Hachette: From Boom to Bust

Hachette Gets Cheap, Real Cheap
During the deluge of bad news that has pounded the publishing industry in the last six months, one company, Hachette Book Group, has emerged unscathed. Thanks to the popularity of Stephanie Meyer, Malcolm Gladwell, David Sedaris, and Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, not to mention the dozen or so James Patterson best sellers that come out every year, Hachette is sailing through this recession. While Random House, HarperCollins, Houghton Mifflin, and Simon & Schuster were all cutting back, Hachette was handing out bonuses.

I don't begrudge anyone in publishing a bonus and was quite happy to find out that the people I know in Hachette were being rewarded for a magnificent year. Just about everyone connected to the printed word is undervalued and poorly paid, so to see bonuses being doled out during hard times was the feel good story of the Christmas season.

Unfortunately, Hachette has decided to not only withhold their largess from their bookselling partners, but they have instituted severe cutbacks that will cost many independent stores $3,000 in the upcoming year. It turns out they want to improve on their good fortunes, by breaking the backs of the very bookstores that promote and sell their titles.

Yesterday, we were informed that Hachette was eliminating their newsletter co-op program ($2,000), their author events co-op ($200 to $800 per year) and their Emerging Voices program ($200). These were all programs where bookstores acted in concert with Hachette to promote individual titles. We bought display quantities of 40 different titles and advertised them in our email newsletter to earn the $2,000. We hosted events to earn the $200 event co-op fee and, most importantly, we bought 10 copies of books by relatively unknown authors to earn the co-op attached with the Emerging Voices authors.

In most businesses, $3,000 might be a fairly insignificant amount. In the bookselling world where a profit of 2% is considered stellar, it is a critical sum. That's enough money to pay a bookseller for one hour of work every Monday through Saturday all year long. Unfortunately, that's how little booksellers earn. It's enough money that we and other stores have been brainstorming how we can possibly make cuts to save it. Heck, we are even buying cheaper toilet paper and paper towels just to realize a savings of about $1,000.

The worst part of Hachette's moves is that many of these programs are working. We bought 10 copies of Katie Crouch's Girls in Trucks when it appeared on the Emerging Voices last year. It's a book I probably would have brought in only two copies without the Hachette incentive. We have now sold 67 hardbacks and are expecting it to explode in paperback this summer.

"I think the newsletter program really worked," my Hachette rep Randy said. "You would change buys from three to eights. There were titles that you bought tens of that you never would have bought in those quantities without the extra money."

Earlier today I tried to reduce my buy of Giulia Melucci's I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti, one of this season's Emerging Voices books, from 10 to 3. It's too late. Hachette has already invoiced us. I can tell you in the future we won't look on Hachette's midlist titles with such a generous eye.

As usual, Hachette made it's decisions with very little input. No bookseller input at all from what I can tell. A little over a year ago, Hachette tried to unilaterally impose a case quantity minimum on hot new titles. That ill conceived idea, which now sounds brilliant compared to eliminating most of their co-op, met with such wrath from booksellers it was quickly rescinded.

One can only hope that this initiative meets the same fate. I doubt it. There is simply too much money on the table. It's a shame to see Hachette take their successes for granted and dump on the booksellers who have worked so hard to sell their titles. Something tells me that they won't get much bookseller support when the next tsunami hits the publishing world.

Musings about eBooks.

The launch of Amazon's Kindle 2 on February 9th has released a torrent of discussion about the future of ebooks on television, in newspapers, in the pages of national magazines, as well as online conversations in blogs and on Twitter. I've refrained from joining the choir of commentators because I feel that I don't have a cogent argument to put forward about my extreme discomfort when it comes to eBooks.

I sincerely believe that if Amazon's Kindle or Sony's Reader Digital Book or perhaps an iPhone eReader application were to take off the way the iPod has over the last five years, bookstores as we know them would cease to exist. Sure, there would be some small, niche stores. Perhaps even a few general booksellers that were a tiny fraction of the size of my store could exist in big tourist destinations, but the world of oversized chain booksellers and scrappy full-service, general independents would largely disappear.

Instead of trying to put together a rational, logical essay about all of these ideas swirling in my head, I thought I'd just jot down a few thoughts about eBooks, in an effort to join the conversation.

• The prices of Amazon's Kindle and Sony's Reader are outrageous. We are talking about a device to enable people to read books. Books, the top source of information for about 500 years, have been relatively affordable, throughout modern history, for people of all walks of life. New books generally range in price from $3 (Dover classics and children's early readers) to $35 (hardcover biographies or histories). The $359 price tag truly prevents eReaders from being something that will be available to all classes of Americans, let alone people in poorer countries. If some books are eventually only published as eBooks, millions of people will not have access to them. That's scary.
  



