Newmarket's Book Sense Best Books Shipping Now

Booksellers are currently receiving their orders of Book Sense Best Books: 125 Favorite Books Recommended by Independent Booksellers, the title independent publishing house Newmarket Press and Book Sense partnered to create. Book Sense Best Books, a compilation of 125 "favorite book" recommendations from independent booksellers, was published to mark the fifth anniversary of the Book Sense program. Booksellers who have already placed their orders can expect them to arrive in the next couple of weeks.

Book Sense Best Books includes a foreword by bestselling author Barbara Kingsolver and an introduction by ABA CEO Avin Mark Domnitz. Additionally, the quick and easy reference book features:

• The "Book Sense Best Books of the First Five Years" list of 15 adult and 10 children's titles, annotated by individual booksellers. The list is the result of voting by more than a thousand independent booksellers across the country, who cast ballots for the titles they most enjoyed handselling over the past five years. (To view the winners of the Book Sense Best Books of the First Five Years, click here);
  

• Top Reading Group Recommendations, an additional 50 titles, organized by category; and
  

• Top Classics for Children and Young Adults, 50 more titles, organized by age and reading level.
  

Best Books recently made its debut at the regional fall trade shows and Esther Margolis, founder and president of the New York City-based Newmarket Press, talked to Bookselling This Week about the book's success. "We've had an overwhelming response," said Margolis. "Norton, our distributor, reported that the title was incredibly well received…. We've created a six-book counter display, and … almost every order placed has included at least one. It bodes well that the book is getting so much counter attention."

Newmarket sales director Heidi Sachner noted that booksellers can use Best Books as a marketing tool, taking advantage of the book's structure, which offers many different categories and themes to help develop displays. "The idea was that booksellers could use Best Books, for example, to create a children's display in the children's section," she said. "Or the Top Reading Group Recommendations, which is broken down into themes -- The American Landscape, Stories of Memorable Women, Cultural Perspectives -- can be used to create all kinds of interesting displays in the reading groups section."

The $12.95 paperback book features an appendix representing the full Best Books ballot, which included 223 adult and 148 children's titles culled from the Book Sense 76 lists of the past five years. Also included is a complete index by title and author.

Orders should be placed through Newmarket's distributor, W.W. Norton at (800) 233-4830.

To read Newmarket's catalog description of Book Sense Best Books, click here.