnson of Melville House Publishing, who also led a post-dinner discussion.

Gibson later said the events "set off an evening of much debating, lamenting and championing of literature. On the last night, many of the writers and fellows were up until 4 a.m., discussing all manner of things."

Publisher Nelleke Geel (Uitgeverij Signature, part of A.W. Bruna Publishers) of the Netherlands called our conversation "most useful. . . . It confirms a few things regarding the approach of booksellers--an increasingly disheartening experience in Holland--and how we could try to change that around to make it more effective. In my acquisitions list, it's all about translations and very little about Dutch authors, which means that I introduce loads of authors that are still unknown in Holland. The bookseller looks at the catalogues with a very weary eye until second books of the same authors are coming in, and returns to his longstanding relationships with the more traditional houses that save him the effort of doing some thinking of his own. Understandably so, perhaps, but disheartening nevertheless. With the chains obviously this effect is a worse, because they have very few schooled personnel on the actual work floor, the store."

I had been thinking about Reading the World month in anticipation of this night, but as our initial generalizations about publishing quickly evolved into a frank discussion of specific challenges (how to reach booksellers; how to market translated work, etc.), I was reminded once again of the importance of conversing with--not simply reading--the world.

What was discussed at those conference and dinner tables probably won't solve the problems we face, but it felt like a step toward what Gibson called "establishing an international community that now has the opportunity to expand and strengthen in the future."

Conversing with the world.

Located in a pristine Hudson Valley setting, Ledig House is an intriguing institution. As Gibson explained, "Ledig House Writers' Colony invites up to twenty writers from all disciplines, from all around the world to live and work on our beautiful grounds in Hudson, New York, during the spring and fall months. Over the past fourteen years, Ledig House has hosted hundreds of writers and translators from roughly 50 countries around the world. The colony's strong international emphasis reflects the spirit of cultural exchange that is part of Ledig's enduring legacy."

He added that Ledig House works with organizations like PEN "to further the cause of literature in translation. Most recently we formed a partnership with an organization called freeDimensional. This collaboration allows Ledig House to house writers who have been censored or threatened by their governments because of their artistic work--these are writers who are, quite literally, looking for a home. This spring we welcomed Pierre Mumbere Mujomba from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Pierre's play, The Last Envelope, is a 'commedia-style' farce, which reveals excesses of the Mobutu regime in the former Zaire. Shortly after its first performance, Pierre was threatened and his landlord was kidnapped."

Although our meeting was about the business of books, there was also a shared, border-bending passion for finding better ways to bring literature and readers together.

As mentioned earlier, some of the writers in residency at Ledig House also took part. According to Gibson, "The idea was to allow the writers to meet editors and agents from all around the world and discuss literature, the state of publishing and reading in the 21st century. Needless to say, there were many different interests, points of views, and thoughts on the direction of literature in general. It was a tremendous thing to see a poet from Spain conversing with an editor from Bulgaria; a translator from India exchanging ideas with a literary agent from Holland."

What we all talked about during these meetings mattered, but continuing--and expanding--the conversations matters even more. I've thought about that weekend at Ledig House often lately, especially when I handsell a copy of a translated work.--Robert Gray (column archives available at Fresh Eyes Now)