Cool idea of the day. Tomorrow evening, Inkwood Books, Tampa, Fla., is hosting what it says is one of its most popular events: a discussion of books the staff loves--and doesn't love--for book group members and book group wannabes. Purchases made during the evening are discounted 15%, there are goodie bags and attendees may take galleys of future titles. Best of all perhaps, the store will offer wine and sweets, supplied by Vintage Wine Cellars and Toffee to Go.

---

Kim Ricketts, who has made a name for herself putting on author events in the workplace, tells the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that she wants to expand beyond Seattle and San Francisco and work "with other companies in a select group of cities: Minneapolis, New York City, Washington, D.C. and Boston." 

--- 

Pressed for time, but still want to discuss the finalists for the 2007 Man Booker Prize? The Guardian offered a convenient "digested shortlist."

---

Books 'N' More, Allentown, Pa., which sells new and used books and operates a postal substation, is closing September 26, the Allentown Morning Call reported. Gwendolyn Allen, who has owned the store for all of its 21 years, told the paper that competition and not being "allowed to profit from the sale of postal supplies" led to the decision.

---

Congratulations to Dave Eggers, who has won a $250,000 Heinz Award, given to "people who make notable contributions in the arts and humanities, the environment, the human condition, public policy, and technology, the economy and employment."

As reported by the AP (via the New York Times), Eggers, author most recently of What Is the What and founder of McSweeney's and the 826 Valencia writing laboratories, was cited by Heinz Foundation chair Teresa Heinz this way: ''As a young man, he has infused his love of writing and learning into the broader community, nurturing the talents and aspirations of a new generation of writers and creating new outlets for a range of literary expression."

--- 

In HarperCollins's sales department:

• Rachel Brenner has been promoted to national account manager for Baker & Taylor and Target. She joined the company two years ago as a senior sales associate for the merchandising group, then became national account manager for Target, one of Harper's fastest-growing accounts.
• Mark Gustafson will handle mass market sales for Target.
• Anne Hollinshead DeCourcey has joined the company as a sales rep, selling children's and adult titles in New England. She was formerly sales director for Gibbs Smith, worked at the New England Independent Booksellers Association and has been a rep at Norton and Penguin.

 

This morning on Good Morning America: Dr. Frank Lawlis, author of Mending the Broken Bond: The 90-Day Answer to Developing a Loving Relationship with Your Child (Viking, $24.95, 9780670018345/0670018341).

---

This morning on the Today Show: Nina Garcia, author of The Little Black Book of Style (Collins, $17.95, 9780061234903/0061234907).

---

This morning's Book Report, the weekly AM radio book-related show organized by Windows a bookshop, Monroe, La., has the theme "finding the way" and features two interviews:

• Kate Braestrup, author of Here If You Need Me (Little, Brown, $23.99, 9780316066303/0316066303)
• Ann Fessler, author of The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade (Penguin, $15, 9780143038979/0143038974)

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 Diane Rehm Show:

• Congressman David Obey, author of Raising Hell for Justice: The Washington Battles of a Heartland Progressive (University of Wisconsin Press, $35, 9780299225407/0299225402)
• Alan Alda, author of Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself (Random House, $24.95, 9781400066179/1400066174).

---

Tonight on Larry King Live: food star Rachael Ray and financial guru Suze Orman.

---

Tonight on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart: Robert Draper, author of Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush (Free Press, $28, 9780743277280/0743277287).

Selected new titles appearing next Monday, September 17, and Tuesday, September 18:

The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World by Alan Greenspan (Penguin Press, $35, 9781594201318/1594201315). The Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board for 19 years shares his experiences.

Dead Heat by Dick Francis and Felix Francis (Putnam, $25.95, 9780399154768/0399154760) stars a successful chef turned sleuth after a bomb goes off at a catering event.

Guiding Light: Jonathan's Story by Julia London and Alina Adams (Pocket, $22, 9781416559023/1416559027) is based on the television show Guiding Light.

