New Booksellers Mark an Upbeat GLBA

by Edward Nawotka, PW Daily -- Publishers Weekly, 10/9/2006

Sports distracted some booksellers this past Saturday at the Great Lakes Booksellers Association trade show held at the Hyatt Regency in Dearborn, Mich. Booksellers were faced with a conundrum: leave the show floor to catch either the Detroit Tigers fourth playoff game against New York Yankees or the annual Michigan-Michigan State football rivalry, both scheduled for a 4:30 p.m. start, or stick around the show floor to find out if they won the raffle for the Pirate's Treasure Chest of books provided by exhibitors. The prize corresponded with this year's show theme: "Pirates of the Great Lakes: Hoist Your Sales, Aaargh!"

Sports notwithstanding, Bill McGarr, owner of publishers rep group McGarr & Associates, said that orders at his booth were better than in previous years. "The show has been more upbeat," he told PW Daily. "Though it's been a lackluster sales year and Michigan economy hasn't been great, booksellers are looking for positive fourth quarter."

Another boon for the region was the arrival of 37 "first timers" at the show, including 10 new and prospective booksellers. One fresh face was Roni Devlin, who plans to open Literary Life Bookstore & More in Grand Rapids, Mich., early next year. After six months of planning and training, which included a session with Donna Paz's bookselling school at BEA, she is "excited about the prospects and ready to go." Though she wasn't yet ordering stock, the show offered her the opportunity "to get some tips and network."

Jim Dana, executive director of the GLBA, told PW that the new booksellers he'd met are better prepared than in the past. "They're more methodical and businesslike," said Dana. "They have actual business plans and we now have an infrastructure to support them." Official numbers were not available, but Dana reported that "attendance was about the same as in previous years," with a small drop in exhibitors.

PGW sales rep John Mesjak reported brisk orders for his lines of featuring quirkier titles, such as Grove Atlantic's Black Cat trade paperback imprint, McSweeney's Books and Actionopolis Books, a new publisher that has enlisted comic book writers to pen prose novels for kids. "Independent booksellers are interested in finding the books that they can handsell and that might otherwise be unavailable in the chain stores," explained Mesjak.

Adult books generating the most buzz were Wisconsin author Michael Perry's second chronicle of life in his small Wisconsin town, Truck: A Love Story (HarperCollins), and Bill Bryson's memoir of his 1950s Iowa childhood, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid (Broadway). Children's booksellers tapped Maurice Sendak's popup book Mommy? (Scholastic/Michael di Capua Books), David Wiesner's Flotsam (Clarion) and Michelle Knudsen's Library Lion (Candlewick) as some of their favorites for the forthcoming Christmas push.

Holtzbrinck sales rep Anne Hellman noted that booksellers were also showing a strong interest in graphic novels, especially after the success of FSG's illustrated edition of The 9/11 Commission Report, but ordering was still tentative. "Every bookseller really wants to get into graphic novels, but they're still not sure which ones to buy and how to merchandise them," she said.