• Every new scientific or technological idea is not necessarily a good one. My wife and I have been debating the merits of cloning Neanderthals for the past few weeks. I've been in favor of bringing our ancient relatives back to life. It would only take about 30 million dollars to meet one. We could clone about 25,000 (a small city) if we spent the entire stimulus bill on the project. My wife is concerned about the ethics and humanity of the enterprise. EBooks seem about as necessary in today's world as Neanderthals. For generations, the book has been an unbelievably efficient means of communicating complex ideas and stories. EBooks don't add anything to the reading experience. IPods, on the other hand, allow us to mix our music and categorize it in ways that weren't possible unless you were a disc jockey. We aren't going to make mixed books. Do you need to carry around 100 books? Should we scrap books simply because we can? What are the real ramifications of digitizing our cultural legacy? Could a virus wipe out a future Thomas Paine's cry for revolution?
  


• Reading is a vacation from the computer and television screens. We spend half our waking lives, maybe more, in front of these screens. Reading a book slows us down, forces us to concentrate in a way that neither the television nor the Internet does. If reading a novel is no different than reading a website with multiple links, will our ability to focus on something longer than a blog post begin to erode?
  


• Now that I have a baby, I seem to find myself in the library a bit more. It's a restful place in downtown Boulder with excellent diaper-changing facilities. We've started borrowing DVDs and books on CD while we are there. Almost all of the library's numerous patrons are glued to computer screens. Many are watching entertainment videos on YouTube, viewing sports clips on ESPN or just tweaking their resumes. Often, I amble, virtually alone, through the stacks of books, glancing at their colorful spines. I get the feeling in those quiet aisles, as I look at John Dos Passos' collected works taking up half a shelf, that I'm witnessing the demise of a whole civilization of learning. I think eBooks will just hasten the decline. Without their physical aspect, books will have no chance of competing in the entertainment world.
  


• Each night, I read a book to our four-month-old daughter, Martina, before putting her to bed. We've read Henry Hikes to Fitchburg by D.B. Johnson, my personal favorite, Chubbo's Pool by Betsy Lewin, I Kissed the Baby by Mary Murphy and Dawn by Uri Shulevitz several times. I perch her on my lap and spread open the beautiful, illustrated pages before her. The paintings take up most of her field of vision. She's completely absorbed by the riot of colors and shapes that she sees. EBooks will never be able to do that.
  

There are two recent blog posts that I would recommend for a sane and rational bookseller perspective on eBooks. Rich Rennick, a bookseller with Malaprop's in Asheville, North Carolina states his belief that there are opportunities for independent bookstores in his post What About EBooks? Patrick, a bookseller with Vromans, the top independent bookstore in Los Angeles, talks about the actual experience of reading an eBook and what the future of eBooks might mean for independents in his recent post, I Read and E-Book (And I Liked It).

The Self-Published Man

The following story is reprinted from an article I wrote for the Boulder Weekly. Robert Dresner is signing at the Boulder Book Store on Wednesday, Feb. 25th at 7:30 p.m.

Everyone Agrees Robert Dresner's Sci-fi Novel is Great.
Why Can't He Get It Published?

Robert Dresner, with his short, tough-guy haircut, Bronx accent and agitated mannerisms seems an unlikely person to write an emotionally resonant and thought-provoking novel. Words flow easily from him in conversation as he anticipates questions and speaks extemporaneously on just about any subject. Words aren’t the problem. It’s just hard to imagine him sitting still long enough to compose much more than a paragraph.

Perhaps even more surprising is that Dresner’s self-published Astral Imperative begins as a simple science fiction narrative about the first manned mission to Mars before revealing itself as an insightful meditation on relationships, heroism and human foibles. Writing in a direct, unadorned prose style, Dresner creates a space ship that is large enough to carry not only his diverse group of astronauts but also the reader’s imagination.

I first met Dresner a few years ago on his day job as one of Boulder’s best house painters. He showed up at my condominium in dungarees and a crisp button-down shirt to advise my wife and me about paint colors and provide an estimate. He was blunt in his vision of eliminating our clashing colors and shook his graying head a few times, asking us if we were sure we wanted to keep the canary yellow in our living room.

He exuded confidence and competence as he paced the four rooms of our home like a caged panther, turning off and on lights, holding up paint swatches to the wall, eyeing the high ceiling of our staircase and explaining just what a pain in the ass it was going to be to get our house painted. He so fully inhabited his role of professional painter that it never occurred to me that he might harbor secret writing ambitions. He was simply “the painter.”

I should have known better. Ever since becoming the head book buyer for the Boulder Book Store in 1997, I have been besieged by writers. Manuscripts have miraculously appeared from locked draws, stapled poetry collections have been pulled out of coat pockets at parties, and bizarre plot summaries have ruined football games at local bars. It’s so bad that I’ve told people that I am a ballet dancer (that always silences them when they view my doughy 5-foot-4 frame) or claimed to be a sports reporter in town to cover the big game. I’ll say anything to avoid the awkwardness of hearing about all of those unpublished books from needy authors.

I let my guard down with Dresner, however, and in a conversation at the end of the painting job I mentioned my position at the bookstore. His eyes lit up, and he told me that he’d written several novels. I tried to change the subject and had almost forgotten the conversation when he showed up at my office a few days later to pick up his check.

“You were the first stranger that I’d asked to read a book of mine in my entire life,” Dresner said to me in a recent interview. “It was very hard for me. I had left the bookstore and was in the alley when I decided to come back in and give the book to you. I knew that I had to do something. People were telling me I had to make it happen.”

