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Welcome
to the Vol. 7, No. 8 August 2009Index (scroll down for stories)
1. Shanks
to speak at Great American Bargain Book Show in Boston
Here’s good news for bookstore owners and managers looking for ideas on how to survive in the current economy.
Gayle Shanks, outgoing president of the American Booksellers Association, the
trade association for independent book stores, will share her ideas on how to
meet challenges and survive in the current recessionary economy. Shanks will speak at the Great American Bargain Book Show (GABBS), which will be held at Boston’s Hynes Convention Center on Aug. 21-22. She is scheduled to speak at 8:30 a.m. on Aug. 21. Shanks has been a bookseller since 1974, when she and a friend opened a tiny 500-square-foot used book store, Changing Hands, in Tempe, Ariz. The store moved twice and grew to 12,000 square feet and now carries new and used books and lots of gift items. Shanks, who has a degree in English literature from Arizona State University, never imagined that she would have a career as a bookseller, but once the store opened she never wanted to do anything else. She spends her days ordering books, recommending books and creating a community gathering place where authors come nearly every day of the year to read from their work. The children’s section, one of the largest in the state, includes books and educational toys for children and teens. Shanks plans to tell independent bookstore personnel from the Eastern Seaboard attending her presentation how they can make their stores more profitable. According to Shanks, success depends on booksellers offering customers a mix of new books, used books, gifts and remainders. She recently told Bargain Book News, a newsletter covering the remainder book industry, that other activities that can mean the difference between surviving and having to close include having a strong offering of children’s books, continuous marketing activities, holding authorless events, making the bookstore a gathering place and source of free entertainment and judicious use of email newsletters. 2. Savvy author promotes holiday book package with YouTube clips Author Ron Clancy, one of America's most knowledgeable authorities on the history of Christmas music, has long been recounting the history of Christmas carols both domestic and European. When Ron heard heavenly Christmas carols sung by a choir of nuns at his first Midnight Mass at a Catholic orphanage in Philadelphia, he was hooked. He eventually sang in the orphanage boys’ choir. In later years he collected Christmas music of all genres and by 1982 he had assembled a sizable library. He has already packaged three separate Christmas carol packages. Each package contains CDs with the best recordings of each song and a colorful hardback book that details the history of each recording, all packaged in a handsome gift box. One of Clancy’s most popular packages is “American Christmas Classics,” featuring 47 Christmas songs that originated in the United States on three CDs. The carols featured include Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas” as recorded by Bing Crosby. In case you didn’t know, “White Christmas” sold more records than any other American tune in history up to the release of Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind” – and Elton John had to issue two separate versions of his pop tune in order to break the “White Christmas” sales record. The other 46 carols featured in the “American Christmas Classics” package range from pop favorites such as “The Little Drummer Boy” to more religious tunes such as “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” Clancy has already sold thousands of the “American Christmas Classics” package, which carries a suggested retail of $69.95, but is also available direct from Clancy’s Web site for $39.95. Now, to enhance sales of the package, Clancy is placing professionally produced trailers for 23 of the 47 carols in the “American Christmas Classics” package on YouTube. Each trailer runs about three minutes and details the history of how the song came to be. If you’re looking for examples of how to produce a trailer, by all means visit. http://tinyurl.com/ks3dmn, http://tinyurl.com/ngsbgf and http://tinyurl.com/ma3nyz .
3. Oprah Book Club plugs 20 summer beach reads: Effect on sales? Everyone knows that an author’s appearance on Oprah Winfrey’s afternoon TV show can provide a big boost in sales. An endorsement by Oprah on the air to her vast following of females, who buy most of the books in the U.S., can rocket a book to best-seller status. But what about Oprah’s Book Club, an online device that lacks the punch of a personal author appearance on Oprah’s nationally telecast show? Can an endorsement boost sales? To answer that question, we decided to take a look at sales of 20 books that the Oprah Book Club listed on June 15 recommended as "20 Tantalizing Beach Reads" because "summer is a time to stray from the beaten track, to read books that might elude you in the busier season,” the site said, adding, “We've got sweet, salty reads for bathing and beyond." The Southern Review took a look at the Amazon rankings for the 20 books on June 16, and again on August 2, after visitors to the Book Club site had had ample time to make their purchases. Following are the rankings we found:
Former Vice President Dick Cheney has signed an estimated $2 million deal with Simon & Schuster's Threshold Editions to write a memoir, the New York Times reports. The book is scheduled for release in the spring of 2011… Kassia Kroszer, Kirk Biglione, Kat Meyer and an unnamed partner have officially announced start-up Quartet Press, a "fledgling digi-publisher" accepting submissions for its romance line Quench! starting this fall.” Their books will be available without DRM (digital rights management).
