We Send a Huge THANK-YOU
To our 2013 Trade Show Sponsors!
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Attention Booksellers and Sales Reps - We're Looking For a Few Good Books
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Can you help? Our NCIBA Book Award committees are hard at work identifying books published in 2013 and written by local authors (residing in Northern California), and we want to make sure they don't miss out on considering one of your favorites. The committees know about the likes of Amy Tan, Anne Lamott, and the Cool Gray City of Love, but we want to make sure we include everyone on the 'long lists' now being compiled. So if you have a title for any (or all) of our categories that should be added to the deliberations, drop an email to us at office@nciba.com. Title, author, and category is all we need, but don't delay - the deadline is Friday, January 10! And if you'd like to be on one of the committees that selects the lists of finalists, let us know that as well. Book Award Categories:FICTION NONFICTION POETRY COOKING/FOOD WRITING REGIONAL (author does not have be local) CHILDREN'S PICTURE BOOK (local author or illustrator) MIDDLE GRADE READERS TEEN LIT
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California Bookstore Day Sneak Peeks!
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We have received artwork for two of the special items being produced exclusively for California Bookstore Day (CBD) and wanted to offer you a first look. We are very grateful to Lisa Brown for allowing us to access to some of her wonderful 3-panel book reviews; CBD is designing and publishing a one-time collection titled Depressed. Repressed. Obsessed. While this online newsletter doesn't do justice to the cover or the sample review, we wanted to at least give you the flavor of the book and its contents.   Thanks to Chronicle Books, one of our publisher partners, we are also offering the Punk Rock Writer's Journal, conceived and illustrated by San Francisco artist Wendy McNaughton. Again, apologies for the reproduction quality, but we have a preview of cover art and an inside page spread to preview for you.   |
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Two Items Dropped From CBD Offerings
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Unfortunately, we have had to cancel two books that were proposed for California Bookstore Day because we were unable to garner enough bookstore orders to reach minimum print runs required to make the titles affordable. All participating stores who placed orders for copies of My Book of Pickles by Henry Winkler and Ajax Penumbra 1969 by Robin Sloan will have them deleted. We are grateful to Penguin Books for Young Readers and Picador, respectively, for offering these items for CBD and regret that we could not make the numbers work.
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Booksellers Invited to Join Publisher Promotion Offer Program
| | The New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association (NAIBA) is inviting bookstores from all regions of the country to take advantage of a new program that aims to make booksellers' weekly ordering more efficient and profitable. Booksellers who sign up for the NAIBA Promotion Offer Program through NCIBA (just send a note to hut@nciba.com) will receive an Excel document via e-mail every Monday morning listing current publisher promotions. The e-mail will feature upcoming and ongoing promotions that affect ordering and potential sales.
"This is another example of how a common problem faced by booksellers was solved simply because a bookseller was at a meeting and mentioned their wish for some industry efficiencies," said NAIBA Executive Director Eileen Dengler. "NAIBA did it last year with the Publishers Advocate program (where booksellers receive marked-up Edelweiss catalogs) and now the Publishers Offer Program. It demonstrates the value of our trade associations and what we do to help our members."
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Twas the Week Before Christmas, and What Books Were Selling?
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| Reprinted from the December 29 edition of Hut's Place, a weekly newsletter for independent bookstore customers.
A look at the eight regional independent bookstore bestseller lists for the week ending Sunday, December 22 offer an interesting picture of what titles were most in demand as Christmas approached. On the Hardcover Fiction and Paperback Fiction & Nonfiction lists, three books dominated the lists across the country (as they have for several weeks), while Hardcover Nonfiction showed a bit more regional diversity.
On the fiction side, the book that I heard more praise for across the board from independent booksellers was Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch, which has been atop the national indie bestseller list for several weeks. And in sp ite of strong showings by commercial stalwarts John Grisham (Sycamore Row) and Mitch Albom (The First Phone Call From Heaven), as well as beloved poet Mary Oliver (Dog Songs), The Goldfinch was clearly the title that most book shoppers wanted. Although the novel weighs in at nearly 800 pages, all I hear from booksellers is that they wanted to read more - high praise from folks with too much to read and too little time on their hands.
Similarly, the paperback nonfiction title that led the sales charge last week (and for several weeks previously) was  Allie Brosh's quirky Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened, which easily beat out the likes of Jennifer Holland (Unlikely Loves), Cheryl Strayed (Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail) and perennial reference favorites The World Almanac and Book of Facts and The Old Farmer's Almanac. As sometimes happens at this time of year, Hyperbole sold out at the largest book distributor last week, so some bookstores were unable to immediately replenish their stacks. But that didn't seem to slow down the sales nationally, and the temporary "out of stock" situation may only fuel demand in to the new year. And before moving on, quick kudos to Wild, which remains in high demand after nine months at or near the top of indie bestseller lists. If you haven't yet read Strayed's amazing account of her life-changing trek, check it out the next time you visit your bookstore.
