News - Bookselling

As part of an ongoing campaign, Windstone Editions, a company located in North Hollywood, California, supports independent bookstores with an unusual profit-sharing program: It donates 10 percent of the company's profits from the sale of its line of cast stone bookends to independent booksellers associations. Windstone is the exclusive vendor of bookends, figurines, candleholders, sconces, and other sculptural items designed by artist M. Peña.

Karl Kilian, owner of Brazos Bookstore in Houston, is determined to try to put his city and his store on the literary map. "[The University of] Houston has this very good writing program … and it's made serious inroads to the consciousness of the city. But we still don't figure in nationally," he told BTW. "When times were better, [Brazos] bookstore itself could hold events ... but we're off the map in terms of author tours."

At the recent ABA Board meeting (click here for related story), the Board approved the report of the ABA Nominating Committee, chaired this year by Lilla Weinberger (Readers' Books, Sonoma, California). The committee presented the Board with the names of three candidates for three-year terms as directors on the Board. (Under the current ABA Bylaws, each year three members of the nine-member Board come to the end of their terms.)

The Women's National Book Association (WNBA) has announced the names of 25 stores nominated for this year's Lucile Micheels Pannell Awards, which recognize "retail booksellers who excel at creatively bringing books and children together and inspiring children's interest in books and reading." A Pannell Award will be presented to one general bookstore and one children's bookstore at BookExpo America, to be held May 1-5 at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York City.

Cheryl and Raymond Zadd, co-owners of Mail Hub Plus Books, have long been on the lookout for niches to fill in their community of Brecksville, Ohio. Midway between Akron and Cleveland, with a population of 13,000, Brecksville is a little too small to be courted by any of the big chain stores. And that's just fine with the Zadds. "There are no malls in Brecksville," Ray Zadd told BTW emphatically.

The next week-long intensive workshop, "Opening A Bookstore: The Business Essentials," will be held March 3 - 8 in Raleigh, North Carolina. More than a dozen book industry professionals will conduct training to introduce attendees to retail bookselling. From what it will cost to how much you'll make, from choosing a smart location to creating your initial inventory and selecting a computerized management system, attendees will learn the kinds of details that will help decide whether bookselling is the right choice and how to avoid common start-up pitfalls.

By Robin WhittenThe unabridged audiobook is easy for booksellers to understand: "Audiobooks the way books should be -- complete." Independent booksellers, once slow to embrace audiobooks precisely because titles were abridged, are in many cases welcoming the trend by audio publishers to offer more titles unabridged.