5. ‘Southern Review’ editor recovering from open-heart surgery Griese was diagnosed with five heart artery blockages in a routine thallium stress test and echocardiogram scheduled by his personal physician and cardiologist, Dr. Stuart Katz, on June 29. On July 2, Dr. Victor Corrigan refined the diagnosis by performing a catheterization at the Fuqua Heart Center at Atlanta’s Piedmont Hospital. Blockages of up to 80 percent in five heart arteries were discovered. Surgery was performed at Piedmont on July 7 by a team of specialists headed by Dr. John P. Gott, who previously performed more than 9,000 successful open heart surgeries at Emory University Hospitals and the Fuqua Center at Piedmont. “I was fortunate to have such a highly competent group of physicians and associates to look after me during the crisis,” Griese said. “I apologize if I’m a bit slow in resuming my editorial duties. I have additional health responsibilities to look after now, but give me 6-8 weeks, and I should be pretty much back to normal.” Griese thanked those who extended get well wishes and prayers on his behalf. He said he plans to write an online account of his experiences for those who face similar diagnoses and are scheduled for similar surgeries. 6. A Georgia resident's long road to 2009 Pulitzer
by Ken Edelstein, Georgia Online News Service Douglas A. Blackmon's Slavery by Another Name, which won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction, is such a book. Those who read it are forced to accept a new understanding of the American South - that racial injustice was more violent, widespread and recent than most of us realized, and that it played a larger role in the region's economic and cultural development than many Southerners will ever acknowledge. The central thesis is that, contrary to what we learn in the history books, slavery did not end with the Civil War. Rather, it lived on well into the 20th century as an informal, barbaric system that developed hand-in-hand with black disenfranchisement and white profiteering. Blackmon's masterpiece was a long time coming. In 2001, the Atlanta journalist wrote a lengthy article in The Wall Street Journal on U.S. Steel profiting from conscripted black laborers in Alabama coal mines during the early 1900s. I happened to pick up the Journal that day, because Blackmon's familiar byline caught my eye. Like other readers, I was gripped by the story. Blackmon had combed deeply enough through Alabama court records and ancient corporate documents to build a tale of widespread cruelty and death, corruption, and social amnesia. He told that tale in a patient, neutral voice, confident that the unembellished truth would be enough to produce a natural outrage. Shortly afterward, Blackmon started talking about a book that would expand on the same general subject. But he had a day job as deputy Atlanta bureau chief for the Journal, and he was promoted to bureau chief during the time he supposedly was working on this side project. As the years passed, many who knew him (at least those, like me, who would run into him casually) wondered when - even whether - the book would be finished. Slavery By Another Name was worth the wait. It turns out that Blackmon somehow found the time to plug away on his research in county courthouses, online databases and corporate libraries, as well as by interviewing people who were old enough to recount bits and pieces of a history that had never truly been recorded. Some people actually do hold a collective memory of the ugly chapter that Slavery by Another Name uncovers. At a book signing last year, Blackmon noted that many black Southerners began to tell him during his research (and apparently even more after the book's publication) that they'd grown up with stories of relatives who'd been sentenced to a brief prison term on a minor or even trumped-up charge, only to disappear into the corrupt convict-leasing system, never to return again to their loved ones. White families, Blackmon noted, didn't pass down such lore: Their relatives seldom fell victim to the system - so why would they fixate on it? Other whites were the perpetrators - not the kind of thing you boast about to your children. But the legacy of a reality forgotten by the majority race lived on. Some families - among them leading families in Atlanta - reaped lasting wealth and power out of their exploitation and cruelty. Other families gained only pain and sorrow. That is one reason Slavery by Another Name is an important book to Southerners, especially white ones. It forces us to revise our understanding of how we got where we now are. Blackmon's book documents that the lore handed down within the South's minority culture truly is the history of us all. (Ken Edelstein blogs at www.atlantaunsheltered.com. [full bio] ) 7. News about bookstores, publishing, marketing and promotion The death of Michael Jackson