Industry News

ABA has announced the results of the 2002 elections for Board officers and directors.

The candidates chosen to serve as ABA Board directors were: Neal Coonerty, owner of Bookshop Santa Cruz in Santa Cruz, California; Russ Lawrence, co-owner of Chapter One Book Store in Hamilton, Montana; and Karl Pohrt, owner of Shaman Drum Bookshop in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Board members serve three-year terms. Coonerty and Pohrt are currently Board members.

The May 6 issue of The New Yorker (on newsstands on April 29) will feature the fifth special Book Sense insert, "Bound to Please: Great Gift Ideas From Your Independent Booksellers." This 14-page special feature will showcase a number of independent booksellers, in both text and pictures, and will share their enthusiastic picks for gift-giving from recent Book Sense 76 selections.

On Saturday, May 4, from 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. BookExpo America (BEA) attendees can learn the latest on how community-based retailers are working to more effectively advocate on important political issues in their cities and towns.

For summer listening and in celebration of June is National Audiobook Month, here are your top ten picks.

The pad of fliers will be in the May white box, and to you by June 1. Thank you!!!

Carl
[email protected]

1. THE NANNY DIARIES, by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus; read by Julia Roberts (Random House Audio, Abridged, $25, 0553714759)

On April 24, La Vergne, Tennessee-based Ingram Book Group announced that its Customer Care staff would expand from 12 hours per day to 24 hours per day, seven days a week. The new hours should benefit booksellers, said Keel Martin, spokesperson for Ingram. "Booksellers are spending most of their time serving their customers," he said. "Being able to call after hours should be a great new convenience."

On April 19, in the case of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression (ABFFE) v. Dean, U.S. District Judge J. Gavan Murtha enjoined a Vermont statute criminalizing any material posted on Web sites considered to be "harmful to minors." The complaint challenging the law was first filed on February 7, 2001, by a diverse array of individuals, businesses, and civil rights groups. The plaintiffs had claimed that the law violated constitutionally protected free speech rights and the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Mavis Gallant

On April 17, the annual $30,000 Rea Award for the Short Story was awarded to Mavis Gallant. The Rea Award is the only award in the U.S.

According to recently released figures on adult trade books from market information provider Ipsos-NPD, independent bookstores in 2001 maintained market share, and accounted for 14.8 percent of the adult trade market, as measured by unit sales. This is the third year in a row that independents have maintained an approximate 15 percent market share. These sales were achieved even as the total number of independent bookseller members in ABA declined by approximately 20 percent in 2001.

The Colorado Supreme Court’s recent ruling upholding the right of the Tattered Cover Book Store to ensure the confidentiality of the book-purchase records of customers from law enforcement scrutiny has received widespread national attention, and the strong support of the bookstore’s community.

Earlier this month, Anderson's Bookshops in Naperville, Illinois, and Eight Cousins in Falmouth, Massachusetts, were named by the Women's National Book Association (WNBA) as the 2002 winners of Lucile Micheels Pannell Awards, for general bookstore and children's specialty store, respectively.

A long-simmering dispute between the Authors Guild and Amazon.com returned to the news when the organization e-mailed over 5,000 members encouraging them to remove links from the authors’ Web sites to Amazon.com. The Authors Guild acted after Amazon.com stepped up its marketing efforts for its "Amazon Marketplace" program, where consumers can sell used books, CDs, and other items. The guild has over 8,000 members, and more than 700 of them have Web sites.

So … you’ve already gone and started a café in your bookstore? And you didn’t wait for our advice? Well, no matter. In this final of three articles on bookstores and coffee, BTW talks with booksellers about strategies for improving existing bookstore cafés. [To read the previous articles in our series, click here.

Ohio Governor Bob Taft will publicly sign House Bill 8 on May 6, 2002, almost three months after the bill passed the state’s legislature. The proposed legislation amends Ohio’s sex offense law to include computer-based material that is deemed harmful to minors. There is concern among booksellers and others in the industry that the law could be construed to include material with sexual content sold on their Web sites.

Oprah scales back, while USA Today and The Today Show announce new book clubs

Booksellers planning their meal with BEA authors this year should purchase their tickets to special events now. And, please note, the pre-registration deadline for discounted attendee badges has been extended until April 15.