Gulf Coast Booksellers Deal With Varying Degrees of Devastation
This week, as part of its continuing coverage of the effects of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita on the booksellers of the Gulf Coast, Bookselling This Week talks to Scott Naugle of Pass Christian Bookstore in Pass Christian, Mississippi, and New Orleans booksellers Britton Trice of Garden District Bookshop, Cynthia Dike of Maple Street Books and Maple Street Children's, Tom Lowenburg of Octavia Books, and Joanne Sealy of DeVille Books.
Stores with Book Sense should be on the lookout for special promotional materials in the October Red Box for a Zathura sweepstakes, beginning October 23. Offering customers a chance to win $2,000, the sweepstakes ties into the November 11 release of the film version of Zathura, based on Chris Van Allsburg's bestselling book, published by Houghton Mifflin.
Bookstore Tourism, a grassroots effort to promote and support independent bookstores by marketing them as tourist destinations, has caught on fast. The term was coined by Larry Portzline, a Harrisburg-based writer for the Pennsylvania State Senate. In 2003, he organized and sold out the first tour from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to New York City's Greenwich Village.