posed a dilemma for Newsweek magazine. The staff had planned to run as its cover story a piece on the 100 best books of all time. The editors compromised, adding a lengthy tribute to Jackson to the issue which became the cover story for newsstand sales, while the feature on the 100 best books was the cover for copies mailed to subscribers. Declaring the best book ever written is tricky business. Who's to say what the best is? Newsweek crunched the numbers from 10 top books lists (Modern Library, the New York Public Library, St. John's College reading list, Oprah's, and more) to come up with The Top 100 Books of All Time. It's a list of lists - a meta-list. Further information: http://www.newsweek.com/id/204478… Speaking of pop legend Michael Jackson, Amber Books of Phoenix, Ariz., has reissued its popular biography of the talented performers, adding a series of new photos… Congratulations to John Mutter’s Shelf Awareness newsletter, which in June celebrated its fourth birthday. The initial issue went to a “friends and family” list. That has grown to where the free newsletter, which caters to the independent bookstore market, now has a circulation of 18,000. Lately, the newsletter has been publishing once a month special editions focusing on specific publishers/imprints. It plans to do some future special editions, which it will call “Maximum Shelf,” on particular books/authors… Speaking on the topic of “Stupid Things that Booksellers Do” at BEA 2009, SourceBooks CEO Dominique Raccah suggested that booksellers should work more closely with independent publishers. The six major publishing houses have 54 percent of BookScan sales, she noted, and yet booksellers spend far more than 54 percent of their time on them. "Bookstores should represent a wide range of titles and companies," she advised… Amazon.com has informed its North Carolina marketing affiliates that it will stop doing business with them by July 1 if the state passes a law forcing online retailers to collect the 4.5 percent sales tax. "We believe the way North Carolina is going about collecting the sales tax is unconstitutional," said Amazon spokeswoman Patty Smith. "It isn't appropriate for us to have to comply with an unconstitutional burden." 8. Take photo of book barcode with smart phone, get instant book info
HarperCollins is using 2-D barcodes to send book information to smart phones.
9. Books to Movies Department The 12-episode second season of HBO's “True Blood,” based on the books by Charlaine Harris, began airing on June 14. The second series, according to USA Today, is "about vampires gingerly entering society after the discovery of synthetic blood eliminates the need - if not always the desire - to feed on humans… roughly follows Harris's second Sookie Stackhouse novel, Living Dead in Dallas." Harris loved the first season. She notes that a certain percentage of her readers “believe the show is pornographic. A huger percentage love it and are very anxious for their favorite scenes from the books to be re-created in the show." 10. How bad is it – and what is the book business doing to cope? April bookstore sales fell 2.5 percent to $969 million, down for the third month in a row this year, according to preliminary estimates from the Census Bureau. For the year to date, bookstore sales dropped 3.8 percent to $5.210 billion… Barnes & Noble is scaling back its superstore plans for 2009, the Wall Street Journal reported. B&N had hoped to open as many as 35 superstores. Instead, it will open 15. The retailer will also close 15 superstores this year, five more than earlier forecast. That’s bad news for publishers, who rely on bookstore expansions to open new markets and growth for them… Sales fell 6.7 percent at Wiley in their fourth quarter, at $403 million and earnings per share declined 14.3 percent. For the full fiscal year, revenue fell 3.7 percent to $1.6 billion, reflecting a $120 million negative effect from foreign exchange, and earnings per share declined 13.7 percent. The professional/trade segment had sales of $97 million for the fourth quarter, down 15 percent. For the full year, the division recorded sales of $413 million, down 13 percent, and contribution to profit was $95 million, compared to $137 million a year ago… Because of drops in state funding, the Minnesota Historical Society Press/Borealis Books is cutting four positions and 30 percent of new titles, or about 9 out of the 30 books it publishes annually. The press will now concentrate in five core areas: Native American studies, environment and the land (which includes nature/travel and tourism/food and cookery), the immigration experience, Scandinavian studies and teaching Minnesota history. The press is launching an e-book initiative on July 1, offering 100 titles in a variety of digital formats that include the Kindle, the Sony Reader and digital delivery to public and academic libraries.
