Live From BookExpo America -- Day 3

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ABA's 10th Annual Celebration of Bookselling

Booksellers and other industry professionals packed the Washington Convention Center for one of BookExpo America's highlights -- the American Booksellers Association's annual Celebration of Bookselling. The 2006 Book Sense Book of the Year Awards were presented to the winners; Pat Conroy presented longtime booksellers Rhett and Betty Jackson with ABA's Lifetime Achievement Award; and Sara Nelson, editor-in-chief of Publishers Weekly, presented PW's Bookseller and Rep of the Year awards.


Gail See, former ABA president and bookseller, presents Rhett and
Betty Jackson with
ABA's Lifetime
Achievement Award.

This year's Celebration, sponsored by Ingram Book Group and Ingram Publisher Services, was attended by three of the four Book Sense Book of the Year winners: For nonfiction, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, authors of Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (William Morrow); for fiction, Elizabeth Kostova, author of The Historian: A Novel (Little, Brown); and for children's illustrated, Jon J Muth, author and illustrator of Zen Shorts, (Scholastic Press). Children's literature winner Cornelia Funke, author of Inkspell (Chicken House/Scholastic), could not attend, but Kris Moran, director of publicity for Scholastic, accepted the award.

Kostova told the crowd filling the ballroom of her recent trip to Croatia, one of the settings used in the novel, but also the site of a very real war over a decade ago. She heard story after story about people's experiences during the war years. A taxi driver told her that only by "reading a lot" was he able to expunge some of the horrors of the war from his memory and continue on. Kostova declared this award the most meaningful she had received because it came from all those who "read a lot."

Dubner accepted the award for Freakonomics with co-author Levitt. The two graciously thanked all the assembled independent booksellers who handsold the book persistently, proving "dead wrong" those, such as Levitt's own father, who expressed a distinct lack of faith in the book's viability.

Muth said he hoped he could continue to be a conduit of the "golden" knowledge that comes from children. He then told the audience, "Thank you for encouraging me."

Moran accepted the Book Sense Book of the Year Award for children's literature on behalf of Cornelia Funke and read a letter Funke had sent for the occasion from her home in Germany. For Funke, receiving the happy news of this, her second Book Sense Book of the Year Award, the timing was difficult. She wrote that she learned of the award for Inkspell the day after her husband of 26 years had died. The news "so much warmed my freezing heart," Funke said.

A highlight for booksellers was a special presentation by fellow South Carolinian author Pat Conroy to longtime independent booksellers and community leaders Betty and Rhett Jackson, founders of the 31-year-old Happy Bookseller in Columbia, South Carolina. The Jacksons were saluted by the crowd with a standing ovation. Rhett Jackson told the audience about their years as owners of The Happy Bookseller, and then said, "I want to commend you independent booksellers. What you do makes an impact on your community."

ABA President Russ Lawrence recognized outgoing ABA Board members, President Mitchell Kaplan and Suzanne Staubach. Bestselling author Dave Barry introduced Kaplan and said when he first moved to Miami, home of Kaplan's Books & Books, he entered a store where he felt at home. "I thought, this is where I want to be, I want to spend a lot of time here," said Barry. "That was a liquor store, but later I found Books & Books." Barry then called Books & Books "one of the best there is" and described Kaplan as the "heart and soul of Miami."

Lawrence acknowledged the ongoing extreme hardship faced by Gulf Coast booksellers, many of whom lost their stores or homes or both, and he discussed the $100,000 in aid dispersed by ABA's Bookseller Relief Fund. A video produced by former bookseller and New Orleans resident Kevin McCaffrey showed the devastation of the area and featured several affected booksellers.

A tradition at the Celebration for the past three years has been the presentation of the Publishers Weekly Bookseller and Rep of the Year Award, which went to Ed, Barbara, and Chris Morrow of Northshire Bookstore of Manchester Center, Vermont, and to Mark Gates of Holtzbrinck, respectively. PW's Nelson called Gates the "book whisperer" and said that the choice of Northshire as Bookseller of the Year was "pretty easy." --Karen Schechner and Nomi Schwartz


ABA Town Hall Meeting

Perhaps it was because it was held in Washington, D.C., the capital of discourse and debate, that ABA's Town Hall Meeting was dominated by a civil, but intense, difference of opinion over the ABA Board's decisions regarding executive salaries.


