Call for Bookseller of the Year Nominations
Publishers Weekly seeks nominations from book industry professionals for the 2004 PW Bookseller of the Year Award. Nominees should operate a professional storefront retail bookstore in the U.S. and excel in the following areas: buying and vendor relations, marketing, handselling, customer care, community involvement, management-employee relations, merchandising and business operations. Bookstores cannot nominate themselves. Please submit your nomination by midnight Monday, January 26, to Donna Paz Kaufman at mailto:dpaz@pazbookbiz.com or fax 904/261-6742 and include your name, phone number and industry affiliation.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
42 Attend Chicago Forum
Forty-two booksellers representing 27 bookstores attended the GLBA-ABA Forum on Thursday, February 15. The Forum, the first of two to be held in GLBA territory this year (the other will be in Cincinnati on March 30), was held at Chicago’s Allerton Crowne Plaza, the hotel that will be the “ABA Bookseller Hotel” at this year’s BEA.
Prior to the Forum itself, Oren Teicher, ABA COO, and Avin Domnitz, ABA CEO, gave a workshop on the electronic gift cards that ABA introduced last fall. Discussion ranged from the nuts and bolts of the system to customer response and how to merchandise them. The “coolness factor” of gift cards appears to be a big issue. Look for a detailed story in the next issue of Great Lakes Bookseller.
The Forum itself, conducted over a free lunch provided courtesy of ABA and GLBA, ranged over a wide number of issues ranging from the scheduled expansion of the ISBN and use of UPC codes to the current state of business and pitfalls for new booksellers and ended with a lengthy, stimulating discussion on where Book Sense and Booksense.com go next.
posted by Jim at Friday, January 16, 2004
ILLINOIS STEPS UP FOR CHILDREN’S READING
The state of Illinois has become the biggest signatory to Dolly Parton's Imagination Libraries program. The state will pay to ship a book every month to any child in the state under the age of five who requests one, with Parton's outfit handling fulfillment. Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich says he has committed to spending as much as a s $26 million on the books, citing the boon for children whose parents may not be able to afford the titles or may not think to go to the library. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/north/chi-0401120229jan12,1,4686288
2004 NEWBERY, CALDECOTT AND OTHER AWARD WINNERS
The ALA announced its annual awards for children and young adults yesterday. Among them:
Newbery: Kate DiCamillo for The Tale of Despereaux (Candlewick)
Caldecott: Mordicai Gerstein for The Man Who Walked Between the Towers (Roaring Brook Press/The Millbrook Press).
Michael L. Printz Award: The First Part Last by recent MacArthur genius awardee, Angela Johnson (S&S).
Coretta Scott King Award: The First Part Last by Angela Johnson
Coretta Scott King Award for Illustration: Ashley Bryan received the for Beautiful Blackbird (S&S/Atheneum)
Pura Belpre Award: Julia Alvarez for Before We Were Free (Knopf)
Pura Belpre Award for Illustration: Yuyi Morales for Just a Minute: A Trickster Tale and Counting Book (Chronicle Books)
Lifetime Achievement: Ursula Le Guin
posted by Jim at Tuesday, January 13, 2004
Catalog Display Photo Winner Announced
Reading on Walden Bookstore has been chosen as the winner of our Catalog Display Photo drawing. Reading on Walden Bookstore has won an All-Event Ticket to this year’s trade show. The other submitters each received $20 in cash for their photos. Thank you very much to everyone who participated! Hopefully these photos will drum up even more support for the next catalog!
posted by Jim at Monday, January 12, 2004 