Book Sense

This week, Book Sense is debuting the Book Sense 2005 Bestsellers, a special listing of the year's bestsellers in six categories, based on sales at independent bookstores with Book Sense nationwide.

For the eight-week period ending December 11, 2005, and based on reporting by hundreds of independent bookstores with Book Sense nationwide.

Past Category Bestseller lists are available at www.bookweb.org/read/5677.

Attention Media: Please contact Meg Smith at [email protected] for reprint guidelines for your newspaper or magazine.

The Winter 2005/2006 Book Sense Children's Picks list incorrectly attributed the bookstore in the quote recommending The Breezes of Inspire by Nick Ruth. It should have noted that Bob Spear's store is The Book Barn in Leavenworth, Kansas. Book Sense apologizes for the error.

The PDF files of the January Book Sense Notables fliers and shelf-talkers, featuring booksellers' comments, are now available on BookWeb's Picks page, along with the full list of January Book Sense Picks titles.

The Northern California Independent Booksellers Association (NCIBA), the Bay Area Rapid Transit System (BART), and Book Sense have teamed up to create a new promotion to encourage BART riders to visit their local independent bookstores. On Tuesday, December 13, fifty thousand fliers -- which feature an area-specific Book Sense Picks List, along with a coupon for $10 off the Picks titles at participating stores -- will be distributed at six BART stations.

Book Sense and The History Channel have once again partnered to create an exciting promotion full of materials and ideas to help booksellers create displays in conjunction with a special History Channel presentation. The documentary Lincoln, premiering on The History Channel on Monday, January 16, explores a little-known side of the 16th president, who suffered suicidal urges and called himself "the loneliest man in the world."

This Friday, December 9, is the deadline for the Book Sense 2006 Valentine's Day Top Ten. This annual list is compiled by Book Sense in conjunction with the Association of American Publishers' (AAP) Get Caught Reading initiative, and it is part of a series of seasonal Top Ten lists that Book Sense and AAP produce each year based on the nominations of independent booksellers nationwide.

Here is the full listing of the January Book Sense Picks, with booksellers' comments, as well as a preview of the January Book Sense Notables. Independent booksellers in the Book Sense program will be receiving their January Picks fliers in the December Red Box. (The flier includes jacket images, bibliographic information, and bookseller quotes.)

Acknowledging that this is the toughest time of the year to ask for bookseller nomination submissions, Book Sense is urging all booksellers to take a moment or two to submit nominations to ensure that the next two lists are the strongest they can possibly be:

In celebration of the movie Curious George, opening in theaters nationwide on February 10, 2006, Houghton Mifflin and Book Sense have produced exclusive materials -- including a two-foot high yellow hat (for The Man with the Yellow Hat, of course) and a Curious George-wrapped disposable camera -- to help booksellers create, and capture, displays and special events. The materials are being sent in a special Yellow Box mailing to arrive in stores by December 9.

E.H. Gombrich's A Little History of the World, a January 2006 Book Sense Pick, was first published in German in 1936.