For the first time in company history, Barnes & Noble has made major layoffs at its corporate headquarters, eliminating nearly 100 positions. Most of the cuts were "due to the reduction in store openings and consolidation of functional areas within its retail and online operations," the company said.

B&N has about 40,000 employees and 800 stores overall. The Wall Street Journal estimated that the 100 people laid off constitute 4% of corporate staff of about 2,500.

In a statement, B&N CEO Steve Riggio commented: "Although our people, from top to bottom, did a terrific job in managing expenses and maximizing productivity, the current business climate and the downturn in retail sales mandate that we reduce corporate overhead costs as appropriate to our overall sales volume. . . . The business climate in which we are operating is unprecedented, and therefore, the reduction in expenses is inevitable."

The company is providing the former employees with "an enhanced severance plan," healthcare benefits for the next 12 months, outplacement counseling and transition seminars.

In the fourth quarter of fiscal 2008, B&N will take an after-tax charge of $2.5 million for the layoffs.

Sales at B&N in the nine weeks ended January 3 fell 5.2% and same-store sales were down 7.7%, the company announced last week (Shelf Awareness, January 8, 2009). And last fall, chairman Len Riggio wrote in a memo to staff that "never in all my years as a bookseller have I seen a retail climate as poor as the one we are in."

 

Pages, "one of Toronto's most important independent bookstores," will not have to move from the central downtown location it has occupied for 29 years, as had been anticipated, CBC News reported. When Pages opened in 1979, the landlord charged $10 per square foot, but that fee had gradually risen to its current $60 per square foot as the area became more trendy. Since the lease was about to expire, Marc Glassman, who runs the shop, expected "his landlord to follow the neighbourhood trend and impose yet another rent hike." Instead, Pages has been granted a six-month extension on its lease. "We're thrilled to be staying until at least the end of August," noted Glassman on the bookstore's website, adding, "Most of all, I'd like to thank the community for their well wishes and encouragement over the past few months. It's heartening to realize how many people embrace Pages."

---

In a front-page article, the Wall Street Journal checks into libraries' increasing popularity in tough times, writing, "A few years ago, public libraries were being written off as goners. The Internet had made them irrelevant, the argument went. But libraries across the country are reporting jumps in attendance of as much as 65% over the past year, as newly unemployed people flock to branches to fill out résumés and scan ads for job listings."

The big draws besides books are free computers and wi-fi access and video rentals.

---

How can a small publisher succeed in the age of volatile economics and a fickle marketplace? Doug Siebold, president and founder of Agate Publishing, shared some of his entrepreneurial strategies in a Small Business Salon interview at Slate.com's BizBox.

"A lot of my ideas about publishing had to do with the idea of the entire field as a sort of an ecosphere," said Siebold. "The key was really less about the kind of content as opposed to the scale at which you operated relative to other players in the space. As in a lot of other businesses, there's a bunch of giant multinational conglomerates that are the big players, and they leave a lot of waste behind them. My feeling was a company that functioned efficiently at the appropriate scale could do a lot of business by being cost-effective and opportunistic. Not too little, but not too grandiose: growing at a careful, natural pace. And that ended up being about what we've done."

---

"As everyone knows, independent bookstores are dead," C.W. Nevius wrote to open his recent San Francisco Chronicle column, then proceeded to disprove this theory by showcasing two Bay area bookshops that are very much alive.

"A lot of people tell you this is the worst possible time to buy a bookstore," said Christin Evans, co-owner of the Booksmith. "But what we hope to do is push the boundaries of a bookstore for the 21st century."

"Not only could this work, it is working," added Hut Landon, executive director of the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association. "Nationally, independent bookstores sell about 10 percent of the new books in a market. In the San Francisco Bay Area, it is 55 percent."

The secret, according to Nevins and Booksmith co-owner Preveen Madan, involves several factors. "First, your store must become an integral part of the neighborhood," Nevius wrote. "Booksmith holds fundraisers for local schools, brings in local authors for readings, and hosts discussions on local issues. Madan said the store held more than 100 events last year. . . . It helps that the customers are so tech-savvy. Those who attend events sometimes record parts of the discussion and post it on blogs. Or, Evans said, they Twitter that 'I am at Booksmith and just found the greatest book.'"

