Book Sense

Over the past decade or so, in the Lake Washington area of Washington state, 12 independent bookstores have closed their doors. However, it's not all doom and gloom. In the lakefront city of Kirkland, there's one independent bookstore that is not only thriving, but growing: Parkplace Books. Currently, the bookstore is expanding from 4,000 square feet to 7,000.

Recently, BookSense.com announced a new functionality that will allow bookstores to upload their store's in-stock quantities of items to the BookSense.com database. For participating bookstores, BookSense.com's new inventory upload feature creates an "On Our Shelves Now" inventory status for any book that the store has in stock. As a result, the customer knows not only that a title is available, but also that it is actually in stock.

This month, the New York Times began sending Book Cash checks as a gift to consumers who upgraded from a trial to a full subscription to the newspaper. It is expected that the Times' Book Cash check, which is good for $10 towards payment for any book purchase, will be distributed to as many as 20,000 consumers. Booksellers could start seeing customers with the checks as early as this week.

Well, this was tough! Over 2,000 books nominated, the most ever. Such a huge, huge, huge September and October new book-wise, not surprisingly. So rich that some great books landing after October 1 need to be held off until the November/December 76.

By Carl Lennertz

Tip of the Week:
Just a reminder: Not all 76 picks need to be in your displays! I know some of you feel guilty because you "just" have 15 to 25 of the picks displayed. That's OK! In fact, that's more than OK!!

Two Kids' 76 ISBN and, therefore, price mistakes:
In the fall Kids' 76 announced last week, two hardcover books had the library binding ISBNs noted instead of the trade editions. Sorry!

As recognition of the Book Sense Bestseller lists by consumers and the trade grows, so does the number of local and national publications carrying them. Publications, spanning the country, are now carrying the national bestseller lists, and as the number of reporting stores in different regions allows for development of regional bestseller lists, they are being published by regional media.

Newspapers that recently began carrying the national bestseller lists include:

It was another big week for Book Sense 76 picks on the network morning shows. On Wednesday, August 7, Good Morning America announced that The Lovely Bones (Little, Brown) was the latest book chosen by the show’s "Read This!" book club. The highly acclaimed novel by Alice Sebold was a top ten pick on the July/August Book Sense 76, nominated by Tripp Ryder of the Carleton College bookstore, in Northfield, Minnesota. [To read Ryder's Book Sense One on One interview with Sebold, click here.]

By Neal Coonerty

As a savvy and experienced bookseller, you should be able to name the best-selling single item in your bookstore in the last 12 months. Until I investigated, I couldn't.

First, I immediately thought about titles of hot books, but our best-selling book sold 845 paperback copies in the last year and wasn't even close to our number-one selling item. In fact, I found out that we sold 4,969 copies of our best-selling item last year, almost six times the number of our best-selling book.

On Monday, August 5, the Today Show named the Adam Haslett short story collection You Are Not a Stranger Here (Doubleday) as the latest pick of its "Today's Book Club." The title, selected for the club by author Jonathan Franzen, was a July/August Book Sense 76 selection.

Booksellers -- Another fun one to do! Thank you for all the great nominations.

The 76 fliers will be to you in early September, and maybe late August. AND … this is the 76 that is the basis of the late September NEW YORKER insert. Kudos!!!

A sneak preview of the quotes being used will be up at BookWeb.org next week. No matter what quote I end up using, thanks go to ALL who recommended each book!

Carl
[email protected]

We're still checking ISBNs of the latest paperback editions, but we wanted you to see this soonest. The flier will be ready this fall, and we'll publicize this major initiative then.

Note: This is also a great resource if your community is thinking of adopting a book for all to read. For a list of what books cities, towns, and states around the country have chosen recently, go to http://news.bookweb.org/read/305
(Let us know of any new ones!)

Bookselling This Week is happy to present its second "Book Sense One on One" feature in which a bookseller who has nominated a title for the Book Sense 76 interviews that title's author.