Specialty Bookselling

Based on the last four weeks of sales from over 300 independent bookstores across America. Thanks to all the stores that report, the new expanded electronic reporting options, and the software our team here has built to sort and slice a ton of data according to BISAC categories, this is the fifth of many subject category lists to run in BTW each week. These lists are intended as inventory checking tools for booksellers, alerts to publishers as to what's selling, and lists that the media can run.

Based on the last eight weeks of sales from over 300 independent bookstores across America.

By Carl Lennertz Whodunit? You did. Thank you for the great recommendations you’ve been sending in and I’ve been tallying. A neat Top Ten, yes? The pad of 100 fliers goes to press momentarily, headed for the June white box mailing to you.

By Robin F. Whitten Publishers did a lot of listening at the pre-BookExpo America (BEA) APAC conference sponsored by the Audio Publishers Association (APA). Six programs with topics ranging from new formats to the Hispanic market to a three-session Audio Publishing 101 filled the day for more than 280 members of the audiobook industry.

This year’s African-American programming provided both a larger business vision and tried-and-true ideas to help booksellers maintain their businesses in a changing marketplace. The conference also boasted a variety of authors, both up-and-coming and well-established.

Shelley Jackson's debut story collection, The Melancholy of Anatomy (an Anchor Books trade paper original), boldly turns the human body inside out, as the visceral becomes visible and takes on a life of its own through her fantastical tales.

Gay and lesbian publishing has come a long way in recent years. Now, more then ever, referring to a title as a gay and/or lesbian book is often an inadequate description, just as someone’s gay or lesbian identity doesn’t fully define who he or she is. Consider what Dan Cullinane, marketing manager of Alyson Publications, had to say at this year’s BookExpo America at the Jacob K. Javits Center in New York City: "What we’re aiming for are books that have gay and lesbian content, but aren’t limited in any way, shape, or form to that market.

Competing as smarter retailers has become a key strategy for independent booksellers, and the almost 400 independents attending a full day of ABA special educational programming at BookExpo America filled panels and seminars to hear the latest on everything from marketing and inventory control to the "best ideas" in newsletters and staff development. In addition to the panels on business operations and personnel issues, there was an extensive offering of programming on children's bookselling and African-American bookselling.

For summer listening and in celebration of June is National Audiobook Month, here are your top ten picks. The pad of fliers will be in the May white box, and to you by June 1. Thank you!!! Carl carl@booksense.com 1. THE NANNY DIARIES, by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus; read by Julia Roberts (Random House Audio, Abridged, $25, 0553714759)

In a notable achievement, independent presses carved out five of the 10 slots for books nominated by independent booksellers for the Book Sense Poetry 76 Top Ten list, released late February in advance of April's National Poetry Month. The presses include Seven Stories, Holy Cow! Press, BOA Editions, Copper Canyon, and Graywolf.