11. The publishing revolution: News of e-books and other new media Scribd.com has launched Scribd store to sell written content that gives rightsholders 80 percent of the revenue. Scribd lets rightsholders set the prices for their content. Among the publishers participating in the beta store, according to a Scribd news release, are Lonely Planet, Berrett-Koehler and O'Reilly. Scribd plans to add an iPhone app shortly. 12. Books in bad taste, and books that taste bad According to various media reports, James Frey is co-writing a young adult novel, I Am Number Four, that is to be the first in a six-book series. According to the Hollywood Reporter, DreamWorks bought film rights for "high-six figures.” Agent Eric Simonoff at William Morris Entertainment is handling rights. Simonoff bills the books as by an "unnamed New York Times best-selling author and a young up-and-coming writer." The New York Times says the book is "about a group of nine alien teenagers on a planet called Lorien, which is attacked by a hostile race from another planet. The nine and their guardians evacuate to Earth, where three are killed. The protagonist, a Lorien boy named John Smith, hides in Paradise, Ohio, disguised as a human, trying to evade his predators and knowing he is next on their list."
13. Books exploiting Michael Jackson contend for ‘RIPpie award’
Stephen Colbert takes credit for introducing the “RIPpie awards,” a competition
for the most vulgar coverage and exploitation of the death of a celebrity.
In the case of Michael Jackson, there aren’t many immediate contenders. Transit Media of Montreal, Canada, on June 30 released a Michael Jackson biography by Ian Helperin that was already in the works. Following Jackson’s death, Helperin frantically added 50 pages to the book before it was released as Michael Jackson: The Last Days. Retailers nationwide have reported huge demand for Jackson’s albums and related material following his death. Amazon said that 60 percent of all CD orders on June 25 were for Jackson-related albums. At Barnes & Noble, the web site and retail stores sold out of most Jackson CDs, DVDs and books, and Borders "sold out almost everything related to the star; albums also sold out at some of the book seller's retail locations, including its New York stores."… But while Michael Jackson may be burning up the music charts after his death, he was not selling a lot of books. Publishers Weekly reported that only one publisher, Random House/Vintage, was going back to press with a book about the pop star: On Michael Jackson, a 2007 book by Pulitzer Prize-winning culture critic Margo Jefferson. The bestselling books at Amazon.com on MJ - both ranking in the 200s - are Michael Jackson Conspiracy by Aphrodite Jones, a crime reporter's attack on the media for their handling of Jackson's trial; and Michael Jackson: For the Record by Chris Cadman, a record of the star's musical career. Both are self-published books. PW also reported that two books by Jackson himself, an autobiography titled Moonwalk (1988) and a poetry collection, Dancing the Dream (1992), are out of print. Da Capo plans to publish Nelson George's Thriller, a history of the megabestselling album and Jackson's career - and now, presumably, his death - next spring. 14. Milestones: Records and news of note in book publishing Barack Obama has crushed John McCain in the bookstores. According to the Washington Post, "McCain reported earning only $20,539 in royalties last year" from Character Is Destiny and Faith of My Fathers. President Obama, on the other hand, earned "about $2.6 million last year" from sales of The Audacity of Hope and Dreams From My Father, the Post reported. According to other accounts, the Obamas reported $2.65 million in income in 2008, $2.4 million of which was due to revenue from the presidents books. McCain was also beat out in the royalties race by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who reported $136,000 in income from The Good Fight."… According to the UK’s The Telegraph, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird finished ahead of the Bible in a recent survey conducted by OnePoll.com that asked respondents to name their most inspirational book. The other three books in the top five were Dave Pelzer's A Child Called It, John Gray's Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus and The Diary of Anne Frank… Man Gone Down by Michael Thomas has won the €100,000 (US$141,400) International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the world's richest literary prize. The Guardian reported that "the winning novel, first published by Grove Atlantic, USA, and a New York Times top ten book of 2007, was chosen from a shortlist of eight. The book, which was published in the UK this year, emerged "from an international longlist of 147 titles, nominated by libraries around the world."