Another key for independents is inventory selection.

"We weed out all the crap that San Franciscans don't want," said Pete Mulvihill of Green Apple Books. "We pick carefully. A good example is a recent book by a Chez Panisse chef. We knew it would be sold out so we ordered a ton of them. Sure enough, we had them on our shelves when every place else ran out--including Amazon."

---

Effective immediately, Ingram Publisher Services is distributing AVA Publishing, West Sussex, England, which publishes educational books on applied visual and communication arts.

Effective February 2, Ingram Publisher Services is distributing Poisoned Pen Press, Scottsdale, Ariz. Poisoned Pen was founded in 1996 by Barbara Peters, owner of the Poisoned Pen bookstore, her husband, Mark Rosenwald, and their daughter. The press has some 550 mystery titles, both original and reprint editions.

---

Lerner Publishing Group is now the distributor in the U.S. of selected titles from Andersen Press, London, which was founded in 1976 by Klaus Flugge and specializes in children's books. The first U.S. editions of Andersen titles, to be published under the Andersen Press USA imprint, will begin appearing this coming fall. They include Elmer's Special Day, Flabby Cat and Slobby Dog, Millie's Marvellous Hat and The Wild Washerwomen. Carolrhoda editorial director Andrew Karre will edit Andersen titles for U.S. publication.

---

Effective immediately, Graphic Arts Center Publishing/Ingram Publisher Services are no longer handling distribution for Epicenter Press. The house is now handling its own distribution. According to the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association, customers may place orders with the press's business office, its warehouse, Partners West or rep Jim Harris, who is covering the Northwest, California and Hawaii. In Alaska, Epicenter titles are in stock at Todd Communications and the News Group.

 

 

During November, bookstore sales fell 13% to $1.054 billion--down for the third month in a row--according to preliminary estimates from the Census Bureau. In October, bookstore sales fell 5.6% compared to the same period a year earlier. For the year to date, bookstore sales are up 0.1%, at $14.880 billion.

By comparison, total retail sales in November dropped 11.2% to $306.811 billion compared to the same period a year ago. For the year to date, total retail sales were up just 0.3% to $3,661 billion.

Note: under Census Bureau definitions, bookstore sales are of new books and do not include "electronic home shopping, mail-order, or direct sale" or used book sales.

 

Harry N. Abrams is off to a very muscular start in 2009. On Tuesday, the pub date for Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw (Amulet Books), the third book in the series, the company sold at least 80,000 copies of the book, Abrams president and CEO Michael Jacobs estimated. Some 3,000 people attended Kinney's appearance that night at the Barnes & Noble in Carle Place, N.Y., on Long Island (see photo), and about 1,300 copies of the book were sold. (At the last minute, an Abrams sales manager drove 400 extra copies to the store in a van.) Kinney appeared last night at an event hosted by R.J. Julia, Madison, Conn. Jacobs commented: "We're very happy, especially in this retail environment."

 

 

It was a happy New Year for Books & Crannies in Middleburg, Va. Co-owner Pat Daly had anticipated a quiet day on January 2, the first day the store was open in 2009. Instead it was bustling. "It just goes to show that with retail sales now there's no way to predict what's going to happen from day to day," she said.

December sales were better than expected and post-Christmas numbers were strong, but overall the store was down 17% from 2007. Daly noted that despite the dip, 2008 sales exceeded those in 2005, Books & Crannies' first full year in business. She attributes the growth to the store's business-to-business program, which she is looking to expand this year.

A recent b-to-b sale came from a Washington, D.C., area hotel that purchased 400 copies of In Our Own Words: Extraordinary Speeches of the American Century edited by Robert Torricelli and Andrew Carroll to give to guests during the presidential inaugural festivities next week. Other b-to-b sales have come from a corporate client who placed a bulk order for Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson, M.D., and an ob/gyn clinic that bought more than 300 copies of What to Expect When You're Expecting by Heidi Murkoff.