The novel that Dresner delivered to me was on 287 manuscript pages bound in a hardback clamshell black binder. It weighed nearly four pounds. He nervously extolled the virtues of the binder that he’d picked up in New York City, rather than of his book, and told me to please return it if I wasn’t going to read the book because each binder cost $40. When he left I noticed that the price tag from Lincoln Stationary was still on the inside cover -- $33.95.

After a month and a few guilt-inducing follow-up visits to the bookstore from Robert, I began reading the novel with great trepidation. Gradually my hesitancy disappeared as I became absorbed in his tale and enthralled by his characters.

These characters include the heroic but isolated astronaut, Captain Adam Sietzer, the second-in-charge Russian, Vladimir Sussenko, and crew members from Japan, Germany, China, India and Africa. There are men and women as well as people of differing religions. It is a miniature United Nations hurdling towards Mars.

Dresner’s astronauts are deeply flawed, all of them hiding some psychological weakness. One is probably criminally psychotic. It is fascinating to see how these people react to each other in the confines of a space ship. The Astral Imperative is really an old-fashioned chamber play. The setting, the mission and even the plot fade into the background as the complexity of human relations move to the fore.

Dresner uses a remarkably creative device to help expose the relationships between the astronauts. Also on board the ship is a computer game called “the Dream Machine,” created by the Japanese astronaut, Makoto. The game creates a holographic image of Mars that every member of the crew views and can change. The image of Mars morphs based on the game entries from various crew members. It’s a way for the bored crew to pass the long flight, but also a way to work out the emotions and expectations of their historic mission.

“The Dream Machine came out of thin air,” Dresner said. “I didn’t even have a point of reference for it. As I wrote the book, I created it. I wanted to know if it was possible to get 8 or 12 players and play a SimCity-style game to the max. Instead of just ideas I wanted ideas and emotions. The Dream Machine gives them a physical component. What happens in the game when seven people are angry and three are happy?”

As the novels progresses, the game evolves into something quite unexpected. At first the color of the planet changes based on the moods of the astronauts, and then structures begin appearing on the surface, someone even hacking into the program and turning the whole thing into a sexist joke that creates a lot of tension between the astronauts. Eventually, the Dream Machine begins exhibiting the traits of a sentient being.

By the time I finished reading I was stunned by how compelling a vision Dresner had created. How could this not be published? Each week more than 25 advance reader’s copies of published books come across my desk. I told Dresner that I’d be surprised if even three of them were the equal to his novel. Surely, he should be able to get it published. Little did I know of Dresner’s lack of expertise in marketing himself.

“I think I write the worst cover letters anybody ever wrote in human history,” Dresner said. “People read them and just start laughing. I think there is an underlying resentment that I have when it comes to publishing. It should be simpler to sell a book.”

I put Dresner in touch with Larry Yoder, my sales rep from St. Martins. Yoder, who has an exuberant personality that more than matches Dresner’s, knows St. Martins’ top-selling science fiction line, Tor Books, better than just about anyone in the country. He’s the only sales rep that I’ve had in 12 years of buying that actually reads most of his books. Not only did Yoder read 100 or more science fiction books a year, he was unusually honest in his assessment of them. Often, his booming voice could be heard in the upstairs ballroom of the bookstore as he ordered me to skip a book while aggressively motioning to me with his hands to turn the page in the catalog.

“I don’t know why they publish this crap,” he’d frequently bellow. “No one’s going to read this because it doesn’t make any sense,” he’d tell me as I pondered a jacket illustration of a fire-breathing dragon riding a space ship.

I thought Yoder could tell if Dresner was truly onto something better than I could. One of Yoder’s most highly touted authors was the Nebula-award-winning Robert Sawyer, whose novels are often set in the near future and are based on current scientific research. Sawyer’s novels, like Dresner’s, also delve deeply into human relations.

Dresner’s ambitions seemed to follow along the lines that Sawyer was taking. The Astral Imperative is meticulously researched and the science all seems feasible. Given the scientific bent of Dresner’s novel, it’s not surprising that it is dedicated to a Boulder scientist, the cofounder of The Case for Mars, Tom Meyer.

“Tom grounded the science in the novel and gave it shape,” Dresner said. “This is his vision of a manned trip to Mars. It’s all very realistic science. These are things that will happen, might happen or someone’s researching the possibility. By being naïve, I’d come up with an idea that is unusual and then Tom would put me in touch with people.”

It took awhile for Yoder to read the book, but when he finally did he believed he’d found a jewel. “My first reaction was that his novel was better than some of the stuff that I sell,” Yoder said. “He was bringing a component of general fiction into a science fiction story. That’s what made Dune great. His characters were developed and you cared about the people.”

Yoder’s opinion of his novel came when Dresner was at a low point in his writing.

“It was a hot day in the summer and I was bogged down in writing book two, feeling discouraged when I got a phone call from Larry,” Dresner recalled. “I’d left him a little message saying I understood he was busy, and if he couldn’t read the book could he send back the manuscript. ‘You want your manuscript back?’ he said. ‘Are you kidding me? It’s the best manuscript I’ve read. I’ve never read anything like this.’”

