Notes: PNBA Show Changes; Online Sales Rankings
Like some other regional booksellers associations this year, the
Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association is making some changes in its
trade show and annual meeting format, in its case to draw more
booksellers to the trade show floor on the meeting's third and last
day, Friday, September 21. Among those changes: authors at the Friday
Book
& Author Breakfast will sign their books on the show floor 10-11
a.m.; many of the other authors doing signings will be well-known and
popular regional authors; a free buffet lunch will be offered; and a
promotional raffle will be held just before the floor closes at 2 p.m.
Word is that more changes are being contemplated for next year's show,
possibly including a full trade show day for all exhibitors and a
second only for those who want to stay (these are usually smaller
publishers and indie presses, not the big houses). On the second day,
the part of the floor vacated by the publishers not wanting to exhibit
could be devoted to author events, panels, signings, talks, promotional
parties and more.
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Today's New York Times
ranks authors compulsively checking their Amazon.com sales rankings as
one of the more modern ways authors can avoid continuing to work on the
next manuscript. The story notes that Amazon's algorithms for
establishing the rankings count sales history but "recent sales are
weighted more heavily."
Incidentally salesrankexpress.com,
a site created by Aaron Shepard, who has self-published 12 books, helps
check rankings even faster and more thoroughly than usual.
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Congratulations to the Children's Book Shop, Brookline Village, Mass., which has won Boston Magazine's 2007 Best of Boston Kid's Books selection. The magazine commented: "Like everything well loved by a child, this Brookline Village institution has become charmingly worn around the edges, the creaky floors a testament to decades of small roaming feet. It eschews the chain bookstores gloss (and their piles of trinketry and TV tie-ins) for shelf after wonderful shelf of kid's titles--more than 21,000 in all. The shop may be considering a spiffing up for its 30th anniversary this year, but here's hoping it'll always be a tad dog-eared: after all, that's how bookworms mark a place they want to go back to."
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Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Mich., is considering adding a Little
Professor bookstore franchise as part of its efforts to "take better
care of visitors and our own staff and realizing they have needs and
want to have convenience," a hospital executive told the Detroit Free Press. In addition, such retails operations have bolstered the hospital's ailing bottom line.
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The New England Independent Booksellers Association is taking applications for the second round of grants intended to help booksellers strengthen or develop independent business alliances and local buying programs in their communities. The first round of grants were made in June (Shelf Awareness, June 18). For more information, contact NEIBA executive director Steve Fischer.
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Cata's Books, Benton, Ill., founded in 2004 by Candice Lahr, recently
moved to Benton Public Square from a mall in West Frankfort, the Southern
reported. The store's new location is a "rehabbed building [that] has a
white brick façade and, with its handcrafted woodwork interior, is a
perfect fit," the paper wrote.
Cata's hosts many book signings and author events and stocks books of
regional interest, works by local authors and a range including
cookbooks, 'tween reads and war history.
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Ahh, good old-fashioned summer
his and hers reading. Spotted yesterday lakeside in Connecticut, an older couple: for hours, he had his nose buried in David
Baldacci's Last Man Standing while she was devouring Philippa Gregory's The Boleyn Inheritance.
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Yesterday's New York Times had an amusing story about The Blue Book of the Hamptons.
The 85th annual edition costs $70, is sold at places like BookHampton,
Southampton, N.Y., behind the counter in unmarked white envelopes, and
is compiled by a secret group that amasses basic information about "the
area's wealthy, social connected residents," including prep schools
attended, private memberships and more. No word on whether the mystery
publisher is ISBN-13 compliant.
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Pablo Fenjves, the ghost writer for If I Did It, is disputing
O.J. Simpson's assertion that he was a passive participant in the
writing the chapter that "depicts him holding a bloody knife at the
scene of the crime," today's New York Times reported.
"The whole book, the whole idea for a book, originated with O.J.
Simpson and a couple of his handlers," Fenjves stated. "O.J. read the
book, his book, several times. I made every change he asked for, and he
signed off on it."
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Cooper
Square Publishing, the new joint venture of the Rowman &
Littlefield Publishing Group and a hedge fund, has bought the book
publishing program of T&N Children's Publishing, including Two-Can
Publishing and NorthWord Books for Young Readers. Effective
immediately, order fulfillment and distribution as well as
returns for those imprints is being handled by Rowman &
Littlefield's sister company, National Book Network.
Two-Can
Publishing focuses on books that seek to entertain and educate children
from birth through age 12 about science, history and arts and crafts.
Many Two Can titles are available in Spanish.
NorthWord
publishes books on animals and nature for children, including picture
books and nonfiction nature and wildlife titles in interactive formats.
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