New ABA President Russ Lawrence and Immediate Past President Mitchell Kaplan at ABA's
Town Hall Meeting.

The informal meeting, designed to allow booksellers to ask questions and share views on any industry-related topic with the ABA Board, featured discussions about a number of topics, including the overwhelming success of the debut Winter Institute, e-fairness, Hurricane Katrina and the Booksellers Relief Fund, and Small Business Health Plans.

When asked for an update on the issue of sales tax collection on online sales, the Town Hall moderator, outgoing ABA President Mitchell Kaplan, asked ABA COO Oren Teicher to respond. Teicher told booksellers, "We've made some progress ... and this past year the first real important shoe fell" when Barnes & Nobles began collecting sales tax on online purchases made through its Barnes&Noble.com website in 38 states. "Your efforts are responsible" for the collection of approximately $22 million in sales tax, he told the assembled booksellers.

And in an emotional moment, Scott Naugle of Pass Christian Bookstore in Pass Christian, Mississippi, whose store was destroyed by Katrina, thanked ABA for all its assistance, both financial and emotional, following the storm. "Those first days of the storm . . . I wasn't thinking of [ABA], but they were thinking of us," he said. "It was so wonderful to know that all of you [booksellers] were there, and the association was behind us."

Things grew more pointed, however, when Susan Novotny of The Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza in Albany, New York, expressed her fears about the future of her bookselling colleagues in relationship to the cost and value of ABA membership. She said that a review of ABA services had led her to believe that they were not providing value, and she called for the association and the Board "to take a look at ABACUS and apply it to yourselves."

Following Novotny's comments, Betsy Burton of The King's English in Salt Lake City raised her hand and said she needed to reply to Novotny's criticism. "With the chains at our heels, ABA began to do very creative things: the branding of Book Sense, its support of Local First initiatives. They've thought outside the box, and, as far as I'm concerned, have created a miracle. I'm [sometimes] kind of a naysayer ... but I feel like ABA has saved our lives.... I've learned so much in the past few years. I want to applaud the ABA and thank them."

Elaine Petrocelli of Book Passage in Corte Madera, California, thanked ABA for its support of the store's efforts to implement a retail size cap in her town and, specifically, thanked ABA's Teicher for participating in a public meeting held at Book Passage last month. However, she said she shared Novotny's concerns over the association's financials. She specifically called the Board to task for contracts that pay CEO Avin Mark Domnitz, COO Oren Teicher, and CFO Eleanor Chang salaries that reflect "such a large disparity" between association senior staff and everyday booksellers.

Incoming President Russ Lawrence refuted Petrocelli's notion that somehow the senior staffs' salaries were cloaked in secrecy. "It's not a secret ... Form 990s are available to anyone; you can just go to www.guidestar.org." Explaining the Board's reasoning regarding compensation, he said that Domnitz "brings an amazing skill set to this job. He does not do what a bookseller does," adding that "the guidelines we checked show that his salary is well within the range of trade association chief executives." Lawrence assured Petrocelli that chief among the Board's concerns was "what good we do, for whom, and at what cost."

Former ABA President Ann Christophersen of Women & Children First in Chicago noted that she had participated in the salary negotiation process for many years, and she said she believed "we made an excellent decision" in hiring Domnitz. --David Grogan


ABA Annual Membership Meeting

Following the Town Hall, ABA Board members, staff, and bookseller members adjourned next door for the Annual Membership Meeting. The meeting was kicked off by Immediate Past President Mitchell Kaplan. It included a year-end review of ABA's accomplishments by ABA CEO Avin Mark Domnitz and concluded where the Town Hall Meeting left off, with a few attendees asking for more transparency from the Board in terms of ABA's financial decisions.

In his President's Report, Kaplan said, "This is my last formal duty as ABA president.... These last six years on the Board went by in a blink." He praised ABA staff and the Board and noted, "[They've made it] pretty easy for me over the past two years. From where I sit, you're worth every single nickel." Kaplan pointed to the success of the Winter Institute and Focus Groups, "which bubbled out of conversations I had with the staff [of ABA], and the Board worked it all out, and then the staff ran with it."

