Notes: Poisoned Pen Grows; Tehran Coffee Shops Close
"In business, it's grow or die. However, you have to limit the risk
so that it doesn't bankrupt you," said Barbara Peters, owner of the
Poisoned Pen bookstore, Scottsdale, Ariz., in an Arizona Business Gazette article chronicling the bookseller's dramatic revival after an extremely challenging period.
According to the Gazette,
"The Poisoned Pen bookstore's downtown shop was killed during a fight
between Phoenix code inspectors and the Bentley Projects, an art
gallery where the mystery-book specialist opened a branch in 2005. The
story here, though, is how owner Barbara Peters ran an inquisition into
what happened and used the information to keep expanding her
Scottsdale-based business after the branch closed earlier this year."
The article praised her upbeat attitude, and Peters said she now regards
the experience as "a very expensive PR campaign. We've created new
customers, hosted some events we might not otherwise have . . . and
received a lot of ink."
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Today's New York Times profiles Kinokuniya's new bookshop near Bryant Park and suggests that the bookstore chain "has decided that Japanese is no longer the center of its universe." In addition to the Japanese-language books that have been the mainstay for Kinokuniya's 26-year-old outlet at Rockefeller Center, the new store also features an array of titles from "Asia and beyond."
"At the old store the main purpose was to sell to the Japanese community,” said Shigeharu Ono, director of Kinokuniya in New York. "We want to expand our audience."
Although Japanese-language works account for 70 percent of the stock at the older bookshop, Ono said English-language books would likely be in the majority at the new store. The first floor at the Bryant Park location, "serenely decorated in blond-wood flooring and minimalist black shelving," offers a generous selection of titles in English, ranging from translations of Japanese contemporary and classic novelists to works by Salman Rushdie and Anita Desai.
For Japanophiles, the new store features "plenty of Japanese-language novels, fashion magazines and a mother lode of manga in both Japanese and English," as well as a branch of Cafe Zaiya, the Japanese-style pastry and sandwich shop. Store manager John Fuller said that the Bryant Park location will also hold more events in English.
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Bookselling This Week features a "shop local" daily double combination, with articles about the upcoming America Unchained! day on November 17, as well as the winner of Scholastic's My Main Street contest.
On
the Saturday before Thanksgiving, nearly 50 communities in the U.S.
will urge residents to shop at locally-owned, independent businesses as
part of America Unchained!, a national celebration sponsored by the American Independent Business Alliance.
AMIBA director Jennifer Rockne said America Unchained! is timed just
prior to Black Friday "to catch people before the bulk of their gift
buying." She added that she would "love to see more bookstores
everywhere get involved. The campaign is easy to pull together because
it's mainly a media campaign, and we have materials available."
Emily
Wynn Hinely represents the next generation of "shop local" aficionados.
The 10-year-old voracious reader from Newnan, Ga., won Scholastic's My
Main Street contest, celebrating the publication of the new Main Street
series by bestselling author and Newbery honoree Ann M. Martin. Emily
entered the contest at Scott's Books, owned by Earlene Scott and "a
Newnan fixture for 32 years." As the store submitting the victorious
entry, Scott's also comes up a winner by earning a visit from Ann M.
Martin.
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Coffee shops in four of Tehran's bookstores were closed this week
"after receiving a 72-hour ultimatum from Amaken-e Omoomi, a state body
governing the retail trade," according to the Guardian.
One of the closed cafés was at a well-known bookshop,
Nashr-e Sales, "which has hosted reading sessions by writers, including
the Nobel prize-winning Turkish author, Orhan Pamuk, and become a
popular meeting point for literary types."
"Amaken justified the closures by declaring
that the coffee shops constituted an illegal 'mixing of trades,' " the Guardian added. "However, critics suspect the move is aimed at restricting the gathering
of intellectuals and educated young people."
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"Off-the-wall
bookstores offer cheaper, hipper selections that will get almost anyone
to rediscover the reading habit," the Cal State Fullerton Daily Titan
claimed. The paper directed readers to local bookstores that "are more
offbeat than your average Borders or Barnes & Noble. These reader
retreats may not offer music listening stations, Wi-Fi or chai lattes,
but after visiting these stores, you'll realize there's more out there
than supermarket paperbacks."
Recommended stops included
"literary hog paradise" Acres of Books in Long Beach, the Bookman in
Orange and the Bookman Too in Huntington Beach; Soap Plant in Los Angeles,
Skylight Books in Los Feliz ("always abuzz with bespectacled
hipsters"), Comics Unlimited in Westminster and Babeland in Los Angeles.
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The Gathering Awareness and Book Center, Pensacola, Fla., will celebrate its 18th anniversary Saturday. According to the Pensacola News Journal,
the Gathering, owned by Georgia and Johnny Blackmon, "is known for
offering an array of Afrocentric books and a variety of gift items
including figurines, artwork, greeting cards, baskets, carvings, soap
and candles. The store also sells merchandise from Africa and the
Caribbean."
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Blog begets publisher. Wired
magazine profiled Dzanc Books, a small publisher "poised to succeed,
hiring staff and expanding quickly. And that may be because it sprouted
from a blog rather than a traditional printing press, and it is
certainly web-savvy."
Dzanc Books is the brainchild of novelist Steve Gillis and Dan Wickett, whose litblog, Emerging Writers Network, has attracted a loyal readership since its inception in 2005.
"I
have been as much of a pain-in-the-neck presence online as I could have
been in last five years," said Wickett. "We have developed fairly large
communities of readers and writers we believe will support us. If half
of our members ran out and bought a book, it would be more successful
than many small-press books."
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A Harry Potter trick for Halloween. The Boston Globe
reported that in Wakefield, Mass., St. Joseph School's pastor, Rev. Ron
Barker, removed Harry Potter books from the school's library,
"declaring that the themes of witchcraft and sorcery were inappropriate
for a Catholic school. . . . The removal at St. Joseph's is the first
reported instance that the wildly popular series has been banned in the
Bay State, according to the American Library Association."
The Globe also noted that Harry joins some distinguished historical company: "In 1650, William Pynchon's The Meritorius Price of Our Redemption was
publicly burned because colony leaders considered it too critical of
the Puritan religion. In 1878, the New England Watch and Ward Society
was founded to ban books, fight pornography, and 'watch and ward off
evildoers.'"
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And a Harry Potter treat. A first edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone--from a first printing of only 500 copies--sold for the record-breaking price of £19,700 ($40,390) at a recent auction. The Guardian reported that "the auction also featured an uncorrected publisher's proof copy of the book, produced for internal use and promotion, and with 'JA Rowling' printed in error on the title page. It went for £2,250 ($4,613)."
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The Salt Lake Tribune reported on bookstore Ladies Nights, which began in 1986 at the Fort Union Deseret Book store and have since evolved into biannual events at 20 Deseret Book stores in Utah.
Cheers! Among the hundreds of people who helped celebrate the 25th
anniversary of Books & Books, Coral Gables, Fla., last weekend were
the following reps: (from l. to r.) Wayne Donnell, Jeff Cope, Marty
Conroy, Books & Books owner Mitchell Kaplan, Gail Whitten, Tom
Murphy, Jim Murphy, Eileen Becker and Geoff Rizzo (kneeling).