Bookseller Optimism High in the Mile High City

by Claire Kirch, PW Daily -- Publishers Weekly, 9/20/2006

Although Mountains and Plains Booksellers Association officials declined to disclose attendance figures, an estimated 300 booksellers gathered at the Marriott Denver Tech Center this past weekend to check out the latest offerings from more than 100 vendors. Attendance was aided by the addition of 32 new members, many from Texas stores that had been part of the now defunct Mid-South Booksellers Association, plus 10 new bookstore owners, primarily from Wyoming and Colorado. And in attendance for the first time were 20 young bookstore employees from all over the region -- the first recipients of MPBA’s new scholarship initiative -- also walked the floor.

Due to 20 fewer exhibitor tables this year, the show was held in one hall, a move which didn’t seem to faze most attendees. Every vendor PW spoke to reported a good show, with Larry Yoder, a Holtzbrinck rep, summing up the general sentiments best, stating, “A lot of people, lots of interest, lots of questions, a lot of orders. It’s exactly what a trade show should be.”

As is to be expected in a region in which residents have always felt a strong connection to the land, books that evoke a strong sense of place and its history received the most attention. These included Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier (Random House), The Wild Girl by Jim Fergus (Hyperion), Michael and Kathleen Gear’s First North Americans series (Forge), and Blood and Thunder: an Epic of the American West by Hampton Sides (Doubleday).

Mysteries and thrillers also dominated bookseller conversations. Cathy Langer of Denver’s Tattered Cover and Arsen Kashkashian of Boulder (Colo.) Bookstore both raved about William Boyd’s literary thriller Restless (Bloomsbury), with Kashkashian claiming he is going to “push it pretty hard this fall.” Susan Wasson of Bookworks in Albuquerque, N.M. talked up Kate Atkinson’s latest foray into the mystery genre, One Good Turn (Little Brown). And Lisa Craft, the new owner of Blue Heron Books in Casper, Wyo., praised mystery writer Craig Johnson’s Death Without Company (Viking).

Six weeks before mid-term elections, political titles also took center stage at this year’s MPBA. Neil Strandberg from Tattered Cover predicted that Barack Obama’s new book, The Audacity of Hope (Crown), would be “huge,” and, surprisingly, many booksellers in this stereotypically red state region look forward to stocking the satirical Bad President by R.D. Rosen and Harry Prichette (Workman) as well as a 2007 George W. Bush Out of Office Countdown calendar from Sourcebooks.

Hands down, though, the most memorable part of this year’s show was Saturday evening’s reception, in which commission rep Henry Hubert of Hubert Associates was awarded the Gordon Saull Sales Rep of the Year award, while Boulder Bookstore’s Kashkashian was named Bookseller of the Year. The ceremony continued with HarperCollins sales rep John Zeck unexpectedly taking the podium to salute Tattered Cover senior book buyer Margaret Maupin, who is retiring in December. Zeck called Maupin “the iron backbone of the industry for 20 years.” An obviously moved Maupin thanked Joyce Meskis for hiring her at the Tattered Cover 20 years ago and for being such an inspiration to all booksellers. Maupin also thanked all of her bookselling friends, the reps, and her colleagues at the Tattered Cover. She ended her remarks by saying, "As my father said, see you in the funny papers -- even though I'm not sure what that means."