What Book Are You?

I had promised to try to blog more often, even if it is only a quick hit. In the spirit of traditional blogs that link to interesting sites, check this one out. My fellow booksellers in the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance are having a ball with it. As for myself, I don't see how they have the time to swap e-mails about it.

To find out what book YOU are, take this quiz. If you've read it, write us to tell us why it's a good fit (or not). If you haven't, don't you think you owe it to yourself to read it?

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.

I Like This List!

We're members of the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance, the regional trade association for independent bricks-and-mortar bookstores. Arguably, SIBA is the strongest of the regional associations and although we are on the fringes of its territory, it is the region we feel closest to.

SIBA just announced the 2007 Book of the Year awards. These will be presented at our annual trade show, this year in Atlanta, Sept. 28-30. FYI, the 2008 show will be in Louisville at the Galt House, and we'll be seeking volunteers to help executive director Wanda Jewell put on the show. As a special treat, at least one other regional association will be meeting concurrently at the Galt House, making next year's show possibly the biggest regional show ever held.

We're prepared to take any of you willing to be trained to serve on our advisory board, so if you're interested in a fall trip to Atlanta to meet the authors and publishers of the year's best books, please give us a call at the store. Each of the award-winners will be on hand for the presentation of the SIBA Book of the Year awards, so that list alone should be enough to encourage you to come with us.

Regional shows are a great opportunity for us to spend time with the authors, including a very special moveable feast where dozens of authors spend ten minutes having lunch with a table full of booksellers. Past shows have featured James Patterson, Tim Dorsey, Jim Webb, Karen Slaughter, Lorraine Dupree, and other top names, but much of the fun is in meeting famous authors BEFORE they become famous. Ann and I obtained the first copy of "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell" right out of the box. Even the author, Susanna Clarke, had never seen the book until that moment in Atlanta, and it is one of our treasured books. We'll provide you with the list of authors later as the commitments come in, but I guarantee you'll have a number of memorable encounters and get to see all the great books coming out later this year.

So, here are the winners of the SIBA Book of the Year for 2007*:

Children's book - Alabama Moon by Watt Key (Farrar Straus & Giroux)

Cookbook - I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence by Amy Sedaris (Warner Books)

Poetry - Keep and Give Away by Susan Meyers (Univ. South Carolina Press)

Fiction - Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier (Random House)

Nonfiction - Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee by Charles J. Shields (Henry Holt & Co)

I'll let you know that I voted three of those as my picks - the books by Sedaris, Frazier, and Shields - and have previously recommended them on these pages or in our newsletters.

*Each year, hundreds of booksellers across the South vote on their favorite hand-sell books of the year. These are the Southern books they have most enjoyed selling to customers; the ones that they couldn't stop talking about; the ones most often pushed into a customer’s hands with the words “You have got to read this!” The SIBA Book Award was created to recognize great books of Southern origin, as determined by people whose business it is to know great books—the independent booksellers of the South.

Books are nominated in several categories, including fiction, nonfiction, poetry, cooking and children's. For a book to be eligible, it must be set in the South, and it must have been published within the calendar year. In order to promote diversity in the award, no author can win the award in the same category twice. Only SIBA-member booksellers can submit nominations, and only SIBA booksellers can vote on the finalists and winners of the award.

Just a Tease

June will not be a month to miss. In the coming weeks we'll have some exciting news to announce - about events, new books, and a very special piece of news that was confirmed just today. I'll tell you more about these in the coming weeks.

Our Harry Potter 7 plans are coming together and will kick off at 7 p.m on Friday, July 20, at Track Nine and Three-Quarters. Will we find a Horcrux? Will a special spell allow us to experience Hogwarts the way Harry, Hermione, and Ron do?

This weekend we're excited about hosting local author Bev Lozier Jackson, who will introduce her beautiful new children's book Mommy, Is God a Superhere? Bev will be at the store at 2 p.m. on Saturday, June 16, to read from and sign her first book. That's the same day our representative to Book Expo America will be coming to town with an armload of goodies. Join us.

And mark your calendar for Thursday, June 28. I can't reveal the details just yet, but what happens that day will be very big for Destinations Booksellers and our patrons.

Finally, if you're just a casual reader of the blog you may have missed the announcement about our e-mail lists. All patrons were unsubscribed from our newsletters and our specialty e-mails as of June 1. If you want to keep up with everything going on in the books world and the store, you need to go to our primary Web site and re-subscribe. With our new program, we have streamlined e-mails for children's interests, new books just in, the blog, and an expanding list of specialty announcements. If you've been missing your news, that's why. Why not click http://www.destinationsbooksellers.com and sign up now?

A Reader's Delight on Public TV

Those of you closest to Ann and me know our dream of someday helping to bring about something for Southern Indiana along the lines of the U of L Kentucky Author Forum. Kyle Ridout at IU Southeast's Ogle Center has ambitions in that vein, too, and someday we hope to have a regular schedule of top authors here in NA.

Now we just need the endowment that KAF has!

We, and many of you, admire the Kentucky Author Forum programming, whether you enjoy it live or during later broadcasts on public TV.

This Sunday, KET2 will rebroadcast a conversation with the late David Halberstam, with Roger Wilkins serving as the interviewer. They discuss the author's The Children, the five-year chronicle of a group of students who set out to change the world in the early 60s. That's at 10 p.m. on Sunday, June 10.

The following two Sundays will also bring treats. On June 17, the most recent winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Lawrence Wright will be featured, discussing his book The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. He'll be interviewed by CNN's Peter Bergen. And on June 24, Bill McKibben is on tap, discussing one of Ann's favorites, Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future. As an added treat, Wendell Berry is the interviewer.