The Art Thief: A Novel by Noah Charney (Atria, $25, 9781416550303/1416550305) follows investigator Gabriel Coffin as he solves a series of connected art thefts.

Dexter in the Dark: A Novel by Jeff Lindsay (Doubleday, $23.95, 9780385518338/0385518331) is the third book about a Miami cop who is also a serial killer.

Louder Than Words: A Mother's Journey in Healing Autism by Jenny McCarthy (Dutton, $23.95, 9780525950110/0525950117) shares her knowledge of autism and ways parents can care for autistic children.

The Power of Story: Rewrite Your Destiny in Business and in Life by Jim Loehr (Free Press, $25, 9780743294522/0743294521) examines the ability of telling stories about one's experiences to enhance life.

The GM: The Inside Story of a Dream Job and the Nightmares that Go with It by Tom Callahan (Crown, $25.95, 9780307394132/0307394131) gives a behind-the-scenes perspective on a season with the New York Giants.

New in paperback:

Palestine Peace Not Apartheid by Jimmy Carter (S&S, $15, 9780743285032/0743285034).

Cesar's Way: The Natural, Everyday Guide to Understanding and Correcting Common Dog Problems by Cesar Millan and Melissa Jo Peltier (Three Rivers Press, $13.95, 9780307337979/0307337979).

Sherman Alexie has been hailed by the New York Times Book Review as "one of the major lyric voices of our time." His works have been translated into 11 languages, and he has received many awards and citations, including the Lila Wallace Readers Digest Award and the PEN/Malamud Award for Fiction. Alexie's bestsellers include novels (Reservation Blues and Indian Killer), books of poetry (The Business of Fancydancing and I Would Steal Horses), collections of short stories (Ten Little Indians and The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven) and screenplays (Smoke Signals and The Business of Fancydancing). His first book for young adults, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian ($16.99, 9780316013680/0316013684), based on the author's own experiences, will be published by Little, Brown today. Visit him online at fallsapart.com. Here he answers questions we put to people in the book business:

On your nightstand now:

Michael Connelly's The Overlook and David Markson's The Last Novel. I read at the ends of the spectrum, from exciting bestsellers to the eccentric and strange. I'd love to be able to write books that combine the hyper-intellectualism of Markson with the intense, commercial roller coaster ride instincts of Connelly.
 
Favorite book when you were a child:

A Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats. It was pretty much the only kid's book that featured a protagonist with dark skin. But I more heavily identified with the kid's solitude, as I was a somewhat of a hermit, even at a very young age.
 
Your top five authors:

Emily Dickinson, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Wright, Adrian C. Louis, Lorrie Moore. Dickinson because of her crazy silences, Fitzgerald because he wrote the best novel about the Native American experience (even though his book was about white folks), Wright because of his desperate lyricism, Moore because of her bitter humor, and Louis because he is the main reason I started writing.
 
Book you've faked reading:

I've never read Virginia Woolf, but I can quote her.
 
Book you are an evangelist for:

Tangerine by Edward Bloor. While writing my YA novel, I read hundreds of YA titles, and Tangerine just struck me as the most original, bizarre and painful book among them. It reads like a feverish nightmare. I've read it 10 times.
 
Book you've bought for the cover:

Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl. It's a radically overdone cover, rather garish, but I was attracted to it. And then it became a monster hit.
 
Book that changed your life:

Fire Water World: Poems by Adrian C. Louis. This is the finest in reservation realism. My first five books are primarily influenced by Adrian.
 
Favorite line from a book:

"O, Uncle Adrian, I'm in the reservation of my mind."--From Fire Water World: Poems, the line that sums up the Native American experience.
 
Book you most want to read again for the first time:

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I think it's the most perfect novel in world literature. Compressed, brutal, more an epic poem than a novel.
 

