The Written Nerd

So just disregard all of the "poor me" stuff stated or implied in Friday's post -- I have the coolest job in the world. I was a tad stressed out last week (my coworkers can testify to my unstable state), and miffed that I had to go into work Friday, my day off, to set up an offsite in the morning and host an in-store event in the evening. Thanks to an afternoon pedicure date with a girlfriend, I was feeling a bit calmer in the evening, and my trusty fellow booksellers helped me do the requisite setup: clear out the regular cafe customers, hang up the ponderous movie screen, set up the temperamental projector/computer/audio hookup, put out rows and rows of chairs. We were ready in good time, and the first of the evening's guests appeared: Jonathan Lethem. (Note: I was floored by Fortress of Solitude , and I've read everything the man has ever written on Brooklyn, as well as some of his earlier sci-fi stuff, which I also love. He's a hero, an icon.) "H...

I'm sorry no posting this week. I'm up to my neck -- no, over my head -- with managing book sales for PEN World Voices Festival events, and keeping up with events in the bookstore. And I've gotten myself sick, something creeping from my head to my chest and making me even less capable of keeping on top of things. But here's a bit. The Literary Saloon has some nice reports on PEN Festival events. Amazon.com is suing New York State. Publishers Weekly reports on the backlash from the successful efforts by the ABA and others to enforce sales tax on online retailers with "nexus" in the state. The Wall Street Journal also has an opinionated take on the issue. Want some literary entertainment this evening? I don't know what to recommend -- you've got the Jonathan Lethem & DJ Spooky Show at McNally Robinson, or the Thomas Pynchon birthday party at the revitalized Freebird in Brooklyn. We've got audio-visual; they've got food and a fax-a...

Read through for some random interesting links, or scroll to the end for a special invitation for NYC booksellers... * The L.A. Times has a cool article on the future of physical/electronic books , from the perspective of some rare books librarians, with some ideas after my own heart: "Our library is very heavily used," said director Judith Nadler. "The digital and the print-based will continue to coexist. We don't want the electronic instead of the book. We want the electronic and the book." * The New York Observer has taken on the ambitious task of picking the Brooklyn Literary 100 : the most important figures in the Brooklyn literary community, including authors, publishers, editors, etc. (What I like about the map is that it also points out the bookish places in Brooklyn, including bookstores and coffee shops). It's obviously a tad arbitrary, but not enough so for New York Magazine , which has taken the Observer 's list and edited it down to the ...

Just a reminder for the book nerds of New York: in celebration of World Book Day or Book & Lovers Day, today from 5 to 8 is the impromptu World Book Party is happening at the southwest corner of Washington Square Park. I'll be working at the bookstore, but if you're free, show up with a book to swap, and make a friend. Speaking of book nerds coming together, I'm launching a new little experiment in social networking. I've now joined three book sites: Shelfari , Goodreads , and LibraryThing . If you want to befriend me, you can find me as "booknerdnyc" on all three sites. I've loaded up just the books I've read this year (Shelfari has more, as I've been a member there longer). I'm weighing my impressions of all three sites for a future writeup here. And it's also good practice for me to start keeping better track of what I've read. I plan to seriously start doing some book reviewing around here pretty soon. And I'd also li...

I was at the New York Comic Con on Friday (hence my lack of posting), to appear on a panel on "Helping Bookstores Buy and Shelve Comics for KIDS". Since it was industry-only hours, there were about as many folks on the panel as in the audience, and I probably learned more from my fellow panelists than I really contributed. Still, it was a good conversation... and it meant I got a nice speaker badge so I could wander the floor of Comic Con for free. It was still a bit too early for the Storm Troopers and Power Girls to be strutting their stuff, so I had a much milder experience than last year . But still, I: -got an awesome slap bracelet from Ari at Del Rey Manga -caught up with the incomparable Gina Gagliano at First Second -talked with the Oni Press guys about the trade edition of Local by Brian Wood -picked up a catalog with action figures from The Warriors -got some cool buttons from the DC Comics booth -experience a little bit of sensory overload -- practice for ...

... gloating a little, that is, over this tidbit in Shelf Awareness: "Following a rise of 4.7% in January, bookstore sales in February surged 11.4% to $1.1 billion from $1 billion in February 2007, according to preliminary estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. For the year to date, bookstore sales rose 6.7% to $3.4 billion. By comparison, total retail sales in February rose 6.9% to $314.7 billion. For the year to date, total retail sales were up 5.8% to $627.8 billion. Note: under Census Bureau definitions, bookstore sales are of new books and do not include "electronic home shopping, mail-order, or direct sale" or used book sales."

I'm deeply immersed in a fact-finding mission this morning -- gathering contact names and emails for every bookstore in the five boroughs, in hopes of getting a critical mass of us together to talk about forming some sort of alliance/association/co-op/cabal/something. I'm working with the awesome Kelly Amabile at Book Culture and our respective bosses -- more details to come. (And if you're an NYC bookseller and you want in, you could email me to make it easier...) So for the sake of quickness, let me just put up two links that should give you plenty of reading today. Random House sales reps extraordinaire Michael Kindness and Ann Kingman have created a blog called Books On The Nightstand -- but it's not a Random House blog. Instead, Michael and Ann have created a space to talk about all the books they love, from any publisher, both in written and podcasted form. The powers-that-be at RH have okay'ed the project, but this is all Michael and Ann, as true a pa...