Following the President's Report, Cathy Langer of Tattered Cover in Denver, the chair of ABA's Nominating Committee, presented the 2006 election results. She reported that two new members had been elected to the Board -- Becky Anderson of Anderson's Bookshops in Naperville and Downers Grove, Illinois, and Beth Puffer of Bank Street Bookstore in New York City; Russ Lawrence of Chapter One Book Store in Hamilton, Montana, had been certified by ABA members as ABA president; and Gayle Shanks of Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe, Arizona, had been certified as vice president. In the Membership Report, Lawrence noted that, although membership was down slightly this past year, a hopeful sign was that ABA had 195 new members.

Domnitz then presented a year-end update on the association's initiatives and on implementation of the strategic plan. He reviewed the highlights of the first-ever Winter Institute, which provided a range of educational programs in January in Long Beach, California, free of charge to over 375 ABA member booksellers.

Domnitz also noted the growth of the Booksellers Forum program; the burgeoning ABACUS study, now in its fourth year; the planned BookWeb.org redesign; the Booksellers Relief Fund; and ABA's partnership with Above the Treeline, which allows bookstores to sign up for the online software product without paying a setup fee.

In conclusion, Domnitz pledged to the attending booksellers that he and staff would work to ensure that "at the end of the day, it's a little safer and it's a little easier place for booksellers to do what is the most important job in the world: to disseminate information."

The meeting concluded with New Business -- with three booksellers asking the Board to look for ways to enhance transparency. Ed Morrow of Northshire Bookstore in Manchester Center, Vermont, called for the Board to have "greater transparency" in terms of ABA's financials and suggested the establishment of an independent financial committee. He also handed the Board members a report he had prepared addressing these issues. Kaplan assured him that the report would receive full consideration by the Board. Bill Petrocelli of Book Passage in Corte Madera, California, encouraged the Board to look beyond traditional criteria when assessing senior executives' salaries. And Miriam Sontz of Powell's Books in Portland, Oregon, urged the Board to consider these matters without emotion. As a former Board member, she said she understood the nuances involved in many of these matters, but was concerned that other bookstore members might not be aware of all the salient facts. --David Grogan


Booksellers & Authors Share Festive Book Sense Lunch

Yesterday, booksellers with Book Sense gathered for the Sixth Annual Book Sense Author Lunch to honor more than 50 authors and illustrators whose titles are past or current Book Sense Picks. Gayle Shanks, ABA's new vice-president/secretary, was emcee of the event. Before recognizing the work of the many authors in the audience, Shanks extended thanks to Levenger, Tools for Serious Readers, which sponsored the lunch. She then acknowledged the authors who, she said, have "taken us all on wonderful journeys ... as they've opened our minds, sharpened our senses, challenged our preconceptions, entertained our spirits, and gladdened our hearts through the pages of their work."

Among the Book Sense Picks authors and illustrators in attendance were three of this year's Book Sense Book of the Year winners and a number of honor book recipients, who expressed thanks to independent booksellers.

To demonstrate his appreciation for all that independent booksellers do, Book Sense Book of the Year winner for children's illustrated, Jon J Muth, author and illustrator of Zen Shorts (Scholastic Press), told a moving story about Boris Pasternak. Muth said that during a rarely allowed reading in Stalinist Russia, Pasternak dropped his sheaf of poems. As he bent to pick them up, one audience member of the thousands in attendance began reciting where Pasternak had left off. Others joined him until the entire audience chanted Pasternak's poem back to him, as tears ran down his face. "That story resonates because that's what all of you do," said Muth. "All of you independent booksellers put books in the hands of readers so they can chant our books back to us, the authors. Thank you for that, for the generous reciprocity you afford us."

John Grogan, author Marley & Me: Life and Love With the World's Worst Dog (Morrow), the top November Book Sense Pick, told the crowd that "independent booksellers did a great job handselling right from the start." He noted, "If Marley were here -- well, if Marley were here, he would have pulled off several tablecloths -- and then would say, 'Bad dogs rock!' and so do independent booksellers."

Book Sense Book of the Year nonfiction winner co-author, Stephen J. Dubner (Freakonomics: A Rogue Economists Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, Morrow), told the audience that the book echoed Jerry Seinfeld's concept of "a show about nothing." He expressed amazement and admiration that hundreds of independent booksellers were able to turn this genre-less book into a mega-bestseller. "I don't know how you do it," Dubner said.