Finally, it looked like Dresner just might get the break he needed. It was hard for him to get his hopes up too much because of his close calls in the past.

“I was with the William Morris agency, I had a screenplay with Universal, it goes on and on,” Dresner said. “I’d get a phone call about how much they loved it and how they thought it was unusual and then the next call never came.”

Despite Yoder’s love for the book and my pushing and prodding of St. Martin’s editors, Dresner was right not to get his hopes up. The call never came from Tor Books, despite Yoder’s strong endorsement.

“Sometimes they don’t hear what you are saying in publishing,” Yoder said. “I took it to them and said, ‘I can sell this.’ But they don’t want to listen. Editor after editor kept telling me that this wasn’t what they were publishing. It’s like we weren’t speaking the same language. I never would have sent it in if I didn’t think it would sell.”

Now, Dresner has decided to publish the book on his own. He doesn’t have the patience for the publisher dance any more, and if anything, his disdain for having to sell himself has only grown with time.

“I feel frustration – rage -- when I think about the effort it takes to get published.” Dresner said. “I have six books. The process to get published is at least a year or two. I just felt, as I was getting older, that time was compressing. If publishers in New York don’t recognize that it’s good why should you be punished for that?”

Dresner’s impatience with publishing extended to his self-publishing venture.

“We were a little too fast in getting this published,” Dresner said. “In five weeks we had a book. I gave it to a talented editor and only gave her a week to get it ready. We had a thousand little things to correct. The cover also looks too heavily masculine (a phallic space ship in front of a nebula background.) It’s a book about self-discovery and relationships -- women love it.”

Dresner is learning how to handle being an author instead of a painter writing in his spare time. The transition hasn’t come as easily as expected. His voluble nature has been stymied when he has encountered his readers.

“The experience of being an author is not what I expected. I’ve become the center of attention at parties. I feel embarrassed. They really think I have something. Being embarrassed is the exact opposite of what I expected to feel,” Dresner said.

I'm Tweeting My Life Away

Tweeting is what you do when you are on the social network website Twitter. I'm not sure why it isn't twittering, I'd prefer twittering. It sure feels like I'm twittering (to speak rapidly and in a tremulous manner) when I'm furiously typing my hopefully pithy comments, responses and questions. Whether it's tweeting or twittering is irrelevant in the end because I'm sure in love with those little 140-character jolts I get each day.

What started as a once-a-day habit in the fall (after a tip from a fellow bookseller at the Mountains and Plains conference) has turned into a full-blown addiction. I can hardly imagine life as a book buyer without my Twitter lifeline. I check in when I arrive at the office, I leave a note telling my 197 followers what I'm doing in the middle of the day, and I read and write a few tweets at the end of the long work day. Simply put, it's my blanket, my teddy bear, my hot soup on a cold day.

The following pieces in homage to Twitter are all exactly 140 words to pay respect to Twitter's 140-character limit. My Twitter identity, like my blog, is Kashsbookcorner.

Love Letter to Twitter

Oh, Twitter where would I be without you? Each morning you bring me news from dozens near and far. One is stuck in snow, another has a dreadful meeting to go to, a third tells me Harper is laying off its stars. Sure, it takes 10 minutes to decipher some of the messages due to your minimalist language, but who else will provide me with obscure links about Norwegian websites declaring war or perfume companies' diminished profits?

Twitter, when I'm down you send me word of a wonderful novel from my publishing friends, when I get too high you give me balance with desperate tweets from frantic booksellers. And sometimes you have just a hint of mystery with your oblique comments starting with @this or @that. What's wonderful? What's incredible? Are you keeping secrets? Please tell me, my beautiful Twitter.

Twitter, Thanks for Doing my Job

Thanks for bailing me out on Wednesday when I didn't look through the publisher's catalog in advance. In the past, I would have just made guesses and let the rep spoon feed me titles. Instead, you saved the day. I tweeted, "Anybody buy Grove/Atlantic yet? What did you like? Anything that is a must have?" The responses came pouring in. Suddenly, I was an expert, a prepared buyer.

Oh yes, we are excited about Wetlands, a couple of booksellers wrote in. Another recommended The Earth Hums in B Flat, echoing my rep's sage advice, and there was even more enthusiasm for The Whole Five Feet. My rep claimed a few books were getting great buzz so I typed the titles into the twitter search to see who was tweeting about them. Wetlands had tons of buzz, Richard Flanagan none.

Twitter Understands Me

It's hard to feel lonely with Twitter. Some days, I used to feel that nobody really knew what I was going through -- the endless catalogs, the rep's hyperbole, and tedious photocopied add-ons. My colleagues saw the lunches, the free books and a comfortable day spent sitting in a chair, while they stood behind the register.

Now, I have a community that I can tweet with everyday. Some have paged their way through the catalogs, some are stuck selling publishers that I can't stand buying, and some are experimenting with Edelweiss, the electronic catalog. Many respond to my tweets with supportive words. I tweet, "It's hard to see so many reps when I don't want to buy." They respond with, "That's how it is with us. Too many books, tight budget." All day long we talk. I'm not alone anymore.

