Outgoing GLIBA President Issues “Call to Arms”

By Claire Kirch -- Publishers Weekly, 10/6/2008 3:06:00 PM

At the just concluded Great Lakes Independent Booksellers Association fall trade show, Carol Besse, GLIBA’s outgoing board president and co-owner of Carmichael’s Books in Louisville, Kent., jolted more than 200 booksellers at Saturday’s breakfast and annual meeting by sounding a forceful call to arms, urging them to not only build alliances with other independent retailers, authors, and customers, but also to “get out there in front” of store patrons and explicitly explain why consumers shouldn’t buy books from Amazon.com. It’s a matter of survival and a quality-of-life issue for entire communities, Besse explained, also calling for a “grassroots effort to re-educate every author” who visits independents, asking them to disable links to Amazon.com on their Web sites.

“It’s a radical proposal, but I’m a radical kind of girl,” a fired-up Besse declared, next blasting Chelsea Green for making its recent release, Obama’s Challenge, available exclusively on Amazon.com for two weeks after its laydown, and author Jonathan Alter of Newsweek magazine going to Borders’s State Street Press to publish his anthology, Between the Lines, which is available exclusively at Borders and Waldenbooks stores.

“Don’t expect publishers to be our allies,” Besse said, “Work with the publishers, but don’t depend on them. They’re in it to survive too. I’m sorry to paint such a grim picture, but I think we’re entering a grim time.” Retailers in the Great Lakes area have been doing business in an already-depressed region that has gone into an economic tailspin this past year with skyrocketing unemployment and home foreclosures.

On the show floor, booksellers continued to buzz about politics and the economy, in between talking up the books, with floor traffic holding strong and steady throughout the day. While some beautifully-illustrated nonfiction titles, such as the Of Woods and Water: A Photographic Journey Across Michigan by Ron Leonetti and Christopher Jordan (Quarry Books, Oct.), The Oxford Project by Stephen G. Bloom and Peter Feldstein (RH/Welcome Books, Sept.) and American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon by Steven Rinella (Spiegel & Grau, Dec.), intrigued booksellers, edgy fiction most excited them, including Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese (Knopf, Feb.): Little Bee by Chris Cleave (Bond St. Books, Feb.), The Leisure Seeker by Michael Zadoorian (Morrow, Feb.); and Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell (Little Brown, Feb.).

Children’s booksellers were out in full force throughout the weekend, with some general booksellers expressing an interest in expanding their inventory by stocking more “recession-proof” children’s books. Though holiday picks were snapped up at exhibitors’ booths, the hottest children’s books at the show were YA titles exploring dark themes, including Eon: Dragoneye Reborn by Alison Goodman (Viking, Dec.), Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson (S&S Young Readers, Oct.), and The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (Scholastic, Sept.).

“I was thrilled to see Hunger Games get that response from booksellers, and not just children’s booksellers,” Cynthia Compton of 4 Kids Books in Indianapolis said after Collins spoke at Sunday’s children’s book & author breakfast. Like other booksellers at the show, Compton reported that sales are holding steady, but that her staff is working harder, “handselling like crazy” to patrons who purchase fewer books. Jill Miner of Saturn Books in Gaylord, Mich. reported that her sales are up, but costs are up, too, and with patrons buying more paperbacks than hardcovers, her staff “has to sell twice as money books to stay the same.” And while Liz Murphy of The Learned Owl in Hudson, Ohio, also reported that the economy is having an impact on her store’s sales, she said she’s “trained” herself to consider that “things are great”-- after all Murphy noted--“People are still reading.”

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