Knowledge Tree Bookstore, Stuart, Fla., is ready to fill up both customers' minds and electric cars. TCPalm.com reported that an electric vehicle charging station has been installed at the bookshop: starting this week, a trio of heavy-duty wall sockets in the bookstore's rear outside wall will be available for public use. Knowledge Tree Bookstore is also co-sponsoring an Alternative Energy Festival on Saturday, September 15.
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The East Hampton Star surveys the four independent bookstores in Sag Harbor at the eastern end of Long Island, N.Y., who "successfully ply their trade, no easy feat in a small town, even one with such a high profile. Part of their success, their owners say, comes from carving out niche markets and complementing one another rather than competing."
The four stores are the Sag Harbor branch of BookHampton; Black Cat Books, the 10-year-old store that sells used, rare and first-edition books; Metaphysical Books and Tools, whose scent is "a charcoal resonance of amber," according to owner Joseph Benzola; and Canio's Books, a literary new and used bookstore.
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The Wall Street Journal traces how Eat, Pray, Love (Penguin, $15, 9780143038412/0143038419), the fourth book by Elizabeth Gilbert, a former writer at GQ, became a bestseller in paperback. "A chatty recounting of the author's divorce, spiritual search and self-redemption as she traveled the world," the book's move from respectable hardcover title to "paperback sensation," as the Journal put it, occurred "after a series of calculated moves from [hardcover publisher] Viking's sister Penguin paperback line, where executives worked to interpret sales patterns and create a marketing blitz to attract individual readers as well as book clubs."
The book is one of several examples of recent titles that have done much better in paperback than hardcover, appeal to women, deal with questions of how to live and love happily, received solid reviews and publicity and benefited from enthusiastic word of mouth.
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Seven independent bookstores opened in August and joined the American Booksellers Association, and an existing store opened another branch. For more information about these new book retailers, read Bookselling This Week.
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Founded in 1975 and once a cooperative, Talking Leaves Books, Buffalo, N.Y., now follows a more common business model, is owned by Jonathon Welch and Martha Russell and features a branch in the Elmwood Village neighborhood.
Welch told BTW that Talking Leaves was founded "on the principle that the book business was moving [away from] small presses and serious fiction. . . . Our goal was to be a place where people go to find serious fiction, poetry, and political books. The books other bookstores weren't carrying." That philosophy has "probably sustained us more than anything else. We've carved out a place."
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BTW also profiles Hue-Man Bookstore & Café, New York City, founded five years ago by Clara Villarosa, who has since retired, Rita Ewing and Celeste Johnson. Marva Allen and Melvin Van Peebles are newer partners.
The Harlem store has become a major tour stop for African-American celebrities and others, including Bill Clinton who in 2004 was greeted by several thousand wild fans (we know, because we were there!) the day his autobiography, My Life, appeared.
The store also participates in such programs as "Books for Kids," under which Van Peebles' foundation offers store gift certificates to primary grades at local Public School 123 several times a year.
In a recent collaboration with Universal Studios, Hue-Man customers attended an invitation-only screening of Talk to Me, which Allen called "a fifth anniversary present to our customers."
New West profiled Artifacts, Hood River, Ore., "a creaky, diverse and wildly fascinating store [that] prides itself on good books and bad art."
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"'Tis the book-buying season," declared the National Post, which offered Canadian readers an inside look at the publishing industry's prime time of year: "Virtually everywhere one looks these days, someone is flogging a book--or is about to. . . . In the domestic book-selling biz, you see, the fall season is the most profitable part of the calendar year. Nothing else comes close."
Several titles attracting early attention (and retail hopes) are autobiographies Jean Chretien: My Years as Prime Minister and Brian Mulroney's Memoirs: 1939-1993 as well as novels like Richard B. Wright's October, Giller Prize-winner The Assassin's Song by M.J. Vassanji and Giller nominee Turtle Valley by Gail Anderson-Dargatz.
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Effective October 29, Jeff Gomez joins Penguin Group as senior director of online consumer sales and marketing. He was most recently director of Internet marketing for Holtzbrinck Publishers. He joined the Holtzbrinck sales department in 1999 and became eBook and print on demand manager in 2000, before being appointed director of electronic content and business development. He founded Holtzbrinck's department of Internet marketing in 2003. He is also the author of four published novels, as well as the forthcoming nonfiction book, Print Is Dead: Books in Our Digital Age, which looks at the relevance of printed books in an increasingly digital world.
Brother, I'm Dying by Edwidge Danticat (Knopf Publishing Group, $23.95 Hardcover, 9781400041152, September 2007)
It's the rare family memoir--and this extraordinary new one by Edwidge Danticat is one of them--that transcends the individual lives of its characters and becomes a testament to the mystery of relatedness.