Cutting the List of Nominees

A few weeks ago, I got one of the more surprising calls of my bookselling career. The caller wanted to know if I'd be interested in determining the nominees for the Indie Choice Book Awards. At first, I wasn't quite sure what she was talking about, but then quickly realized that the Indie Choice awards given out by the American Booksellers Association at Book Expo America are the new Booksense awards. Wow! I've come to the realization that I'm never going to be able to vote for the Baseball Hall of Fame, but now I would have a chance to influence a book award.

Sure, I'd love to nominate a few books. I was about to start rambling off titles when she informed me that the process was a bit more complex than shouting out a few of my favorite books. The ABA would send me a long list of nominees from this year's Indie Next Lists in four categories and I would work with a handful of other booksellers from around the country to whittle the lists down to five books each. ABA booksellers would then vote for the awards from our short list.

I started sweating. I have a two-month old baby at home. I can barely get through a Dr. Seuss book right now. The caller was talking about a total of 60 or 70 books on the long lists. The panic was setting in and I was about to get my shrink on speed dial on the other line, when the caller mentioned we'd begin discussions in a week or two. That was too much, "I don't think I can read all the books in time."

She chuckled. "That's why we need people like you. No one can read all the books. We need people who know the industry, know about these books and can discuss them so we can get the right finalists."

What a relief. They needed a natural bullshitter. No problem. I do that everyday. In fact, I once had a sports talk show in Maryland and one of our features was rating movies that we hadn't seen. It was the most popular part of the show. "Sign me up for the Indie Choice Awards," I exclaimed.

This morning I completed my form and have selected my five books in each category. I thought I'd share my picks and my convoluted reasoning with the readership of Kash's Book Corner.

Fiction

• Now You See Him by Eli Gottlieb. Gottlieb's book contains echoes of The Great Gatsby, he lives right here in Boulder and I interviewed him for my blog.

• Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri. The best short story writer working today. An absolutely magnificent collection.
  

• Netherland by Joseph O'Neill. A quirky novel featuring cricket players in New York and odd energetic characters that reminded me of some of the great Saul Bellow novels including Humboldt's Gift.
  

• Gossip of the Starlings by Nina de Gramont. A marvelous look at adolescent friendship, written in a gorgeous style. Nina used to work at the Boulder Book Store and I interviewed her for my blog.
  

• Peace by Richard Bausch. My favorite novel of the year. Bausch's intense look at a group of Americans trying to climb an Italian hill on a snowy night in World War II was a gripping tale of survival and morality.
  

I must admit that I really didn't follow the spirit of my task in this category. I actually read all of the books I put on the shortlist. There were two books on the long list that I read, but I decided against nominating for the short list. Garth Stein's Art of Racing in the Rain which I thought was too lightweight for an award. Also, Stein's book zoomed in popularity after Starbuck's featured it. Nothing says independent like a title that Starbucks makes. Dennis Lehane's Given Day, which had the best galley package of any novel this year, was a great lark of a story, but in the end I felt at 720 pages it was a bit unwieldy and somewhat sloppy.

Other favorites in the fiction category that I dismissed included The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. One of my fellow buyers said she liked it but it was too slight for an award. I also have difficulty with co-written fiction although I would have made an exception in this case. Toni Morrison's A Mercy also missed my ballot. It seems to me that you should be disqualified for winning further literary awards after garnishing a Nobel Prize. The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb was simply too long to consider.

Nonfiction

Billionaire's Vinegar by Benjamin Wallace.
Waiter Rant by The Waiter.
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami.
American Buffalo by Steven Rinella.
Hurry Down Sunshine by Michael Greenberg.

Unlike the fiction nominees, I didn't read too many books in this category. Hurry Down Sunshine, a title that I'm writing in because it didn't appear on the long list, is the only one I've read of my nominees. Greenberg's book is a personal, beautiful memoir depicting the year his teenage daughter had a psychotic break. Greenberg came to Denver to meet with independent booksellers before the book came out and was quite charming. Hurry Down Sunshine was published by Other Press and I don't think they'd survive without independent booksellers.

The other four books were all books that sold well at our store and seemed to speak to the kinds of readers that independent stores attract. They are smart, thought provoking and none of them were huge hits nationally. Considering their attributes almost makes me wish I'd taken the time to read at least one of them.

One book that I did read on the long list that I didn't nominate was Bonk by Mary Roach. I thought Roach's romp through sex research had it's entertaining moments, but it just seemed a little slap dash, lurching from one topic to another without much flow, and overly reliant on goofy footnotes. I also didn't think Dewey: The Small Town Library Cat Who Touched the World should make the cut. Dewey has already enjoyed more fame and better sales than any feline should expect. Besides, I'm allergic to cats.

New Author

Mudbound by Hillary Jordan.
The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga.
Dear American Airlines by Jonathan Miles
The Little Book by Selden Edwards.
In Hovering Flight by Joyce Hinnefeld.

