Industry News

Monday, February 16, is the last day to submit ballots for the Best of Book Sense. By voting, booksellers will automatically be entered into a random drawing to win a grand prize of five nights' accommodations and admission to BookExpo America for the next five years or one of four other prizes. Participation is open to all employees of ABA member bookstores.

On January 29, Ingram Book Group unveiled "pubsource," a new enhancement to its "ipage" Web site that provides booksellers with the ability to check availability and purchase book products directly from three participating publishers: Random House, Holtzbrinck Publishers Group, and HarperCollins.

Scholastic Announces Potter Paperback Pub Date

As Valentine's Day focuses our sights on expressions of fond regard and appreciation, so the February White Box overflows with offerings from Book Sense Publisher Partners, included with those same sentiments in mind -- regard for the passion with which you approach your chosen profession, and appreciation for the attention you pay to each title presented. Here are just some of the highlights:

Galleys, ARCs, and Finished Books:

Passengers on American Airlines flights during the month of February who pick up the airline's publication, American Way, will discover a feature article by Chris Tucker entitled "Book Tour -- The conventional wisdom is wrong: Real bookstores are not dead."

The deadline for vendors to submit information for inclusion in the new Booksellers' Resource Directory has been extended to Monday, February 23.

Vendors of nonbook products and services that would be of interest to independent booksellers may submit data through an online form at www.bookweb.org/docs/brd/. More than 70 categories of products and services are included.

It is expected that the Booksellers' Resource Directory will be online at BookWeb.org this spring.

On Monday, February 9, ABA Communications Manager Kristen Gilligan and BookSense.com Director Len Vlahos set out on a weeklong tour of East Coast bookstores. Here's a report on their adventures to date.

By Len Vlahos

Day 1 -- February 9

Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale,
A tale of a five-day trip
Leaving from this tropic port,
Aboard this tiny ship

Last week, Amazon.com announced that it would begin to comply with Kansas' new streamlined sales tax law, which requires retailers with remote sales that have an affiliated company in the state to collect sales and use tax. Amazon, which has an automated distribution center in Coffeyville, Kansas, will begin collecting Kansas state sales tax starting April 1.

Rather than hope customers will use and/or buy from their Web sites when they can't get to the bookstore, some booksellers have decided to bring their BookSense.com Web sites to customers by creating Web kiosks in their stores. Booksellers who spoke to BTW about their kiosks have found the axiom made famous in W.P. Kinsella's Shoeless Joe on target: Build it, and they will come.

The first annual Booksellers' Retreat, organized by the Southeast Booksellers Association (SEBA), provides a unique opportunity for booksellers to leave behind the daily stress of business and get together with their peers.

The Great Lakes Booksellers Association's (GLBA) Grass Roots Cafe, which debuted at the association's October 2003 fall trade show, has been developed into a permanent feature of GLBA's Web site, offering a menu of hyperlinks to elected officials in the four main states from which the association draws its membership.

Increasing bookseller participation in political issues, including efforts to amend the USA Patriot Act and to fight for e-fairness, is the goal, said GLBA Executive Director Jim Dana.

ABA's forum tour, which provides booksellers across the country with the opportunity to meet with representatives of the ABA Board of Directors and senior staff to ask questions, express opinions, and hear about the association's activities and plans for the future, will be going to California next week.

There are two important deadlines for booksellers to be aware of: Nominations for the Best of Book Sense 76 titles from the past five years are due in less than two weeks, on February 16. Additionally, nominations for the 2004 Book Sense Book of the Year (BSBY) Awards are due on March 8.

In an effort to give booksellers more time to make plans for BookExpo America 2004, to be held June 2 - 6 at the McCormick Place Convention Center in Chicago, ABA is providing below a preliminary programming schedule for the convention.

Highlights include:

In a recent e-mail sent out to all ABA-member bookstores, ABA CEO Avin Mark Domnitz strongly encouraged bookstores to submit their fiscal 2003 financial statement numbers to the "ABACUS Survey -- Year 2."