Industry News

Beginning with the June Red and White boxes, all Book Sense mailings are being outsourced to Transport Specialties International, Inc. (TSI), a dedicated mailing house in New Jersey. Book Sense Publisher Partners that plan to include materials in either of the June mailings should not ship them to ABA's Tarrytown address. All materials for June and for subsequent mailings should be shipped to:

Transport Specialties International, Inc.
9 Joanna Court
East Brunswick, New Jersey 08816-2108

When Rep. Bernie Sanders reintroduced the Freedom to Read Protection Act (H.R. 1157), legislation that would remove the threat to the privacy of bookstore and library records created by Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act, in March, 107 fellow members of Congress were listed as co-sponsors of the bill. Since that time, 10 more members of Congress have added their names to the list of co-sponsors.

The new co-sponsors are:

Seattle-based Internet retailer Amazon.com has recently acted less like a big seller and more like a big buyer. In a period of less than two weeks, the company has purchased BookSurge LLC, a print-on-demand company based in Charleston, South Carolina, and Mobipocket.com SA, an e-book and e-book software company based in France. It has also reportedly been soliciting literary agents in an effort to publish and sell exclusive material from big-name authors.

Every week dozens of booksellers seek and share advice and information about bookselling and the book industry on BookWeb's Idea Exchange Forums. Here, BTW presents a look at some of this week's topics -- with the hope that more booksellers will join in.

Among the topics that booksellers are discussing in the Bookseller-to-Bookseller Forum this week are:

Perpetrators of fraudulent order schemes are increasingly sophisticated, as evidenced by the frequency and variety of scams reported by ABA member bookstores. Unfortunately there is no hard and fast rule for identifying a fraudulent order, but booksellers are being urged to err on the side of caution and to train all staff to beware of the variety of schemes.

The Book Industry Study Group (BISG) Business Solutions Committee is asking bookstore book buyers to participate in an online survey, "Book Buying Process and Trends Survey," the results of which will be compiled in a report that will help foster a better understanding of the purchasing process. The online form should take 10 to 15 minutes to complete.

Retail sales in bookstores in February were soft and continued the general decline of recent months. February 2005 bookstore sales of $1,027 million were 4.2 percent off the $1,072 million in sales of February 2004.

Overall retail sales continued to outperform bookstore sales. Overall retail sales of $301 billion for February 2005 were 5.6 percent ahead of the $285 billion reported in February 2004.

Comedian Billy Crystal will be the keynote speaker at BookExpo America's (BEA) Opening Night on Thursday, June 2, at New York City's Jacob Javits Convention Center. The event, which will be begin at 6:00 p.m. in the convention center's Special Events Hall, is open to all badged BEA participants at no charge. Seating for all convention-goers is on a first-come, first-served basis. Crystal's 700 Sundays will be published in October by Warner Books.

American Booksellers Association Board of Directors ballots, which must be returned to accountant KPMG by May 4, feature the names of three candidates for the Board: Russ Lawrence of Chapter One Book Store in Hamilton, Montana; Michael Tucker of Books Inc. in San Francisco; and Collette Morgan of Wild Rumpus Books for Young Readers