On the fiction side of paperbacks, well let's just say it helps to win a Nobel Prize. Canadian Alice Munro has long been regarded as perhaps our best living short story writer, and her latest collection, Dear Life, won critical acclaim and was an immediate bestseller when released  in paperback in August. But when Munro won the Nobel Prize for literature, Dear Life shot to the top of the lists and has remained ensconced for weeks. It's safe to say that the award had a lot to do with book's rise to number one - short stories generally don't sell quite as well as novels - but the fact remains that Munro's collection was more coveted in the week leading up to Christmas than other popular titles like Jess Walter's Beautiful Ruins, Maria Semple's Where'd You Go, Bernadette, and The Round House by Louise Erdrich (another prize winner, collecting the National Book Award in 2012). For the 82-year-old Munro, her reign at the top has not been short, and certainly it has been sweet.
The one battle for sales supremacy took place in Hardcover Nonfiction, where five titles were in the mix throughout the week. Unlike with other categories, the eight regional indie bestseller lists didn't look the same at all, with sales of individual titles shifting across the country. For the record, the order on the national Indie  Next list went as follows:
1. The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism by Doris Kearns Goodwin
2. David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants by Malcolm Gladwell
3. Things That Matter: Three Decades of Passions, Pastimes and Politics by Charles Krauthammer
4. I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban by Malala Yousafzai with Christina Lamb
5. One Summer: America, 1927 by Bill Bryson
But no regional list had those five in that order, or even in some instances those five titles at all. In the South, Pat Conroy's memoir of his father, The Death of Santini, was very strong, and in the crew-happy Pacific Northwest Daniel James Brown's The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americ ans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics was a close second to I Am Malala. Meanwhile, in Southern California, Johnny Cash: The Life by local author Robert Hilburn knocked conservative Washington Post columnist's Krauthammer's collection of writings out of the top five.
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BINC Foundation Helping Booksellers
Financial Emergencies Needn't Be Tragic
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Household finances are often a balancing act even in the best of times. When an unexpected event causes a loss of household income, a family can be knocked into a downward spiral that seems to have no end. At the Binc  Foundation we hear of these circumstances on a regular basis. Here are the stories of several of the families we have helped this year.
One bookseller was trying to keep her children safe and secure while experiencing a painful separation from her spouse. The family fell behind with their bills and the utility company was scheduled to turn off the power just as the holidays were approaching. Luckily, her manager had heard about Binc while attending a regional IBA event and suggested that she apply for assistance. A quick phone call and payment from Binc kept the power on for this family.
Another bookseller had to manage through the unexpected death of the major breadwinner in her household. Added to the pain and stress of planning a funeral was the worry about how the bills would be paid. Binc was able to provide the funds to stabilize the family's finances until they could get back on their feet.
Imagine you provide the sole support for your family of four and you are told you will need surgery that will keep you away from your job for 6 weeks. How will you pay your mortgage? Utilities? Keep food on the table? Again, Binc was able to provide short-term assistance to get this family through the surgery and rehabilitation period without the added stress of mounting bills.
Whether it is caused by a death in the household, disability, divorce/separation, or the job loss of a partner or spouse the loss of household income can set a bookseller on the road to a financial crisis. If left unassisted a family's standard of living can be severely reduced, their utilities can be shut-off or they can even lose their home. The Foundation's mission is to help booksellers and their families get through these crises and come out stronger than before.
If you or a bookseller you know is facing an unforeseen personal financial hardship, please get in touch with Binc today!
info@bincfoundation.org
www.bincfoundation.org
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Poster Reminds Customers That Books Make Great Gifts All Year Round
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The NCIBA has done a new color printing of its poster touting books as gifts that's available free to any interested bookstore member. The message is simple - books make great gifts for any person and any occasion; to date, more than 75 stores have requested and received posters.
The impetus for the poster's creation came from the notion that, although book buyers may spend less on themselves in tough times, they will usually not shirk on spending when purchasing a gift. So why promote books as great gift ideas only during the holiday season? Book customers purchase gifts all year round, so let's remind them that books are the perfect answer.
The poster, measuring 11x17 and printed on card stock, can be ordered for free by emailing hut@nciba.com. Or use the concept to create your own messaging and let us know what you come up with.
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Classifieds
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Sales Assistant, Perseus Books Group
Position Summary: This position provides sales, marketing, and administrative support to PGW's Berkeley Sales Management and Field Sales Force.
Click here to read full job description at nciba.com.
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