Industry News

The American Booksellers Association's Board of Directors and senior staff held meetings from Sunday through Tuesday, January 31 - February 2, 2010, just prior to the Fifth Annual Winter Institute, at the Doubletree hotel in San Jose, California.

Among its activities during the two and a half days of meetings, the Board:

Books & Books Observes Genocide Prevention Month

Books & Books in Coral Gables, Florida, is observing Genocide Prevention Month with a sneak preview of The Last Survivor, a documentary to be released this fall that follows the stories of four genocide survivors who have become anti-genocide advocates. The screening will be held Friday, April 24, at 8:00 p.m.

It was probably inevitable. Over the past several months, there have been ongoing reports about recalls of Chinese-made products due to excess levels of lead. In August, Mattel recalled over 10 million Chinese-made toys due to lead paint as well as tiny magnets that could be swallowed by children, as reported by the Associated Press. In October, Antioch Publishing announced the recall of seven non-book products, mostly bookmarks, due to excess lead levels.

This past weekend, several ABA staff members joined front-line booksellers at celebrations marking the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Here are reports filed by ABA COO Oren Teicher at Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe, Arizona; ABA Information Director Dan Cullen at Other Tiger in Westerly, Rhode Island; and Book Sense Marketing Director Mark Nichols at The Hickory Stick Bookshop in Washington Depot, Connecticut.

By ABA COO Oren Teicher at Changing Hands Bookstore

A reported 20 federal lawsuits filed in the Pittsburgh region over the past month are indicative of a growing trend that could cost small retailers big time. Consumers are filing class-action suits against retailers and businesses for violating a new credit card security law. Retailers who electronically print receipts that include more than the last five digits of the cardholder's card number are in violation of the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACTA), which was signed into law in December 2003 (with a three-year grace period for merchants to comply).

The ABA/Book Sense Lounge at BookExpo America (BEA) -- Room 401 at the McCormick Place Convention Center -- is the place to go to learn about Book Sense Bestseller reporting. ABA staff will be on hand from Thursday, June 3, through Sunday, June 6, to explain how easy it is to report your weekly sales figures through the Nielsen BookScan, ABA Upload, or ABA Web Data Form methods.

As the trade and consumer recognition of the Book Sense Bestseller list grows, bookstores that do not yet regularly report to the list have the potential of significantly helping to widen the scope and awareness of the list. Publishers already look to the Book Sense Bestseller lists as an accurate barometer of trends within the independent bookselling community, and consumer awareness of the bestseller lists (and the Book Sense program in general) is growing rapidly.

ABA recently launched a new set of features on the Book Sense Bestseller List reporting Web site, bestsellers.bookweb.org, designed to simplify the reporting process for booksellers who choose the manual-entry method each week.

According to many booksellers, independents can now transmit the data for the Book Sense Bestseller List before you can say "Kingsolver." Since the list debuted in November 1999, its importance to book buyers, publishers, and media analysts -- as well as booksellers -- has increased dramatically.