Link-Mad Monday: Mad World
Ready for some links, O my bookish friends? * Here's that piece in Bookselling This Week about the Book Nerd experience at Winter Institute. Read for all the bits you didn't get here. * At the WI session on PR, there was a round of indignant applause when one bookseller mentioned "the same old story" that major media had decided was "sexy", especially in the days since You've Got Mail. You know that story: woe to independent bookstores, they are dying if not already dead, the only reason to go to them is sentimentality, what a tragedy. (Never mind the opening of 97 new independent bookstores last year, the success stories from New York City to North Carolina, the innovative new stores and those that have continued to evolve for decades, the smart business people who are educating themselves and adapting to a changing retail environment... but don't get me started.) Well, here's another version of the same old story from the L.A. Times (go