Book Sense

Here BookSense.com Director Len Vlahos updates booksellers on the latest improvements and enhancements to BookSense.com.

Greetings! There's a lot of BookSense.com news in this edition of On the Move....

As the direct result of requests from booksellers, we've made a number of enhancements to BookSense.com -- some of which are pretty significant.

The number of national and local magazines, newspapers, industry publications, and Web sites featuring Book Sense Bestseller Lists continues to grow each month. Regional Book Sense Bestseller lists recently began appearing in three more newspapers.

The New England Bestseller list is now featured in Brunswick, Maine's The Times Record and Nantucket, Massachusetts' Nantucket Independent. And the Southeast Book Sense Bestseller List is being carried by the Seven Lakes Times in Moore County, North Carolina.

Based on sales reports from well over 400 independent bookstores across the U.S. for the four weeks ending July 20, 2003.

Food, glorious food. We wonder, Are women even allowed near the grill?

Attention Media: To reprint this list, contact Kristen Gilligan at [email protected].

Thanks to all loyal reporters!

In the July/August Book Sense 76, the nominating bookseller for The Rice Mother by Rani Manicka (Viking, $24.95, 0670031925) was incorrectly identified. The bookseller, from The Country Bookshop, Southern Pines, North Carolina, was Katrina Denza.

The Book Sense Gift Card program will launch with five distinctive gift card designs. Based on the input of a number of booksellers, the card designs are appropriate for any occasion and for general and children's bookstores alike. To see the five gift card designs, click here (PDF format).

On Thursday, July 17, ABA wrote the producers of The Early Show regarding its Early Readers Club and offered possible ways that the association and independent booksellers might work together with CBS, which broadcasts the show. The Early Readers Club debuted on June 25 with the goal of promoting children's literacy. Guests on the show have included First Lady Laura Bush and American Library Association President Carla Hayden, executive director of the Enoch Pratt Free Library of Baltimore.

A "perfect fit" is how John Cross, co-owner of Foul Play Mystery Bookshop in Westerville, Ohio, described the store's sponsorship of Mystery! on WOSU, the local PBS station. "People have always come in looking for the books on Mystery!" he explained.

Here are booksellers' picks for the top ten science fiction and fantasy titles for the fall. Pads will be in the August white box mailing and a downloadable PDF file will be available at www.bookweb.org/read/1474 next week. This Web page also includes links to all past Book Sense 76s.

Book Sense is pleased to welcome three new Publisher Partners: Fordham University Press, Yorkville Press, and Cumberland House Publishing.

Founded in 1907, Fordham University Press publishes in the humanities and social sciences with strengths in philosophy, theology, American history, and literature. Fordham also publishes general interest books on New York and the Hudson Valley.

This week, BookSense.com announced that publishers Grove Atlantic and John Wiley & Sons have joined the BookSense.com Co-op Reimbursement Program. Other publishers participating in the program are AOL Time Warner, Harcourt, and HarperCollins.

The co-op program is designed to help publishers both promote and increase the sales of their books. Furthermore, it gives booksellers a way to claim unused newsletter co-op -- which can then be used to offset a significant portion the monthly cost of their BookSense.com Web sites.

Children's titles will be the feature of the next Book Sense New Yorker insert, which will appear in the October 6 issue, on sale September 29. To complement the story, the magazine is seeking photographs, especially good exterior shots, of children's bookstores with Book Sense.

The July white box lands on your doorsteps with the crackle and boom of Independen(ts) Day fireworks -- a dazzling and colorful array of offerings from Book Sense Publisher Partners including:

Galleys, ARC's, and Finished Books

The Atomic age spawned more than nationwide paranoia, anti-Soviet propaganda, and "Little Boy," the code name for the four-ton bomb dropped on Hiroshima. There was a spate of filmmakers and writers who responded to the possibility of nuclear Armageddon with a legion of classics: Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, The Manhattan Project, and Fail Safe, among them.

Very soon, bookstores with Book Sense will able to sign up for the new Book Sense Gift Card program. This innovative program will provide booksellers with a number of choices regarding card designs and processing options. ABA has partnered with Givex, one of the fastest-growing transaction processors, whose sophisticated service will allow for a customized solution for the more than 1,200 bookstores participating in Book Sense.

Based on four weeks of sales from over 400 independent bookstores across America.

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

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