After the event, Dave Barry (Peter and The Shadow Thieves, Hyperion Books/Disney Publishing) told BTW how much he appreciates doing signings at independent bookstores. "When I'm on the road on a book tour, I know if I have a signing at an independent bookstore it's going to be really good. They'll do it right: they'll have people there, and they'll be really happy I'm there, which means a lot. When you're on the road, it's something to look forward to." --Karen Schechner


BookSense.com & Gift Card Users Groups Meet

Friday's programming kicked off with the BookSense.com Users Group Meeting, presented by Len Vlahos, BookSense.com director; Ricky Leung, the BookSense.com tech lead; and Scott Nafz, BookSense.com's senior customer service coordinator. Over 70 booksellers attended the session to learn about the latest features of BookSense.com, as well as planned enhancements. Following the updates, there was a Q&A period.

Among the updates and enhancements discussed at the Users Group were BookSense.com's new templates. "The templates we have now are seven years old and last summer, we hired a company called OrangeYouGlad to design new ones," Vlahos reported. "Yesterday, the first of the new templates went live." Providing attendees with a look at the page, he noted, "The product page is more streamlined. And in six to eight weeks there will be more color palettes, and after that the next template."

The new templates drew a positive response from attendees, and Sarah Pishko of Prince Books in Norfolk, Virginia, commented, "It's much cleaner looking." In reference to the product page, attendees suggested it would be better if the book descriptions were moved to the top and the title information moved to the bottom of the page.

Vlahos also noted that BookSense.com had improved its search engine to provide users with more relevant results. "We've taken five or six years of Book Sense bestseller data," he said. "Our system looks at that and makes a determination of what is the most relevant."

Other topics at the BookSense.com Users Group Meeting included a status update on BookSense.com's ISBN-13 conversion and the ability to upload data twice daily.

The Book Sense Gift Card Users Group, which followed the BookSense.com Users Group gathering, brought together approximately 25 booksellers who are currently part of the gift card program and several who came to learn more about it. The meeting was led by ABA Marketing Director Jill Perlstein, who announced two items of gift card news.

POS vendor Anthology recently became certified to process Book Sense Gift Cards, Perlstein said, joining BookLog, Computac/Square One, IBID, and WordStock, which are already certified. And, Perlstein noted, POS systems are just one way to process the cards. All booksellers also have access to the WebPOS, which is included in the program.

Perlstein also announced that Random House Children's Books is sponsoring limited edition Book Sense gift cards, featuring popular characters from several of its children's books, as well as one bearing the FREADom logo, to celebrate Banned Books Week. Characters featured on the new cards, which will be available for shipment in August, are Babar, The Cat in the Hat, My Father's Dragon, and Pat the Bunny. To help ABA and Random House project print runs for the cards, booksellers in the audience were asked to fill out a preliminary order form.

Because Random House is paying for the card, the presenter, and the transaction fee, booksellers will be saving 80 cents per combination, said Perlstein, who noted that an order form for the cards would be made available to stores with Book Sense through an announcement in BTW next week.

After an overview of the program and a short Q&A period, Perlstein reminded the group that the answers to most of their questions could be found in the information provided on the Gift Card Page of BookWeb.org, and that she and ABA's Linda Ford were just a phone call [(800) 637-0037, exts. 6642 or 6644] or an e-mail [[email protected] or [email protected]] away.


The 2006 Children's Book & Author Breakfast

The 2006 Children's Book and Author Breakfast featured both award-winning authors and booksellers. The popular event was presented in cooperation with the Children's Booksellers and Publishers Committee, a cooperative committee of the American Booksellers Association, the Association of Booksellers for Children, and the Children's Book Council.

Bookstores from Vermont and Virginia were the recipients of the Lucile Micheels Pannell Awards for Excellence in Children's Bookselling, presented by the Women's National Book Association's Eileen Hanning and Jill Tardiff. Northshire Bookstore in Manchester Center, Vermont, was honored as best general bookstore, and A Likely Story Children's Bookstore in Alexandria, Virginia, won in the children's specialty category. The two winning stores each received a check for $1,000 and a framed piece of original art created by two children's book illustrators, Graeme Base and Marla Frazee.

Northshire was lauded for the particularly enthusiastic and welcoming environment it provides for teenagers in its store and caf. A Likely Story was recognized for its numerous specialized storytimes, snow day specials, summer camps for readers, and family nights.