I haven't cracked open any of these books. I've admired their cover art, I've read the descriptions on the galleys, I've been awed by the blurbs, but instead I wiled away my time this year with old authors like P.G. Wodehouse and John Updike. Don't worry, I'll read Mudbound after Jordan proves herself with another 20 or so excellent books. I'll crack open Miles' tome when he's got a bit more... mileage on him.

Why these books? Hinnefeld (Unbridled) and Jordan (Algonquin) were published by small houses that consistently do excellent work. Their novels were favorites of people on the staff and I'll take any opportunity to award these small literary houses for their efforts. White Tiger won the Man Booker Prize, pretty darn impressive for a debut. Selden Edwards came to Denver for a dinner and wowed one of my co-workers (not that she finished the book). Jonathan Miles had the best premise of any novel (a scathing complaint letter that rises to great art, I'm told) this year.

I didn't select the most obvious choices on the long list. David Wroblewski's The Story of Edgar Sawtelle was clearly the splashiest debut of the year. Wroblewski lives in the Denver metro area and I feel bad in not nominating a guy from the home team, but not that bad since Oprah gave him her blessing. Oprah's seal of approval is basically the sales equivalent of the Nobel Prize. Wroblewski simply doesn't need an Indie Choice award. I also skipped on The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, because with translated fiction I'm never sure if the translator or the author deserves the award.

Childrens

Savvy by Ingrid Law.
Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.
Graceling by Kristin Cashore.
Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes by Mem Fox, Helen Oxenbury.
Pretty Monsters by Kelly Lind, Shaun Tan.

I'm a guy in an open-air office with five women. These are the books they told me to nominate. What could I do? Ingrid Law, a local author, is a true favorite among the staff and she had a great signing at the store. I believe that short stories are underrepresented in teen lit and Pretty Monsters is a marvelous collection of tales that also takes up residence in our Science Fiction section.

Neil Gaiman's Graveyard Book did not make my list simply because he won the Newbery Award. Gaiman gave a wonderful signing at the store that had me flummoxed as to how many books to buy. Still, he doesn't need an Indie Choice award. It's time to spread the wealth. Whatever wealth is still left in the book world.

The next step is conversing with everyone else on the committee as we try to come up with those short lists. Hopefully, someone out there uses more rational logic than I.

Changes Here, There and Everywhere

Avin Domnitz to Leave American Booksellers Association

I was quite surprised by the announcement last week that Avin Domnitz would be leaving his post as Chief Executive Officer of the American Booksellers Association later this year. To me, Domnitz, with his booming voice and large energetic bearing, has come to embody the trade group that has fought so valiantly for independent booksellers during this past decade.

Domnitz seemed to be everywhere, from the corridors of the large convention halls in New York, Chicago, Washington D.C. or Los Angeles at Book Expo America and the hotel lobbies that house the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association meetings in Colorado, to our new fiction section browsing for a book to read while on vacation. He was constantly championing the cause of independent bookstores at these gatherings and he was always willing to speak one on one to booksellers with suggestions on how to survive in this almost impossible business climate.

Over the years, I've had to endure a lot of complaints about the ABA. Booksellers would grumble that the ABA wasn't doing enough to help member stores, the initiatives were ineffective, ABA should only focus on one particular agenda item (the focus always changed with the person I was talking to), and that it was absurd for poor, beaten down booksellers to have to support the large staff infrastructure and high salaries of ABA. Heck, if someone could make money in bookselling more power to them.

I never took much stock in those complaints. The job that Domnitz was trying to accomplish was remarkably complex. The ABA is made up mostly of tiny little almost invisible mom and pop stores while the big glamorous booksellers (like Powell's and Tattered Cover) get all of the press and attention. It's almost two completely different constituencies. Domnitz, through programs like Booksense (now IndieBound), the suing of publishers for unfair trade practices and most recently the litigation in New York to get Amazon to pay sales tax has tried to find the common ground.

I don't think it will be easy to find someone to replace Domnitz. He was simply impossible to ignore. Sure, some booksellers thought he was full of bombast and empty rhetoric, but people took notice when he entered the room. He got publishers to pay attention to independent stores during a time when there were many more reasons for them to cast us aside.

Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops Closing
This headline nearly broke my heart until I saw the glimmer of hope in the articles. Harry W. Schwartz, the venerable bookseller that has been serving Milwaukee for 82 years, announced yesterday that it was going to close its four stores at the end of March. My sadness was personal because my dear friend Daniel Goldin has been the buyer for Schwartz for over 20 years.

Daniel is the smartest, most passionate bookseller I know. He's an amazing reader, a kind soul and he possesses a remarkable business mind. I owe much of my success as a buyer to the advice he has given me over the years. I almost picked up the phone and called him to commiserate before I finished reading the article. Luckily, I didn't. It turns out that Daniel will be purchasing Schwartz's best store, the Downer Avenue location and renaming it Boswell Book Company. If anyone can make an independent book store thrive in an old Great Lake's city it is Daniel.

