The Written Nerd

There's lots of good news and bad news in Bookselling This Week. On the one hand, bookstore sales are apparently down over last year for the 12th month in a row. And there's another piece on the c losing of Bennett Books . On the other hand, eleven new independents opened in the month of July. And the California town of Stockton (named after some distant relative of mine, I've been told) successfully passed legislation that will keep out big-box stores. And there's also a piece on how bookstores are using MySpace for publicity and community building. And the future just keeps on coming on. HarperCollins has announced that it will release free samples of new books in an electronic format that can be read on the Apple iPhone (I first came across this on a fellow LBC member's blog, but now I can't remember whose). You can download them here on the HarperCollins Browse Inside page . The language suggests the brief downloadable passages are meant to replic...

As I've been casting about trying to get a sense of the Brooklyn character, turns out the creators of a new book from Brooklyn art publisher powerHouse Books beat me to it. Photographer Seth Kushner and writer Anthony LaSala are the brains behind The Brooklynites , a gorgeous book of photographs, interviews and essays (coming out in October ) on the diverse denizens of the best borough. The accompanying photography exhibition will be up at the powerHouse Arena (an amazing combination of "gallery, boutique, book store, performance, and events space" in the DUMBO neighborhood) from September 6 to September 30. Seth and Anthony kindly agreed to a joint email interview for Brooklyn Lit Life, in which they talked about the surprises and rewards of their project and their love for the place they grew up. Describe your particular literary project, and your role in it. Why Brooklyn? What made you decide to live/work here, in both practical and emotional terms? Anthony: I...

Carolyn Bennett is one of my favorite people in the book industry. She's a sales rep at BookStream , a youngish independent wholesaler (and sends out their great e-newsletter), and works part time at Oblong Books in upstate New York. She also belongs to a wonderful bookselling family: her sister Whitney works for HarperCollins, and her parents John and Betty Bennett are the proprietors of Bennett Books in Wyckoff, New Jersey. I've been lucky to get to know both John and Betty through NAIBA, and they're some of my bookselling role models. Last week, Carolyn told me Bennett Books has made the decision to close at the end of September. The closing of an indie bookstore is always a hard thing to grapple with, and I think Carolyn's own words do it better than mine could. The following is also published in today's Shelf Awareness and on Carolyn's blog . Epilogue: Nineteen Years Later Back in 1988, my ten-year-old heart burst with a secret. My parents were goin...

Just madness, no links -- forgive my overworked state, I promise I'll have more later this week. I suggest you spend Monday messing around with the Bookseller Wiki . Actually, you can only change it if you're an ABA member, but the accumulated knowledge (and they only just unveiled it ), is fascinating. Especially the info on the order of kids' book series like Warriors -- I don't think that information is available anywhere else. What's your favorite example of information sharing?

Brooklyn Lit Life is a series of interviews with authors, publishers, retailers, bloggers, readers, and others involved in the literary life of my favorite borough. Questions are designed to spark conversation from a variety of perspectives on what characterizes Brooklyn and its neighborhoods as a cultural and literary place. If you'd like to take part or you know a great candidate for the series, email me: booknerdnyc at earthlink dot net. Brooklyn Lit Life #2: Peter Melman Peter Melman is a long-time Brooklynite and first-time novelist: his story of a Jewish Civil War soldier, Landsman , was published by Counterpoint in June 2007. I met him at a charming dinner for Counterpoint authors and later hosted his reading at McNally Robinson, and was delighted to learn that he once worked at BookCourt , one of the borough's premier indie bookstores. His cheeky answers to my interview questions reveal a true Brooklyn spirit. Describe your particular literary project, and your role i...

I'm trying really hard to buckle down on the business plan this morning, so here are some quickie links. * HarperCollins CEO Jane Friedman is optimistic about the future of publishing. Here's a sample of her interview in Forbes : I think the book business is the healthiest I have seen it in a very long time. We are seeing a breadth of titles selling in many different channels of distribution. We are no longer publishing for the independents only, the chains only, the big box merchandisers only, the online sellers only. We are selling across the board. The health is the breadth, diversity and range. That's good for business, and more importantly, it's good for society. *I so totally want to go the New York Public Library and print a free instant book on the Espresso Book Machine -- especially after the great stories about indie bookstores doing great business with Print on Demand I heard at the Digital Task Force. *A victory for shopping local: thanks largely to the ef...

Today marks the first installment in an ongoing series I'm calling Brooklyn Lit Life: interviews with authors, publishers, retailers, bloggers, readers, and others involved in the literary life of my favorite borough. Questions are designed to spark conversation from a variety of perspectives on what characterizes Brooklyn and its neighborhoods as a cultural and literary place. If you'd like to take part or you know a great candidate for the series, email me: booknerdnyc at earthlink dot net. Brooklyn Life Life #1: Johnny Temple Johnny Temple is in some ways the face of Brooklyn literary life. He is the co-founder and publisher of independent press Akashic Books , and the chair of the Brooklyn Literary Council, which organizes the Brooklyn Book Festival . He is also the organizer for the Fort Greene Park Summer Literary Festival , and I've seen him selling books from a booth at the Atlantic Antic . And that's all when he's not touring with his band, Girls Again...