Industry News

Chris Van Allsburg's Caldecott Medal-winning The Polar Express (Houghton Mifflin) will come to the big screen this November 10 in an animated adaptation from Warner Bros., starring Tom Hanks.

This coming weekend is a busy one for booksellers as the Mid-South Independent Booksellers Association (MSIBA), Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association (PNBA), and Southeast Booksellers Association (SEBA) all hold their fall trade shows. In addition to exhibiting at the shows, ABA is sponsoring a series of educational programs, which are free and open to all ABA member booksellers.

2004 Hugo Winners Announced

The 2004 Hugo Awards, honoring excellence in the field of science fiction and fantasy, were presented at the Worldcon Convention on Saturday, September 4. Among this year's winners were:

The downloadable PDF flier of October "We Also Recommend" titles, which includes bibliographic information, jacket images, and booksellers' quotations, is now available on BookWeb.org. (To download, click here).

The September Marketing Action Kit includes:

With Banned Books Week, the national celebration of First Amendment rights, just over two weeks away, booksellers are being encouraged to take advantage of the event to educate the public about the importance of protecting bookstore and library privacy, particularly since the passage of the USA Patriot Act in October 2001.

The final days of the Campaign for Reader Privacy petition drive are drawing near. Participating booksellers should remember that in order for the signatures they have collected to be counted all signed petitions must be sent by September 20 to ABA, Restore Reader Privacy, Attn.: Oren Teicher, 828 S. Broadway, Tarrytown, NY 10591. Of course, until that time, ABA is urging booksellers to keep collecting signatures!

It's been a tough three weeks weather-wise for businesses and residents in the southeast -- with a devastating hurricane hitting Florida, a tropical storm battering Virginia -- and now there's no rest for the storm weary as another massive hurricane is on the way.

The Upper Midwest Booksellers Association (UMBA) will hold its fall trade show from Friday, October 1, to Sunday, October 3, at the RiverCentre in St. Paul, Minnesota. Exhibit hours are 10:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on Saturday and 9:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. on Sunday. Education programming, all free this year, will be held on Friday, with one program, ABA's "Book Sense Gift Card Users Group," on Saturday.

FSG Launches Classics Series

On August 31, Farrar, Straus and Giroux announced the launch of FSG Classics, a new line of paperback reissues. Encompassing both fiction and nonfiction, FSG Classics will include works that are still widely read, as well as those that have "somehow been forgotten." Each new book will include a new introduction by a contemporary writer.

The Northern California Independent Booksellers Association's (NCIBA) fall trade show will be held from Friday, October 1, to Sunday, October 3, at the Oakland Convention Center/Oakland Marriott in Oakland. Once again, this year's trade show will feature a stellar lineup of authors and a wide array of educational programming.

The arrival of September marks the final weeks of the Campaign for Reader Privacy petition drive, and ABA is urging booksellers to make one last push to collect the maximum number of customer signatures.

This past weekend, ABA completed software programming to integrate its new association membership database with the BookWeb.org and Book Buyer's Handbook Web sites. These changes have created the need for members to re-enter their user names and passwords to gain access to members-only sections of the sites.

Jessica Stockton of Three Lives & Company in New York City was recently named the winner of the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association's contest that asked booksellers to write an essay that began with "I am a bookseller because …"