Another area that Daly and fellow proprietor Genie Ford plan to focus on this year is author events, which helped boost holiday sales. Among the store's top sellers were Susan McCorkindale's Confessions of a Counterfeit Farm Girl: A Memoir and Virginia Willis's Bon Appétit, Y'All: Recipes and Stories from Three Generations of Southern Cooking. Both authors appeared at the store last year in October and December, respectively.

On January 24, Books & Crannies is hosting "Mystery Lovers Saturday" along with other Middleburg businesses. The daylong affair will begin with a meet-and-greet and panel discussions at the store, followed by a moveable feast-style luncheon inspired by the ones at regional trade shows. Consumers select one of five restaurants at which they'd like to dine, and the participating authors will rotate among the venues. Ellen Crosby (The Bordeaux Betrayal), Reed Farrel Coleman (Empty Ever After) and nine other scribes will then sign their books at various stores throughout the town. To end the day, Books & Crannies is holding a farewell reception. Area inns are offering discounted rates to out-of-town attendees.

The mystery-themed extravaganza is expected to become an annual event. Said Daly, "Not much happens here in January so we're hoping that we can spice up the town a little bit."--Shannon McKenna Schmidt

 

Today on the Diane Rehm Show: Godfrey Hodgson, author of The Myth of American Exceptionalism (Yale University Press, $26, 9780300125702/0300125704).

---

Today on Fresh Air: Daniel Sperling, co-author of Two Billion Cars: Driving Toward Sustainability (Oxford University Press, $24.95, 9780195376647/0195376641).

---

Tonight on MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann: Scott McClellan, author of What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception (PublicAffairs, $27.95, 9781586485566/1586485563).

---

Tomorrow morning on the Early Show: Shauna Reid, author of The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl (Avon, $13.99, 9780061657702/0061657700).

 

Another book related to Slumdog Millionaire, winner of nine Golden Globe and Critics Choice awards, as noted here yesterday, is Slumdog Millionaire: The Shooting Script (Newmarket Press, $19.95, 9781557048363/1557048363). Part of the Newmarket Shooting Script series, the book includes the complete script by Simon Beaufoy, a foreword by Beaufoy, an introduction by director Danny Boyle and a Q&A with Boyle on the making of the film. While in Los Angeles for the Golden Globes this past weekend, Beaufoy stopped at Book Soup in West Hollywood for a discussion of the movie and signed the book.

 

Book TV airs on C-Span 2 from 8 a.m. Saturday to 8 a.m. Monday and focuses on political and historical books as well as the book industry. The following are highlights for this coming weekend. For more information, go to Book TV's website.

Saturday, January 17

8 a.m. Matt Towery, author of Paranoid Nation: The Real Story of the 2008 Fight for the Presidency (Hill Street Press, $22.95, 9781588181862/1588181863), suggests a conspiracy theory regarding the recent presidential election. (Re-airs Sunday at 1 a.m., 3:15 p.m. and 7 p.m.
     
10 a.m. Thomas Sugrue, author of Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North (Random House, $35, 9780679643036/0679643036).

11 a.m. Gar Alperovitz and Lew Daly, authors of Unjust Deserts: How the Rich Are Taking Our Common Inheritance and Why We Should Take It Back (New Press, $24.95, 9781595584021/1595584021), argue that a majority of the wealth created in the U.S. stems from inherited social knowledge rather than individual ingenuity, effort or smart investment decisions. (Re-airs Saturday at 11 a.m. and Sunday at 12 a.m. and 7 a.m.)

2:15 p.m. Book TV re-airs its 2004 interview with President-elect Barack Obama, author of Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (Three Rivers Press, $14.95, 9781400082773/1400082773). (Re-airs Sunday at 8 p.m. and Monday at 4 a.m.)
 
5 p.m. For an event hosted by Politics and Prose bookstore, Washington, D.C., George Herring, author of From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 (Oxford University Press, $35, 9780195078220/0195078225). (Re-airs Sunday at 6 a.m.)

