BTW Articles

Beginning in August, as many as 20,000 consumers nationwide will receive a special Book Cash promotion designed to send book buyers into bookstores nationwide. The latest version of Book Cash certificates, good for $10 towards payment for any book purchase, will be sent to certain new subscribers to the New York Times.

As in previous Book Cash promotions, the certificates should be handled as if they were regular checks or traveler's checks: they should be deposited in the store's bank account.

At first glance, the recent feature article in the Los Angeles Times about Santa Monica's well-known Midnight Special Bookstore seemed to be telling an all-too-familiar tale: independent bookshop forced out of long-time location by rising rents. Future prospects: bleak to none.

An ever-increasing number of American Booksellers Association member bookstores are reporting to the Book Sense Bestseller List by using BookScan. Bookstores using Anthology, Books in Stores, Booklog, Computac/Square One, IBID, or WordStock systems can use BookScan to generate a weekly sales data file and to orchestrate electronic transmission of the file -- within a matter of seconds.

The ABA Board held its summer meeting at the association's headquarters in Tarrytown, New York, from July 12-14. In addition, the ABA Strategic Planning Committee met in Tarrytown on Friday, July 12. Together with the members of the ABA Board, the committee includes two non-Board members, currently Timothy Huggins of Newtonville Books in Newton, Massachusetts, and Fran Keilty of Atticus Bookstore in Middletown and New Haven, Connecticut.