Still, the news was a major blow to people in the independent bookseller community. After all, Schwartz is one of the great stores in the country (hosting magnificent events under the guidance of another old friend of mine Nancy Quinn) and it has survived rough times in the past including the Great Depression. But this time there was no hope. Sales were down 17 % last year and didn't show any promise of rebounding this year. Carol Grossmeyer, Schwartz's President, said, "we really believe that the multiple-store model that we had become, and that worked so well for us in the 1980s and 1990s, is not feasible anymore."

If she's right then we could be headed for very interesting times in the bookselling community. Barnes & Noble and Borders have taken the multiple-store model to huge extremes. However, Powell's and Tattered Cover also have multiple locations. What are the implications for them? Will they go the way of Schwartz and Washington bookseller Olsson's? I hope not. The results of more closings like this, leading to fewer dedicated booksellers will be truly devastating for authors and readers in addition to booksellers.

The irony that Domnitz got his bookselling experience and made his reputation at Schwartz during their heyday is quite hard to avoid this week. His retirement and the closing of Schwartz seems like a true end of a bookselling era.

Boy, It's a Little Stressful Around Here

We've seen our share of tension here at the store over the past few weeks. It's been a time of reckoning as we try to align our staff and our inventory to the new economic reality. It's also been a time of looking ahead and trying to project what our future holds. Projecting much optimism is nearly impossible.

Fortunately, due to normal staff turnover, we have been able to avoid layoffs. However, we have shifted people's responsibilities, accepted resignations without any hope of hiring replacements and foisted more work upon fewer people. Perhaps the most difficult aspect of this transition is that we are struggling to make our young staff members understand the seriousness of the situation. It's been a challenge.

As I listened to Barack Obama's inaugural address this morning and he discussed putting aside petty recriminations and choosing work over leisure, I couldn't help thinking of the hurdles that our staff faces in these coming months. I can only hope that we can rise and meet our challenges.

Meeting these enormous challenges despite the obvious difficulties is truly our best option. I think I echo most of our staff's feelings when I say that I've had enough change for one year and it's only Jan. 20.

To Go Where No Buyer Has Gone Before

I got a glimpse into the future this week when I bought the HarperCollins children's and the Penguin adult hardcover lists using the electronic catalog Edelweiss instead of the paper catalogs provided by the publishers. Edelweiss, an offshoot of the popular bookstore data analysis program Above the Treeline, is attempting to position itself as the industry's catalog repository of the future.

Why should each publisher have to develop their own ecatalog when Treeline can create a format that will allow them to just plug their title information into it? Overjoyed buyers would only have to learn one program instead of dozens. At least that's the reasoning of Treeline's founder John Rubin. Rubin has been working furiously since last June's Book Expo America in Los Angeles, when HarperCollins announced their ambitious plans to rid themselves of paper catalogs, to get his product off the ground.

Rubin was in my office for the HarperCollins children's buy along with my Harper rep John Zeck. Zeck and I have been two of the biggest proponents of Treeline over the last few years. It's a program with an enormous amount of potential to revolutionize how bookstores and publishers relate to each other. Publishers can see nearly real time sales data at stores on a title-by-title level as well as their aggregate sales.

Much to my frustration, the industry tends to use Treeline, which has the analytical power of a Maserati, as a child's tricycle. Publisher reps timidly suggest that stores buy a title here and there based on Treeline data. Instead, the publishers could do something truly useful like allot co-op dollars to stores for the year based on the Treeline data. Get one more marginal title into a store or save hundreds of hours of extra labor? Seems like an easy decision, and yet every publisher has opted for the extra title so far. In my experience, only Random House has made some attempts to use the true power of the program.

Rubin is smart enough to know that his program is under-utilized by the industry and saw a golden opportunity to position Treeline front and center as publishers looked for ways to save catalog costs. It's a bold step but one that might be necessary for the long-term survival of Treeline. When the cost-cutters at bookstores and publishers start snipping their budgets, it's easy to imagine Treeline, a program filled with potential but short on results, just might go by the wayside.

Well, after two full days on Edelweiss, I can honestly say that Rubin is well on his way to changing the industry in a drastic way. Each buy took a little longer than it would have taken using a paper catalog, but I should be able to get that time back when I dump the order directly into our Point of Sale system rather than having to enter each title of the purchase order by hand.

Edelweiss is organized by catalog just like the publisher's mailings, and that's how I bought the lists. It is possible to reorganize the catalogs on Edelweiss and look at a publisher's whole list by category or date. That's what I planned to do with the Penguin hardbacks, but I was thwarted. When I brought up all of the fiction titles, the rep's notes, which contained co-op incentives, disappeared. It was frustrating, but an email to Rubin resulted in the glitch being fixed by the end of the day.

The more challenging and entertaining appointment was the Harper's children's buy. Zeck and I have a routine (we are both gregarious East Coast guys) that usually distracts everyone else in the office. The day is spent thrusting and parrying over the merits of Harper's books, co-op, publishing philosophy, as well as our bookstore's buying policies, independent stores' reluctance to change and whatever happens to be in the news that day. Add in the fact that I hadn't bought a major children's list in over a year, the confusion of learning Edelweiss and Rubin's high energy presence and it was quite a day in the office.