8:45 p.m. Book TV re-airs a discussion between New York Times columnist Bob Herbert and Barack Obama about his book, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream (Three Rivers Press, $14.95, 9780307237705/0307237702) (Re-airs Saturday at 8:45 p.m. and Sunday at 2 a.m. and 9:45 a.m.)
 
10 p.m. After Words. Eugene Meyer interviews Robert Bork, author of A Time to Speak: Selected Writings and Arguments (Intercollegiate Studies Institute, $30, 9781933859682/1933859687). (Re-airs Sunday at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m., Monday at 12 a.m. and 3 a.m., and Sunday, January 25, at 12 p.m.)

 

The winners of the 2008 Borders Original Voices Awards, which honor "fresh, compelling and ambitious written works from new and emerging talents," are going to:

• Fiction: The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway (Riverhead). The committee commented: "A haunting story of ordinary and not-so-ordinary people trying to find and retain their humanity in the midst of war and siege."
• Nonfiction: The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World by Eric Weiner (Twelve). "Part travelogue, part self-help, part anthropological study, the best part of this entertaining and informative book is Weiner's rich, clever writing."
• YA/independent reader: I Am Apache by Tanya Landman (Candlewick). "An engaging, well researched book that any young adult--or any adult for that matter--will find compelling, thanks to its unorthodox storyline and passionate, vengeful protagonist."
• Children's picture book: Those Darn Squirrels! by Adam Rubin, illustrated by Daniel Salmieri (Clarion Books). "The quirky, colorful illustrations perfectly complement the imaginative text, making this a book that kids and parents will cherish and want to read again and again."

Each winner receives $5,000, and the books will be featured in Borders stores.

---

The shortlist for the 49th Romantic Novel of the Year prize includes Star Gazing by Linda Gillard, Sophia's Secret by Susanna Kearsley, Thanks for the Memories by Cecelia Ahern, Before the Storm by Judith Lennox, East of the Sun by Julia Gregson and The Last Concubine by Lesley Downer. The finalists were chosen by a panel of members of the Romantic Novelists' Association, and the winner will be announced February 10.

In its 49th year, the award "aims to recognise excellence in romantic novels and enhance the status of the genre," the Guardian reported, adding that among the previous winners were Freya North, Rosie Thomas, Erica James, Katharine Davies, Jojo Moyes and Philippa Gregory.

 

The Amaranth Enchantment by Julie Berry (Bloomsbury, $16.99, 9781599903347/1599903342, 288 pp., ages 10-14, March 2009)

Narrator and heroine Lucinda Chapdelaine is the main attraction of this debut novel, set in a town called Saint Sebastien in a time and country in which royalty still rules and the class system sits securely in place. Orphaned at age five, Lucinda remembers a time when a nanny brushed her hair and her parents attended balls requiring fancy gowns. Now she lives atop Montescue's Goldsmithy with an uncle and aunt who show her few kindnesses, aside from a place to sleep and meager meals, and who treat her like hired help. At the opening of the book, two key characters arrive at her uncle's shop who will change her life: Beryl (called the Amaranth Witch by the town's priest), who wishes to repair the setting for a white stone of great significance to her ("it magnifies the soul of the bearer"), and Prince Gregor, who is searching for "a gift that says 'forever' " for his betrothed, whom he's never met. It's not giving too much away to say that the white stone of great value to Beryl winds up as the gift bound for Gregor's betrothed. Equal parts suspense and farcical elements follow Lucinda on a circuitous route, where she meets a thief whom she unwittingly aids and abets, as well as a villain with ties to Lucinda's parents, Beryl and the royal family. Berry's talent for building credible connections between Lucinda and this orbit of characters carries the novel and creates some memorable moments. If a building could leak remorse, it would be the once-opulent and now decaying Palisades, with its empty flower pots and broken panes of glass where Beryl makes her home. By contrast, the streets pulse with a magnetic quality as the annual Festival gathers momentum, with the aroma of chicken turning on open fire pits, and prostitutes strolling as citizens dance the Gavotte ("Such order, such beauty in the midst of the city's chaos"). These high points compensate for a weaker thread involving Beryl's origins in an alternate world. Given the well-rounded aspects of Beryl's character and emotions, her alien origins seem unnecessary to the plot and also to the machinations of the other traveler from her world. What the author depicts well and confidently is the isolation that Lucinda--and all of the characters around her--experience and how that sense of alienation ultimately draws them all together. This is a writer to watch.--Jennifer M. Brown