15. News of chicanery, dishonesty and tort-feasing in the book business
The U.S. Justice Department's antitrust division has sent formal demands to
Google Inc. and select publishers for information about a deal that would allow
Google to make millions of books available online. Hachette CEO
David Young confirmed that his company received a civil investigative demand
(CID) regarding the Google settlement. The Justice Department is requesting
documents about pricing, digital strategy and conversations with other
publishers related to the Google settlement. The Justice Department also sent
CIDs to the Association of American Publishers and the Authors Guild. The
Justice Department began reviewing the settlement Google reached with authors
and publishers last fall after various parties complained that it would give
Google exclusive rights to profit from millions of orphan books. Orphans are
books still protected by copyrights, but that are out of print and whose authors
or rights holders are unknown or cannot be found… Amazon has told California
and South Carolina officials it will terminate its affiliates in those states if
new tax legislation is passed. The bills, which mimic one passed and now
under legal challenge in New York, could raise more than $150 million in revenue
for the two states. A spokesperson for California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
says "he has been clear that he does not support any new tax increases." The
independent bookstore members of the American Booksellers Association have been
backing such bills, arguing that they create a level playing field for the
booksellers, who have to pay state sales taxes. The U.S. Justice Department has confirmed that it is conducting an antitrust investigation into the settlement of a lawsuit that groups representing authors and publishers filed against Google. In a letter to the federal judge charged with reviewing the settlement, the Justice Department said it was reviewing concerns that the agreement could violate the Sherman Antitrust Act. "At this preliminary stage, the United States has reached no conclusions as to the merit of those concerns or more broadly what impact this settlement may have on competition," William Cavanaugh, a deputy assistant attorney general, said in the letter. "However, we have determined that the issues raised by the proposed settlement warrant further inquiry." The $125 million settlement agreement, signed in October and subject to review by a federal court, was intended to resolve a class-action lawsuit filed in 2005 by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers against Google. In the lawsuit, the authors and publishers said Google's plan to digitize millions of books from libraries and make them available in its Book Search service amounted to a violation of their copyrights. The settlement would give Google the right to display the books online, and to profit from them by selling access to individual titles and by selling subscriptions to its entire collection to libraries and other institutions. Revenue would be shared among Google, authors and publishers. Antitrust experts said the letter was the latest indication that the Justice Department is seriously examining complaints that the agreement would grant Google the exclusive right to profit from millions of so-called "orphan works," books that are out of print and whose authors or rights holders are unknown or cannot be found. U.S. District Judge Denny Chin of the Southern District of New York in Manhattan is charged with reviewing the settlement. He has set a deadline of Sept. 18 for the government to present its views in writing.
17. True to word, Amazon begins cutting off affiliates in North Carolina
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19. Mom told to pay $1.92 million for file-sharing 24 copyrighted songs
A federal jury in Minneapolis, Minn., ruled in June that Jammie Thomas-Rasset, a 32-year-old mother of four from the Minnesota city of Brainerd, willfully violated copyrights on 24 songs by offering them on her computer to others, and awarded recording companies $1.92 million, or $80,000 per song.
Thomas-Rasset’s second trial actually turned out worse for her. When a different federal jury heard her case in 2007, it levied a $222,000 judgment against her.
U.S. District Judge Michael Davis, who heard the first lawsuit in 2007, ordered a new trial after deciding he had erred in instructions to jurors.
For the retrial, Davis instructed the jurors that in order to find Thomas-Rasset infringed any copyrights, they had to determine that someone actually downloaded the songs from her computer using the Kazaa file-sharing network.
The case was the only one of more than 30,000 similar lawsuits to make it all the way to trial. The vast majority of people targeted by the music industry for sharing copyrighted material had settled for about $3,500 each.
20. Attorneys defend author-publisher of Holden Caulfield novel
Attorneys at Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz filed papers on behalf of Fredrik
Colting and his distributor, asking the court to deny JD Salinger's request for
an injunction blocking publication of 60 Years Later - Coming through the Rye.
They claim the book is "a complex and undeniably transformative exposition"
about JD Salinger and "his best known creation Holden Caulfield" that is
"protected parody, containing important commentary and criticism."
Now that he has lawyers, Colting has changed his story on the work, saying that
"while my earlier book cover and some promotional material characterized 60
Years as a sequel, I now realize this description is inaccurate and I have
changed it.... 60 Years is not in any way a continuation of Catcher
(in the Rye)."
Colting now says "my book is not designed to satisfy any interest the public
might have in learning what happened next to Holden Caulfield.... Rather it is
intended to stand on its own as a critical examination of the character Holden
Caulfield, the relationship between the author and his creation, and the life of
a particular author as he grows old but seems imprisoned by the literary
character he created."
Expert witness for the defense Sara Nelson assured the court that 60 Years
"will not have detrimental impact on sales of Catcher in the Rye."
All that said, the success or failure of the Salinger lawsuit will likely depend on the judge’s interpretation of obscure U.S. law on protection of characters in books.
According to attorney David L. Fox, quoted by Ed Nawotka, editor of Publishing Perspectives newsletter, success of the Salinger suit will likely hinge on interpretation of an obscure aspect of U.S. law.
