We Hope to Do This Every Year

Each year, San Jose State University conducts a competition for the Bulwer-Lytton Prize for the most turgid writing submission. The winner submitted this:

Gerald began--but was interrupted by a piercing whistle which cost him ten percent of his hearing permanently, as it did everyone else in a ten-mile radius of the eruption, not that it mattered much because for them "permanently" meant the next ten minutes or so until buried by searing lava or suffocated by choking ash--to pee.

Read more at this Web site.

There, you'll find dozens of atrocious entries. Yours truly earned dishonorable mention in the years preceding my relocation to festive, clean, and just New Albany, Indiana.

Obscure footnote: We won!

Tribune Columnist Tops Harry Potter

The overwhelming cultural phenomenon and international bestseller “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” author J.K. Rowling’s final installment in the wizard school series, sold well, but not well enough to place it at the top of a local bestsellers list, released today.

Destinations Booksellers, New Albany’s full-service independent general bookstore for new books, released its Top 25 bestsellers list and Tribune columnist Terry Cummins heads the list with his collection of essays, “How Did Back Then Become Right Now?”

The list covers books sold at the store at 604 E. Spring St. during the twelve months ending July 31.

Local residents who publish with a number of different publishers are well-represented on the list. Cummins’ book, consisting primarily of previously published columns that appeared in The Tribune, is published by New Albany’s Flood Crest Press. The micropublisher placeed seven titles from local authors in the top 15.

“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” published in the U.S. by Scholastic Press, did take the second spot on the list, followed by “New Albany: Images of America,” a local pictorial history from Arcadia Publishing by local author Gregg Seidl.

A photographic calendar of iconic Southern Indiana scenes, “Southern Indiana 2007 Calendar,” with photos and design by Audra and Chuck Skibo, earned the fourth spot on the list. “New Albany in Vintage Postcards” took the fifth spot on the 2007 list. Written by David C. Barksdale and Robyn D. Sekula, the Arcadia Publishing title is the store’s all-time bestselling book.

The entire top 25 list is available at the store’s Web site, destinationsbooksellers.com.

Besides the Potter title, the top national title on the list is Barbara Kingsolver’s “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life,” at number 11.

Other titles by local authors on the list include “Skimming the Cream” by C.R. Reagan, who also writes regularly for The Tribune; “It Comes in the Night” by Calvin Lewis Jr. and Susan L. Wilhite; “The Great Flood of 1937” by Rick Bell; “The Governors of Indiana” by IU Southeast professors Linda C. Gugin and James E. St. Clair; “Sharks Never Sleep” by Sheri L. Wright; and “Veritas de Temporis” by F.E. Adkins.

Also on the list from local authors are: “At the Crest,” a collection of poetry and short stories from local secondary school students; “Lighten Up, Will Ya? I’m Serious” by Joe Bosco; “Phantoms of Old Louisville” by David Domine; “Mommy, is God a Super Hero” by Bev Lozier Jackson; “Jeffersonville: Images of America” by Garry J. Nokes; “The Underground Railroad in Floyd County, Indiana” by Pamela R. Peters; and “The Devil’s Temptation” by Kimberly Logan.

To see the list, go to www.destinationsbooksellers.com and click on the "Features" tab.

Southern Indiana Votes With Its Feet

Those of us dedicated to the revitalization of Downtown know the drill. Sentimental attachment to concepts like smart growth, independent businesses that keep their investments and their profits in the community, businesses who support community instititutions because it is their community, are not always borne out by consumer behavior.

We aren't, however, in business as a public service. We don't concede that we are inconsequential niche businesses catering to a strictly bohemian clientele. We earnestly believe, and today few rational people argue the point, that any community that chooses to hollow itself out like a donut by turning away from a central core (downtown) where money has already been invested is making a foolish, shortsighted choice.

Destinations Booksellers is here to stay.

According to Nielsen Bookscan, traditional bookstores in the Louisville metro region sold some 17,000 copies of the final installment of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Southern Indiana, by population, represents about one-sixth of the region. We're getting reports that the average Wal-Mart sold 200 copies or so. Assume that Sam's Club, Target, Kroger, Meijer, and perhaps a few more chain retailers matched those sales at each of their SI locations.

Amazon sold about 1/4 of all copies during that first weekend (why? I have no idea!) where 8.2 million copies moved. Non-bookstores sold another 1.5 million.

One would think, then, that as the only independent full-service general bookstore in Southern Indiana, Destinations Booksellers would have sold about 1,000 copies. Price would not have been determinative, as our store had a price lower than any I've heard of. The allure of a party couldn't have been determinative. We are told that our two Harry Potter parties were surpassingly good, and they were free. Finally, those who absolutely had to have the book at midnight found (and this was true across the country at independent booksellers) that distribution involved no long lines. Our guests had all their books within seven minutes.

Destinations Booksellers sold 200 copies of Harry Potter that first weekend. I can only conclude one of two things. The first is that even after three years the residents of Southern Indiana are not aware that New Albany has a bookstore, and a good one. If that's the case, you can do something about that. Tell everyone you know why you rely on us to provide you everything a bookstore can.

The second one is far more troubling. It constitutes a referendum. 57 years without an independent bookseller has ingrained some bad habits and it seems that our neighbors have cast their vote to this question: Is it important for a community to have a full-service independent bookseller? The returns say that so far the answer from most is "No."

Thanks to all of you who have voted yes. I believe the realities will hit home in the near future. Advocacy for urbanized living, rational transportation policies, and other quality-of-life issues will dictate more localism. But most of all, it will be our continued service and improvement on delivery of that service that will ensure that our region will never again be underserved.

Sorry for the dearth of postings lately. This is the busiest time and ol' Harry did nothing to make it easier. I'm going to try to set aside a specific half-hour for posting each day, even if it's a quick hit observation. I'm still reading, gobbling up books at the pace of 2 to 3 a week, and those of you who visit the store haven't suffered. We're still hand-selling and offering recommendations - just not on the Web.

For those of you who subscribe to e-mail notices of new postings, I'm eager to know if you prefer that e-mail to be the complete posting or merely a notification that something new is up. Send an e-mail or post a comment here with your thoughts on that topic, this posting, or any books-related topic.