 

And still the Queen kept crying "Faster! Faster!" but Alice felt she could not go faster, thought she had not breath left to say so.

Maybe it reached crisis point last weekend when I discovered that the Whole Earth Catalog, that iconic counter-culture tome of my youth, is available online in a time machine of editions. Or maybe I've been thinking about e-books too much lately.

Whatever the catalyst, I felt particularly drawn to Ann Kingman's recent post at her excellent Booksellers Blog, where she asked some pertinent--and usefully impertinent--questions about the possibilities and challenges in a retail environment where e-books and consumer access to information online for readers of all ages increasingly conspire to challenge indie booksellers.

I read articles about e-books every day, and seldom is the perspective of booksellers solicited. If their future is considered at all, it's often noted as a side comment about impending doom, the dangers of Fahrenheit 451 apparently being usurped by Web 2.0, 3.0. 4.0, 5.0 . . . Like Ann, I keep wondering how indies will surf these treacherous but seductive electronic waves.

I'm a book person by nature and profession, but new technology intrigues me, too. Although I own neither a Kindle nor Sony Reader, I read on screens of every description. What I seem to be waiting for is a device that allows me to bypass Remote Control Syndrome.

What is RCS? There are often three or four remote control devices on coffee tables throughout the land. If you visit friends and haven't been properly trained, you can't perform the simple act of watching their television because firing it up requires one controller to turn on cable, another for the TV, yet another if a DVD player is involved (or, bless them, a still functioning VHS player), and still others for music systems. Which one controls volume is anybody's guess.

With RCS in mind, every time I toss another electronic device into my briefcase, I wonder why, if we can put an electro-metaphorical man on the moon in terms of wi-fi and touch screens and downloaded episodes of Lost, we can't get all this stuff on a single device.

But I also wonder how all of this figures into the future of independent bookselling and what we can do about it. Which brings me to e-books and what I hope will be our first discussion of 2009. Here's a conversation starter:

• AFP: "Shortcovers expects to be turning iPhones into electronic books . . ."
• Newsday: "Boy, do I have high-tech idea for those of you who got a shiny new smartphone for Christmas: Try reading a book on it."
• The Tennessean: "In the trade space, what I think we'll see is a period of time where we'll see a lot of experimentation," said  Frank Daniels III, COO, Ingram Digital Group. "But our observation thus far is that you can't underestimate people's willingness to read on a smart phone. There have been less than 500,000 Kindles and Sony Readers sold in 2008. And there have been how many millions of iPhones sold?"
• Wired: "But what about whole books? Think you need to invest in the Kindle? You could, but why lug around yet another device when the iPhone can do a perfectly acceptable job?"

I'd like to join Ann in asking readers for their thoughts on e-books and bookstores. As Alice told the Red Queen, "Well, in our country, you'd generally get to somewhere else--if you ran very fast for a long time, as we've been doing."

• How do independent booksellers find their way in the new world without leaning too heavily on the old chestnut that some readers will always want to handle a book, feel the pages, etc.?
• Is there a place for e-books in the indie store retail future and what will that look like?
• Can indie booksellers find even more ways to redefine and reinvent their handselling expertise for the digital age?
• Could there be an indie bookstore version of Apple's Genius Bars, helping readers navigate both paper and digital worlds?
• What are you doing now?
• What are you doing next?

Consider the Red Queen's advice: "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"

If we're already running as fast as we can to stay where we are, how do we run even faster?--Robert Gray (column archives available at Fresh Eyes Now)