Fox is a senior counsel at Fulbright & Jaworski L.L.P., where he is in the Intellectual Property and Technology Section of the firm’s Houston office, According to Fox, characters described in a single work of fiction usually cannot be copyrighted, as opposed to those described graphically (e.g., Mickey Mouse), or those in serial works (e.g., James Bond).
A lower court judge has initially sided with Salinger, temporarily prohibiting publication of the new book in the U.S. The judge concluded Salinger’s description of Caulfield was sufficient because Caulfield was presented in “a portrait of words.”
The judge found that in his 1951 novel, Salinger described Holden Caulfield sufficiently to copyright the character under U.S. law.
Fox’s forthcoming book, U.S. Patent Opinions and Evaluations will be published by Oxford University Press in October.
Into the Okavango is a lavishly illustrated
500-photograph, 92-poem 12-inch by 13-inch coffee table book sui
Specifications: 12 x 13, HC w/dust jacket,
216 pp.,
ISBN
978-0974218304 ,
6 per carton. |
21. News from trade shows, book fairs and book festivals
The Frankfurt Book Fair
announced that they have renewed their contract with Messe, committing the show
to the current location at least until 2022… Separately, the London Book Fair
announced that their "market focus" for the 2010 show will highlight South
Africa… BookExpo America organizer Reed Elsevier is making changes to the
show's 2010 format. The show will remain in New York City through 2012. In
2010, BEA will eliminate weekend show hours. It will start on a Tuesday (May
25), with conference sessions and special events. The expo hall also will open
that day (usually the expo opens on the second day), though only from 4 p.m. to
6 p.m. The expo will be open for full days on Wednesday and Thursday.
22. Upcoming seminars for authors, publishers and micropresses
Aug. 14-15. The Midwest Independent Publishers Association and the Independent Book Publishers Association (formerly PMA) are sponsoring a regional publishing university called Publishing Matters at the Minneapolis Airport in Bloomington, Minn.
23. Major upcoming trade shows, book fairs and book festivals
August 21-22.
http://www.gabbs.net The secret is out! The Great American Book Show is
journeying north to New England. Historical Boston, Mass., will be the host city
for GABBS 2009, slated for August 21–22. The Friday-Saturday event will be held
for the first time ever at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston’s Back Bay
area. A block of rooms for those attending has been reserved at the connecting
Sheraton Hotel.
August.
The New York International Gift Fair. New York City.
Sept. 3-7.
The Beijing International Book Fair. Thurs.-Mon., Beijing, China.
Sept. 10-12.
Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association. Thurs.-Sat., Portland, Ore.
Sept. 13-15. The Munce Group Christian Product Expo (CPE) for members only.
Munce estimates that 300 retailers, representing over 150 independent Christian
stores, and 80 product vendors, representing nearly 100 product lines, will
gather at the Embassy Suites and Conference Center in Murfreesboro, Tenn.
Training will cover subjects ranging from consumer marketing analysis to
outreach to churches and current market trends. The show floor will close on
Tuesday afternoon with cash giveaways of $400, $600, and a grand prize of
$1,500.
Sept. 13.
Brooklyn Book Festival. Sun., Brooklyn Borough Hall and Plaza, Brooklyn,
N.Y.
Sep. 19, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. First Author! Author! book festival in the courtyard of
the Princeton Shopping Center, Princeton, N.J.
topbanana@chickletbooks.com
Sept. 21-26.
Fall for the Book Festival. Mon.-Sat., George Mason University's Campus,
Fairfax, Va.
Sept. 23-26.
Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association. Wed.-Sat., Denver,
Colo.
Sept. 24-26.
Midwest Booksellers Association. Thurs.-Sat., St. Paul, Minn.
Sept. 25-27.
Baltimore Book Festival. Fri.-Sun., Baltimore, Md.
Sept. 25-27.
Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance. Fri.-Sun., Greenville, S.C. This
show includes the SIBA book award authors luncheon, team spelling bee, a
moveable feast of authors and trade show.
Sept.
West Texas Book & Music Festival. Abilene, Tex.
Sept.
National Book Festival. Washington, D.C. Sponsored by the Library of
Congress and on the Mall.
Oct. 1-3.
New England Independent Booksellers Association. Thurs.-Sat., Hartford,
Conn.
Oct. 2-3. Inaugural Sedona Book Festival in Sedona, Ariz. Activities include a
fundraising Southwest BBQ on Friday evening, with keynote speakers Barbara
Peters and Robert Rosenwald, founders of the Poisoned Pen Bookstore and the
Poisoned Pen Press, Scottsdale, who will discuss trends in publishing.
