Industry News

In mid-February, the American Booksellers Association, the American Library Association, and PEN American Center launched the Campaign for Reader Privacy (CRP), a petition drive that calls for Congress to amend Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act. And booksellers participating in the campaign who spoke to BTW say it is vital that all independent booksellers join the cause -- and now, before it's too late. "I think it's a critical time to do this [petition campaign]," said Neal Coonerty of Bookshop Santa Cruz in California.

A special three-page travel insert in the April issue of Good Housekeeping, which went on sale March 5, directs readers to find featured titles at independent bookstores with Book Sense.

The insert, featuring 11 titles selected by Good Housekeeping Marketing Manager Heidi Sacko and Book Sense staff members, ties classic to contemporary literature to travel destinations within the U.S.

It may not be as sexy as Y2K, but it has the same potential to cause chaos for booksellers, publishers, and vendors if their inventory management and POS systems are not ready for the major evolution that will take place in the unique identifiers for books as well as other products sold in the North American market in the next few years. Most notable among the changes, the International Standard Book Number (ISBN) will expand to 13 digits from 10 digits, effective January 1, 2007.

ABA CEO Avin Mark Domnitz, COO Oren Teicher, and ABA Board member Karl Pohrt of Shaman Drum in Ann Arbor, Michigan, will be conducting an ABA Booksellers Forum, in conjunction with the Great Lakes Booksellers Association (GLBA) on Tuesday, March 30, at Emmis Books in Cincinnati, Ohio. The second forum in the Great Lakes region this season (the first was on January 15 in Chicago) offers booksellers the opportunity to ask questions, express opinions, and hear about ABA's activities and plans for the future.

The Great Lakes Booksellers Association (GLBA) recently announced its second annual Get Caught Reading Photo Contest. A variation of the Get Caught Reading campaign sponsored by the Association of American Publishers and the Magazine Publishers of America, which features posters and magazine ads of famous people reading, the GLBA contest calls for regular (non-famous) people to shoot pictures of other regular people reading.

In this column, which originally appeared in the March 3, 2004, edition of San Jose, California's The Mercury News, editorial writer Miguel Helft explains how calls for "no new Internet taxes" are "nothing more than an attempt to rob states and local governments of billions from an old tax they count on to provide essential services."

You Didn't Pay Sales Tax on That Amazon Book, Did You?

By Miguel Helft

You're probably a tax cheat.

On March 4, BookExpo America (BEA) announced the speakers for its special events program at this year's convention to be held at the McCormick Place Convention Center in Chicago, from June 3 - June 6. Three Book & Author breakfasts, a lunch, and an audiobook tea are among the events planned, and the hosts include NPR's Terry Gross, Vanity Fair's Graydon Carter, and C-SPAN's Brian Lamb.

ABA hopes to see booksellers in the upper Midwest and New England regions at Booksellers Forums to be held on Saturday, March 6, at the Comfort Inn Airport in Bloomington, Minnesota, and on Wednesday, March 10, at Brookline Booksmith in Brookline, Massachusetts, respectively.

With one year in the books, so to speak, recently released BookSense.com Co-op Reimbursement Program figures indicate that the program has done well to help publishers increase book sales, while giving booksellers access to co-op to help offset the cost of their BookSense.com Web sites. "We're delighted at the early success of this program," BookSense.com Director Len Vlahos told BTW.

HarperCollins' Lennertz to Once Again Focus on Independents

April is National Poetry Month, but the Academy of American Poets (AAP), organizers of the annual event, are hoping that booksellers will be inspired to extend their celebrations of verse throughout the year. In addition to sponsoring numerous readings and poetry-related events in April, AAP is launching a Web-based Poetry Almanac on April 1 that will provide 365 days' worth of poetry highlights, activities, and ideas for individual or classroom use.

The list of newspapers, magazines, and Web sites carrying regional, national, and category Book Sense Bestseller Lists grows each month. Recently, these newspapers began featuring a regional list: Scranton, Pennsylvania's Scranton Times-Tribune (New England list); Fernandina Beach, Florida's News Leader (Southeast list); Ogden, Utah's Standard-Examiner (Mountains & Plains list); and Bandera, Texas' Bandera Bulletin (Mid-South list). The Scranton newspaper will also be featuring a category list, the Book Sense Business Bestseller List.

For all those amateur bakers who have wondered why their efforts to produce perfect results succeed only about 20 percent of the time, Baking Illustrated: The Practical Kitchen Companion for the Home Baker With 350 Recipes You Can Trust (America's Test Kitchen) provides welcome reassurance.

Patrons of a former Waldenbooks in Norcross, a part of metro-Atlanta, are extremely happy that the shuttered store has turned Chapter 11. This Chapter 11 is hardly a financial calamity, though. It's a family-owned, Atlanta-based chain of 14 neighborhood bookstores. As of March 1, make that 15 with the Norcross store, which was one of the few freestanding Borders-owned Waldenbooks.

You won't hear many booksellers saying "put down that book," except maybe in the case of the print version of the ABA Book Buyer's Handbook. Since the ABA Book Buyer's Handbook database was made available online at http://handbook.bookweb.org in April 2002, activity on the site has steadily increased. To date, the online Handbook has been accessed more than a million times.