The next day Penguin rep Tom Benton and I were able to power through the Putnam, Viking, Riverhead and Penguin Press catalogs in just over four hours. His appointment was noticeably calmer then Zeck's. We were both a little more familiar with the mechanics of the ecatalog and Tom's demeanor is much more low key. Instead of a fencing match, our appointments are more like a civil conversation between old friends. We trade ideas about what songs to download from emusic and consult the baseball schedule before making our summer appointment. Also, with Rubin off skiing in the Colorado high country, we were able to proceed more like a normal appointment.

During the Harper meeting, Rubin quickly typed in notes every time Zeck or myself stumbled over a difficulty in the program. Why can't we assign department categories to books when we are in the title list view? How can we tell whether a comparable title mentioned by the publisher is a hardback or paperback? Shouldn't this page load quicker? What is this buyer rating feature?

We spent most of the day in the single title detail screens, going title by title through the catalog. I would have preferred scrolling down the title list screen that shows dozens of titles and then just darting in and out of the detail screens but this just wasn't practical because the title list screen took a little too long to load. Rubin left determined to increase the speed of the list page and was already emailing his programmers with ideas before the appointment ended.

One of the catalog's features is that the reps can rate the priority of the titles and buyers can sort by the priority level. Zeck had rated a couple dozen at high priority, and in the future I would probably start with those titles. Going title by title through the catalog, it was interesting to see which ones popped out as priority titles.

I loved having the comparable books a single click away rather than having to type in the ISBN. The other great thing about seeing the author's previous title in Edelweiss is that the sales and inventory data for the first three months after the book was released come from Treeline. In our POS system if a title is over a year old we lose this monthly data. These out-of-the-gate sales are critical for determining an initial buy, and for the first time ever, I was able to see it on older titles.

I also appreciated that Edelweiss is adding up your buy as you go along. That was particularly critical since I was intent on ordering less this year. During the Penguin buy, I was determined to cut at least 20% off of last year's buy. It was great to have a running tally of the dollars spent as I went along. Unfortunately, Penguin made this task of cutting dollars fairly easy by publishing a pretty weak list this season. Hopefully, the presence of Thomas Pynchon's new novel, Inherent Vice, which Tom described as "the most accessible Pynchon ever" will help redeem the list.

I found that I relied on Zeck and Benton more than usual during these appointments. This might have been because the difficulty of dealing with a new program made it a bit harder to focus on the titles or that I needed more help in deciding which piece of the abundant information to give credence. Harper sometimes listed 25 comparable titles for a children's picture book or teen fiction title. I'd turn to Zeck with a forlorn look in my eyes and he'd invariably tell me to compare the book to Marley and Me which seemed to be listed half the time.

Penguin actually had the opposite problem -- a lack of information. Putnam at least populated its catalog with cover images, descriptions, quotes and an occasional comparable title, but Penguin Press frequently had no information whatsoever accompanying its titles. One piece of information that I had on the Penguin Press catalog was Tom's suggested orders. Those suggestions would have been more effective if they weren't hovering in the middle of an empty screen. Reviewing those titles, I'd look at Tom's lonely suggestion and ask him if it was perhaps based on more information than I could see. We both peered at his paper catalog with its scribbled notes about print runs and publicity and tried to come up with a number.

When my buying appointment with John Zeck was finally over (Harper's children's catalog alone contained 232 items, and that didn't include Greenwillow or Hyperion), we were too exhausted to attempt a marketing meeting. Next meeting I might tell him to just sort out his top 100 titles before we sit down. Tom Benton and I decided to meet with the store's marketing manager after we'd completed all of the online catalogs (significantly fewer titles than Harper) and save the old-fashioned Dorling Kindersley's and Rough Guides' paper catalogs for another day.

As I was doing the buys, I was using Edelweiss' tagging feature to highlight different titles for our store's newsletter, displays and possible events. Our marketing manager opened up the catalog, sorted it by the tags and instantly had the information she needed. She cut and pasted the title and ISBN info from the catalogs, and the marketing appointment took half the time it normally does. I think I can safely say she was an instant convert to the ecatalogs.

On reflection, I don't think too many buyers will choose to use Edelweiss instead of the publishers' catalogs at this point. Buyers, like many people, are averse to change and it's not clear that the ecatalog is advantageous yet. Looking at all the titles and imprints on screen in the same format (a Putnam title looks like a Viking title) gets a little tedious. I think a few tweaks, especially getting the title list page to load faster and being able to order directly off of that page could change things quickly. Suddenly, the ecatalog would be quicker to buy than the paper ones because it's faster to scroll down a page of books that are mostly skips than to turn page after page.

I was extremely impressed with John Rubin's attentiveness to what the reps and I needed and his willingness to make the necessary changes to make the system even better. After all, I was basically the first beta tester and I consider it a bit of a miracle that we were able to do two major buys in the first two days. Hopefully, over the next few months several more teams of curious and intrepid buyers and sales reps will use the program. Their input could mean the difference between revving up that sports car engine he's designed or merely pedaling uphill in one speed.