Industry News

Last week, the New York Times ran a story about the behavior of children and their parents in the cafes and restaurants of Chicago's Andersonville neighborhood. The piece incorrectly stated that mothers were not attending events at the bookstore Women & Children First because children had been "kicked out for standing, talking, or sipping drinks" and "a retail clerk at the bookstore [had] asked a woman to stop breast-feeding last spring."

After two months of modest gains, bookstore sales in September took a slight downward turn. Bookstore sales in September were off by 2.9 percent. Year-to-date sales are down 2.3 percent.

Overall retail sales continue to be robust and continue to outperform bookstore sales. Overall retail sales of $342 billion for September 2005 were 7.2 percent ahead of the $319 billion reported in September of 2004.

Four independent bookstores are part of a broad-based coalition of Western Massachusetts educators, libraries, arts and peace organizations, and others that seeks to foster "community-building" between the peoples of the U.S. and Iraq by shedding light on the connections between literacy and access to education and the formation of healthy societies.

Stores with Book Sense should be promoting the Zathura sweepstakes, which ties into Columbia Pictures' film version of Zathura in theaters now. The sweepstakes, sponsored by Houghton Mifflin, the publisher of Chris Van Allsburg's bestselling book, offers consumers a chance to win $2,000.

Rooms at special reduced rates at the Long Beach Hilton, headquarters hotel for the American Booksellers Association's First Annual Winter Institute, are officially sold out for Wednesday night, January 25. However, rooms are still available at a rate of $112 per night for Thursday, January 26, and Friday, the 27th, on a first-come, first-served basis.

Earlier this month, Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY), chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, introduced legislation that aims to help small businesses and their employees increase access to affordable health insurance plans. The legislation, the Health Insurance Marketplace Modernization and Affordability Act of 2005 (S.

The start of the holiday season brings gift catalogs, decorations, and dozens of large color advertisements for new movies. What follows are updates on more films based on books, graphic novels, plays, and short stories. This list is not comprehensive, but it does represent some of the more popular feature films opening during November, December, and the early weeks of 2006. Some of the films are opening only at film festivals and major markets in 2005 and, then, moving into wide release in 2006.