Notes: BAM Sales Drop; Literary Reading Up; Book King Sold
Sales at Books-A-Million during the nine weeks ended January 3 fell 2.5% to $127.5 million, and sales at stores open at least a year fell 5.6%. The drops were not as deep as at Barnes & Noble and Borders, but other trends were similar to the other chains and some independents.
In a statement, BAM president and CEO Sandra B. Cochran said, "Given the challenging retail environment, we were pleased that we could record an improvement in the sales trend we saw during the third quarter. Holiday sales came later than ever this year, reflecting a cautious and price-sensitive consumer. The success of Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series was the big story in books this season. Gifts, bargain books and the broader teen category also performed well."
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Don't miss an account in Bookselling This Week by ABA COO Oren Teicher about his latest stint working a few days during the holidays in a bookstore--in this case, at the Anderson's Bookshop in Naperville, Ill. Among his observations: "It was clear that customers in Naperville were spending less than they had in previous years. I had multiple customers asking for a single recommendation--implying that the recipient was only getting one book this year. Of course, this served to reinforce how terribly important staff picks are to so many customers. And I also had several questions regarding when a title would be out in paperback, clearly reflecting decisions to put off a purchase. Anderson's strength in kids' books clearly was helpful. It was very apparent that, while shoppers were buying fewer adult books as gifts, many were still spending for their kids, grandkids, etc."
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IndieBound.org has updated its front page, which includes a blog by Paige Poe focusing on news and stories about independent retailers around the U.S. The site also has a permanent archive of blog entries and articles. Members of IndieBound are encouraged to make comments, share stories and ideas, send leads, become "fans" of each other's stores, and more.
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The Midwest Booksellers Association has launched a new, improved version of its website, which can be found at midwestbooksellers.org.
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The San Jose Mercury News has a brief e-profile and Q&A with Mark Coker, a Silicon Valley denizen who has developed Smashwords, a service for authors to publish e-books that he compares with YouTube. The company makes the MS available in 10 e-book formats and takes a 15% cut of sales.
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Hope it's not fiction.
For the first time since 1982, "the proportion of adults 18 and older who said they had read at least one novel, short story, poem or play in the previous 12 months has risen [to 50.2%]," according to a National Endowment for the Arts study being released today, reported by the New York Times.
The increase was most notable among 18-24 year olds and involved novels and short stories more than poetry or drama. Literary reading also increased among Hispanic Americans.
For the first time, the study included Internet reading, which some thought might have helped boost rates, although the AAP's Pat Schroeder suggested that some people don't count reading online or on e-readers as "book" reading.
Other possible explanations for the jump: one community, one read programs; the popularity of the Harry Potter and Twilight series; and "individual efforts of teachers, librarians, parents and civic leaders" to promote literature and reading. Booksellers, too, we'd think.
The study is called "Reading on the Rise: A New Chapter in American Literacy" and is based on data from the Census Bureau compiled last year.
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Steve Eddy, who founded Book King, Rutland, Vt., in 1971, has sold the store to Elizabeth Dulli, a former employee who is moving the store around the corner in downtown Rutland, according to the Rutland Herald.
The store, which closed on Saturday, will reopen in its new 2,900-sq.-ft. digs on February 9. The new location will have a cafe, wi-fi and space for small performances and book readings. Dulli, a nurse, called owning a bookstore "one of my dreams." Joanne Johnston, who has worked at the store for 30 years, will continue working for Book King.
For his part, Eddy commented: "It's just time to move on. I've been doing it for 38 years and I think I'd like to do some other things."
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The Buffalo News
visited city retailers and discovered "it's clear that cultural critics
and other low-tech influences--far from losing their grip on the
popular mind--are simply getting an extreme digital makeover."
Lucy
Kogler, manager of Talking Leaves Books, said, "People still come
in and pick our brains about what's new, and then they go online and
purchase it because they'll get it cheaper. So we've become a resource
kind of like a library in lots of ways. However, we still have a cadre
of customers who are longtime supporters, who read things like the New York Review of Books, the New York Times Book Review, the New Yorker,
who come in here and still buy the books. They rely on the sort of
tried-and-true intellectual magazines of our time and those people are
still very much our customers and still supporting us, which we are
grateful for."
Kogler also praised her staff: "The likelihood in an independent store that the people who are working there are big readers is better than average. That's why we hire them."
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How many books did you read last year? Los Angeles Times Jacket Copy
columnist Sarah Weinman read 462. How did she do it? "A lot of it has
to do with my music background," said Weinman. "I studied voice and
piano fairly seriously during my elementary and high school days, and
as such, I became very attuned to rhythm and cadence and voice. So what
happens when I read is that I can 'hear' the narrative and dialogue in
my head, but what's odd is that I'm both aware of the book at, say, an
LP rate (33 1/3 revolutions per minute) but in my head it translates to
roughly a 78."
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Return to the Hundred Acre Wood,
the first authorized sequel to A.A. Milne's Pooh stories, will be
published October 5 by Dutton Children's Books, a Penguin imprint.
According to the Associated Press (via USA Today),
the new book will be written by novelist and playwright David
Benedictus and illustrated by British artist Mark Burgess. Benedictus
said he hoped the new book will "both complement and maintain Milne's
idea that whatever happens, a little boy and his bear will always be
playing."
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The new issue of Granta magazine has the theme of fathers and includes contributions from Jonathan Lethem, Siri Hustvedt and short story writer Daniel Mueenuddi.
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The Literary Ventures Fund, the not-for-profit foundation that provides philanthropic investment to publishers, is now also offering strategic marketing and publicity on a fee-for-service basis for publishers, agents and authors--starting as early in the publishing process as possible.
In a statement, LVF chairman Jim Bildner said that the Fund, which was founded in 2006, has experimented "with a variety of approaches, both new and tried-and-true, to provide better practices for an industry undergoing dramatic transformation--and we have developed a number of focused strategies that have been working."
For more information, visit literaryventuresfund.org or contact editorial director Ande Zellman or director of marketing, publicity and foreign rights Mary Bisbee Beek.
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Effective January 20, Angus Killick, formerly director of school and library marketing at Disney Book Group, will join Kingfisher, an imprint of Macmillan Children's Books, a division of Pan Macmillan (which is distributed in the U.S. by Macmillan). Before joining Disney, Killick held senior marketing positions at Penguin Putnam, DK and Cassell in New York and London.