Oct. 1-4.
Amelia Island Book Festival. Thurs.-Sun., Fernandina Beach, Fla. In its
eighth year, this festival takes place on Amelia Island.
Oct. 2-4.
Great Lakes Independent Booksellers Association. Fri.-Sun., Cleveland, Ohio.
Oct. 4.
West Hollywood Book Fair. Sun., West Hollywood, Calif. Attracts around
20,000 people.
Oct. 4-5.
New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association's Fall Conference.
Sun.-Mon., Baltimore, Md.
Oct. 8-10.
Northern California Independent Booksellers Association. Thurs.-Sat.,
Oakland, Calif. Educational programming for booksellers on Friday, followed by a
trade show and other events.
Oct. 8-11.
Wordstock. Thurs.-Sun., Portland, Ore.
Oct. 10-11.
Southern Festival of Books: A Celebration of the Written Word. Fri.-Sun.,
Nashville, Tenn.
Oct. 14-18.
Frankfurt Book Fair. Wed.-Sun., Guest country: China. Biggest book show in
the world.
Oct. 17.
Louisiana Book Festival. Sat., Baton Rouge, La.
Oct. 24.
Southern California Independent Booksellers Association. Sat., Los Angeles,
Calif.
Oct. 24.
The Boston Book Festival. Sat., Boston, Mass. The fair makes its debut this
year. Website launched in early February.
Oct. 31-Nov. 1.
Texas Book Festival. Sat.-Sun., Austin, Texas. Benefitting Texas public
libraries, this year is the festival's 14th year.
Oct.
Litquake, San Francisco's Literary Festival. San Francisco, Calif.
Oct.
The New York Times Great Reads. New York City.
Oct.
Twin Cities Book Festival. Minneapolis, Minn. Sponsored by the Rain Taxi
Review of Books.
Oct.
Wisconsin Book Festival. Madison, Wis.
Oct.
Book Group Expo. San Jose, Calif.
Oct.
Kansas Book Festival. Wichita State University campus, Wichita, Kan.
Oct.
Midwest Literary Festival. Aurora, Ill.
Nov. 6-9.
CIROBE, the Chicago International Remainder and Overstock Book Exposition.
Fri.-Mon.,. Chicago, Ill. Oldest but no longer largest of remainder shows in the
U.S.
Nov. 7. Self-Publishing Book Expo. New York City,
www.selfpubbookexpo.com
Nov. 8-15.
Miami Book Fair International. Sun.-Sun., Miami, Fla. Draws hundreds of
thousands of people. The street fair runs Fri.-Sun., Nov. 13-15, and the
Congress of Writers runs the whole week.
Nov. 9.
Self-Published Book Expo, New York. It will highlight service companies
along with individual titles, and offer advice on marketing and publicity. Nov .
11-14, Publishers Association of the West's conference and trade show in Tucson,
Ariz. The association is seeking proposals for sessions and speakers; send them
to executive director Kent Watson at
kent@pubwest.org.
pubwest.org.
Nov.
Buckeye Book Fair. Wooster, Ohio.
Nov.
Connecticut Children's Book Fair. Storrs, Conn.
Nov.
Kentucky Book Fair. Frankfort, Ky.
Nov.
Vegas Valley Book Festival. Las Vegas, Nev.
Nov.
New Orleans Book Fair. New Orleans, La.
2010
March 12-15. Shortened National Association of College Stores CAMEX show in Orlando, Fla., reduced to four days from its traditional five. Under the new schedule, the trade show and educational panels will overlap somewhat on Saturday, March 13.
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"Southern
Review of Books Archives" hyperlink at the bottom of this page. The search
engine for the current edition and archives may be accessed by the button
at the bottom. The
Southern Review is edited by Noel Griese. The author of 17 books and
numerous articles on various subjects, he has been a newspaper reporter
and editor and has taught English and journalism at the Universities of
Wisconsin and Georgia. Elected to both Phi Beta Kappa and Phi Kappa Phi,
he holds three degrees in English and journalism.
pies
of the American Christmas Classics gift package have been retailed for
$69.95. Now, for a limited time, 5,000 copies of the package are available
from Anvil at remainder prices for those who buy in volume.
table
as a gift book. A finalist for four awards for excellence, it takes its readers
on 23 days of safaris through Botswana, Zimb