The breakfast's lively speaker roster began with humorist Dave Barry and crime fiction writer Ridley Pearson, co-creators of Peter and the Shadow Thieves (Hyperion Books/Disney Publishing). The two, who are also founding members of the literary band The Rock Bottom Remainders, were full of self-deprecating comments about themselves and glowing praise for children's booksellers. "We love you folks," said Barry, "Without you, we'd have to go out and get real jobs." He also spoke of the comfort booksellers provide when an author arrives for a signing and nobody shows up. "Don't feel bad," he remembered a bookseller once told him. "It's always dead like this just before Christmas."

Next, Laurie Halse Anderson, author of Speak (Puffin/Penguin Young Readers), drew a burst of applause when she offered her response to anyone who says teenagers don't like to read. "Teenagers don't like to read boring books," she said.

Describing booksellers as "the hinge" between readers and books, she told those present, "Without you, our work is meaningless."

Marc Brown, author of the 30-year-old Arthur series (Little, Brown) spoke passionately about books, bookselling, and the need to make changes in the status quo. He objected to the "Harry Potter effect," which, he said, had young children reading the Potter books on their own. "We're making children grow up too quickly, those books [Potter and others] are too long and too violent for young children," he said. Describing the plethora of celebrity books on the market as being "not very good," Brown called for the dissemination of quality picture books.

Expressing his pleasure to booksellers who have recognized the amusing quality of his work, Brown told the audience that even after selling about 50 million books over 30 years, "My own children never found me to be very funny." --Nomi Schwartz


A Q&A With Book Sense Book of the Year Fiction Winner Elizabeth Kostova

Among those honored at last night's annual Celebration of Bookselling was Elizabeth Kostova, the winner of the 2006 Book Sense Book of the Year Award for Fiction. Kostova's compelling debut novel, The Historian (Little, Brown), is about a teenage girl's discovery of a medieval book that spurs her on a quest to find the murderous ruler Vlad the Impaler -- better known today as the fiendish Dracula.

In nominating Kostova's novel for the June 2005 Book Sense Picks, bookseller Luisa Smith of Book Passage in Corte Madera, California, wrote, "History and intrigue are the foundations of this dark and wonderful novel, a scary and beautiful story about a dark quest for Dracula. Taking the reader all over Europe, The Historian mixes history with fantasy and creates a chilling literary thriller."

BTW recently had a chance to talk to Kostova via e-mail regarding The Historian, her Book Sense Book of the Year Award, and more.

BTW: How did you become interested in Vlad the Impaler and Dracula? What is it that intrigues you about him?

Elizabeth Kostova [EK]: I first became interested in Bram Stoker's Dracula when I was a child, because my father, a wonderful storyteller, told me a series of tales based on the classic Hollywood Dracula films he'd grown up with. I loved these pleasantly creepy stories. Most importantly, he told them to me while we were traveling in Eastern Europe, where he had a teaching fellowship, so that Dracula has always been associated for me with that region, with travel, with real history, with fathers and daughters. It was a wonderful legacy. I became interested in the separate figure of Vlad the Impaler years later.

BTW: Given the literary and cinematic legacy of Dracula, was the task of writing a novel about him, especially a first novel, intimidating?

EK: Yes. It's very intimidating to try to write a fresh fiction about a mythic figure. Sometimes I felt that I was sitting down to write in a room already crowded with people.

BTW: You have said that it took you 10 years to write The Historian. What surprised you most during your research?

EK: The thing that surprised me most was the degree to which Vlad the Impaler was famous in Europe in his own lifetime. As I note in the novel, that's quite an accomplishment for a medieval ruler.

BTW: What are you working on now?

EK: A second novel. This one isn't gothic, but it is again about how, as modern people, we collide with history -- in a very different way.

BTW: What does it mean to you to win the Book Sense Book of the Year Award?

EK: I am extremely honored and proud to know that my novel has gotten this award. Booksellers are some of the best readers in the world -- experienced, critical, discerning (after all, they have to sell the damn things!). This particular award means a great deal to me.

BTW: Do you have a favorite independent bookstore?

EK: I love the many indies I've been to across the country, this last year, but every writer has a hometown store -- my heart's with Nicola's Books in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I can't stay out of there for more than four days at a time. --Interview by David Grogan

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