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The Spirit of St. Louis Bookstores
What a difference nine months can make. St. Louis, Mo.’s booksellers are feeling a confidence and optimism these days that didn’t exist in February, when four independent booksellers—Left Bank Books, Subterranean Books, Pudd’nhead Books, and Main Street Books—formed the St. Louis Independent Bookstore Alliance (SLIBA) in an effort to keep Subterranean from going out of business.
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Obituary: Nicky Salan, 1934-2011
San Francisco bookseller Necia (“Nicky”) Salan, a founding mother of both the Association of Booksellers for Children (now the ABC Children’s Group at the ABA) and the Northern California Children’s Booksellers Association, died at home after a long illness on Monday, October 10. She was 77 years old. The bookstore she founded, Cover to Cover Booksellers in San Francisco, grew out of her love for children’s literature and small, Saturday sales of children’s literature from her home.
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Borders: More Troubles with IP Sale
After what turned out to be a minor hiccup when it looked as if Barnes & Noble’s purchase of Borders’s intellectual property assets might founder because of Judge Martin Glenn’s concerns over privacy issues, Borders and the Creditors’ Committee together with the consumer privacy ombudsman Michael St. Patrick Baxter got things back on track within a matter of days, and it was approved late last month. Now new concerns have arisen about how B&N is meeting the sale proviso to give customers the ability to opt out.
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College Bookstores in Dynamic Times
The digital transition and sputtering economy are not only bringing changes to general bookstores, but to college bookstores as well. College stores are dealing with a changed landscape of their own: more textbook choices that now include rentals and digital texts; trade book sections with sales declines; and now that college apparel, or spirit wear, has become a fashion statement, other retailers, including Victoria’s Secret, are getting in on the action.
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Three Questions for a Children's Bookseller: Meghan Goel
Meghan Goel, children’s book buyer at BookPeople in Austin, Tex., cues us in to the books she (and her customers) are looking forward to this season.
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Kids' Books Front and Center at MPIBA
Given that children’s book buyer Meghan Goel of BookPeople in Austin, Tex., is president of the Mountains and Plains Independent Booksellers Association and that children’s books have been a bright spot for many stores this year, children’s authors were front and center at last weekend’s MPIBA trade show.
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NAIBA Offers Tips for Holding YA Events
"We know YA literature is hot; we know it’s good; and we know teens are reading it. But we can’t get teens in our stores when authors are in it," said moderator Heather Hebert of Children’s Book World in Haverford, Pa., as she introduced the NAIBA panel on How to Host Successful YA Events.
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NAIBA: Children's Bookselling Reconstructed
Children’s programming was an integral part of last month’s New Atlantic Booksellers Association annual conference at the Golden Nugget in Atlantic City (Sept. 19-22).
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Borders Files Liquidation Plan
Borders filed a motion Monday outlining plans to create a Liquidation Trust that will handle remaining payments to creditors. It is not currently known how much money will be available to pay publishers and other unsecured creditors, although the plan confirms that shareholders will receive no payments.
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B&N Exercises Its IP Options
After the U.S. bankruptcy court gave Barnes & Noble’s final approval for its purchase of Borders.com and Borders’s intellectual property last week, the retailer made quick work of notifying its former rival’s customers the reasons why they were interested in the assets. -
MPIBA to Launch Consumer Web Site & BYOB
The Mountains and Plains Independent Booksellers Association announced two new programs intended to help booksellers: an ad-driven program called Bring on Your Books (BYOB), and a consumer Web site called Buzzaboutbooks.org.
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MPIBA: Enthusiastic Show
Like its members, Mountains and Plains Independent Booksellers Association has been rethinking everything it does, including a new venue for this year’s trade show, the Renaissance Denver (Sept. 30-Oct. 2).
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Is POD Ready for Prime Time?
HarperCollins's announcement that it will make 5,000 backlist titles available through On Demand Books' Espresso Book Machine in November—with Zondervan and HarperCollins Canada titles to be added early next year—brings a print-on-demand tipping point a step closer, but with more hurdles to overcome.
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St. Mark's Bookshop Rent Fate Settled in October
Cooper Union, the landlord of St. Mark's Bookshop, has sent a letter to its finance committee asking it to examine the bookstore's request for a lower rent.
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Amazon Unveils $199 Kindle Fire Tablet, Three New Kindle Models Starting at $79
At a packed press event in New York this morning, Amazon unveiled its long-expected tablet offering, called the Kindle Fire, as well as three new Kindle devices.
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EBM to Register Titles with Google Merchant Center
"Search global, print local" could become the new slogan for Espresso Book Machine users given today’s announcement that On Demand Books, the company behind the EBM, will register its network of more than seven million paperback titles with Google Merchant Center.
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Court Denies Injunction Against 'Elf Off the Shelf'
A judge has denied a request for the injunction against F+W Media and its Adams Media line, which faced legal woes over its big holiday title, the seasonal parody Elf Off the Shelf. This means Adams can return to actively promoting the book to its accounts and on its special ElfOfftheShelf.com Web site.
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It's a New World for MIBA
Usually, one or two authors or books ignite bookseller gatherings and steal the show. This year, however, it was the venue – the Renaissance Hotel in a historic 19th-century train station (nicknamed “The Depot”) between downtown Minneapolis and the Mississippi River, that upstaged everything and everybody at the Midwest Independent Booksellers’s annual conference (Sept. 22-23).
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Joseph-Beth Booksellers Adds Fourth Store
Five months after emerging from bankruptcy with a new owner, real estate developer Robert Langley, Joseph-Beth Booksellers is opening a store in northern Kentucky.
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MIBA, GLIBA May Merge Shows
Even though it came as a surprise to some booksellers, it didn’t come as a surprise to others: the Midwest Independent Booksellers Association and the Great Lakes Independent Booksellers Association are contemplating merging shows.
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