In Monday's homage to the late Madeleine L'Engle, we credited the wrong book with having received 26 rejections: it was not her first book but rather her Newbery Medal-winning A Wrinkle in Time, which is all the more astounding.

 

Last week, BookSite's Dick Harte posed--and answered--a central question for booksellers who want to unlock the secrets of bookstore website success. At the risk of redundancy, I'll ask the question once more and call it Harte's litany.

What is the single most important thing needed for a successful bookstore website?
 
It's the store.

When you follow a provocative question with a "simple" answer, inquiring minds will inevitably demand a follow-up query. Harte anticipates them: "If the answer is 'the store,' then what is it you want to get out of the Internet? Why bother? Most booksellers don't need anything unless they can answer the question, 'Why bother?'"

"Because it's there" would be too obvious a response. Focus is necessary. There are myriad opportunities for communication and personalization online. Harte suggests that certain bookstore website ingredients are key:

1. Clear branding, location, hours, etc.--Yellow Pages stuff.
2. Events
3. Focus on "exclusive" unique local items, not just books. One of the things that makes college bookstore websites so successful is the insignia merchandise they sell that is unique to the site. So add local items to your promotions.
4. Easy to use Search with in-store inventory featured
5. Personality--emphasize people, staff and customers to get the identity of the store and community through
6. Integrated newsletters
7. Brevity and simplicity
8. Co-marketing with fellow retailers
9. In-store pick-up/two-way communication (remember iPhone)
10. Fun stuff
    

"If you want to reach your customers, you need to look downstream, not upstream," he says, "and communicate directly with your customers. What is the most successful thing you can do that's going to make it work? What is your relationship with the customer?"

He cites creative and coordinated use of e-newsletters as a prime example, noting that a bookstore's website and newsletter should work hand-in-hand. "The granddaddy of Internet marketing tools is the e-mail. I believe something like 96% of Internet users have used e-mail and less than 15% any of other services [blogs, podcasting, etc.]. Not having your newsletter tie into your website is a mistake. A website is like a dump truck and a newsletter is like a motorcycle. It can't carry much, but it darts here and there, delivering your message."

That mobility can, and should, also draw customers back to a bookstore's website, particularly if the newsletter is taking advantage of one of the best, and least expensive, tools available, the hyperlink.

"Imagine sending out a newsletter with no links," Harte says, and I can hear the perplexity in his tone of voice. He doesn't have to imagine such a thing. He's seen it--too often--and so have I. And so have you.

In other words, not all e-newsletters are created equal. According to Harte, "What BookSite, Amazon and BN.com do is deliver a live e-newsletter, while most indies seem tied to the dead newsletter approach. Here is where indies have a big competitive advantage that most are ignoring. I believe the local audience is looking for only two things from their newsletters: interesting local news in the form of activities, sales and recommendations from the store; and an easy way to act on it, namely order buttons and integrated store pick-up opportunities of the items presented. The national chains don't do the former very well, and the indies don't do the latter. The group that tackles both is sure to win this inning."

Questions arise. I ask Harte what an indie bookseller should be minimally attempting online if time and finances are limited.

"I have yet to find an indie where time and finances aren't the issue," he replies, "so it is important for everyone to be prudent with their resources. The cost shouldn't be an issue as the Internet is the most economical marketing and promotional tool available to indies. Internet marketing can be 'free.' A smaller store (with sales of less than $200,000) can make a good Internet marketing program with a simple e-newsletter using their e-mail address book that wouldn't cost them anything out-of-pocket. BookSite clients tend to be marketing-oriented and have a need for tools to make their staff more productive with their time. They appreciate the impact of providing 'live' e-newsletters to keep their audience. But even this full-service approach only costs $150-$300 a month, which is less than most stores would pay for a typical single-day, four column inch ad in the local paper."

Next week, we conclude this series with a few precedents and predictions. "Everything is going in our direction," Harte says, and he'll tell you why.--Robert Gray (column archives available at Fresh Eyes Now)