Like many booksellers, sales at Powell's Books, Portland, Ore., rose during the pandemic but are now below pre-pandemic levels. Still, the bookseller is optimistic about the future, and will soon introduce a new website and has taken out a $4.5 million loan that will be used to make a variety of improvements, according to the Portland Business Journal.

"We've got a bullish perspective on where we're going," CEO Patrick Bassett said.

Owner Emily Powell added, "We are addressing deferred maintenance, day-to-day needs, and working to elevate the experience of our bookstores for everyone. We are not ready to discuss the details at this time, but we welcome more discussions in the future."

The revamped website will likely launch this summer. Without revealing details, Bassett told the Journal, "We have been working for the last couple years on re-platforming our e-commerce... We've got a new website hopefully coming out this summer, and we think that's going to provide customers a much better experience." In the 1990s, Powell's was one of the first booksellers to sell extensively online.

The store's loan was secured by the Powell's warehouse, which was the site last weekend for a wildly popular sale that aimed to clear out extra inventory accumulated during the pandemic. Deep discounts attracted thousands of people, some of whom waited for hours to get into the building.

Bassett told the Journal: "We wanted to clear the shelves [of] some of the stuff that hadn't been selling over the last handful of years and make room for some good stuff... Close to 40,000 units sold."

It was apparently the first time Powell's opened its warehouse for a sale, and so successful that Powell's will likely repeat the event.

"With that kind of turnout, we'll have to figure out some way of doing something like this again," Bassett said. "We have certainly learned a lot about how to make this a much better experience for all, even if there are long lines. We're excited for next year already."

Costco plans to stop selling books regularly at its stores around the U.S. beginning in January 2025, the New York Times reported, citing four publishing executives who had been informed of the warehouse retailer's plans. The company will instead sell books only during the holiday shopping period, from September through December. 

During the rest of the year, some books may be sold at Costco stores occasionally, but not in a consistent manner, according to the executives, who spoke anonymously in order to discuss a confidential business matter that has not yet been publicly announced, the Times noted.

The company's shift away from books is due in large part to the labor required to stock them, the executives said, noting both the constant turnaround of books and the fact that copies have to be laid out by hand instead of rolled out on a pallet as other products often are at Costco. 

The decision "could be a significant setback for publishers at a moment when the industry is facing stagnant print sales and publishing houses are struggling to find ways to reach customers who have migrated online," the Times wrote, adding that while the retailer isn't as critical to the book trade as bookstore chains like Barnes & Noble, "it has provided a way for people who might not otherwise seek out books to see them.... Shoppers could also browse books at Costco in a way that is difficult to do online."

Costco had already stopped selling books in some markets, including Alaska and Hawaii. The Times reported that the retailer's impact also comes from the size of its orders because "when Costco decided to stock a book, it often went big, ordering tens of thousands of copies at a minimum. For major blockbusters, they might stock hundreds of thousands of copies of a single title."

The change may also impact Costco's customers, particularly those who live in areas without a bookstore, the Times added, noting that "because many books at Costco were impulse buys, some of those sales may not shift over to Amazon or Barnes & Noble. Instead, they might not happen at all."

In recent years, Costco has noticeably cut back on its book inventory. Pennie Clark Ianniciello, who retired in 2021 after 32 years with Costco, was the longtime book buyer and a major force in the book business. Her "Pennie's Picks" column, which appeared in Costco Connection, the monthly magazine that goes to many Costco members, often dramatically boosted sales of highlighted books.

Let's Play Books in Emmaus, Pa., will no longer sell books but will remain open as an events space and office, the Morning Call reported, while its sister-store The End will become the focus for book sales.

Located in Allentown, Pa., The End will close for a few days next month to reorganize and bring in more titles. Let's Play Books will officially become Let's Play Book Co., and customers who go there in search of books will be pointed to The End. Later this year, The End will expand operations to seven days per week.

Earlier this year, owner Kirsten Hess announced that the 10-year-old bookstore was facing challenges and that she was "exploring options" for its future. Many different possibilities were on the table, including relocation, limiting operating hours to the weekend, transitioning to a lending library/after-school center, and more.

Hess told the Morning Call that sales at The End are strong enough for it to be the main source of income, and she feels positive about the changes. "So much was connected to the physical location in Emmaus for me. But as soon as we evaluated everything from an objective point of view and asked what the customers really want, the storefront at Emmaus is not it."

Read Shop, a bookstore and coffee shop with titles for all ages, opens this weekend in Dallas, Tex., Culturemap Dallas reported.

Located at 2730 N. Henderson Ave. in the city's Knox Henderson neighborhood, Read Shop carries a general-interest inventory that includes a substantial cooking section as well as a dedicated children's area upstairs. Read Shop's nonbook selection includes cookware, mugs, toys, and gifts, while the cafe side of the business serves Stumptown coffee and offers pastries from La Casita Bakeshop. There are also plans to add tacos.

The Dallas store is the second Read Shop location. Owner Dan Collier founded the original in Atlanta, Ga., in 2016, and at first it had no coffee shop component. Collier told Culturemap that for a long time, people would come in and browse but did't buy. Adding the coffee shop solved that problem: "People came in looking for coffee, and left with coffee and a book."

Collier noted that at the Atlanta store, nonfiction tends to do best, particularly cookbooks, home decor, and art and design.

Danny Plaisance

Danny Plaisance, who owned and ran Cottonwood Books in Baton Rouge, La., for 36 years before it closed in 2022, died June 4. He was 68. Noting that the bookshop "was a community hub for both Baton Rouge book collectors and readers," the Advocate reported that a Facebook post from his family "saw an outpouring of condolences, with fans of the store sharing how welcoming and helpful Plaisance was to them when they visited Cottonwood over the years."

"I can still hear the bell on the door. He would be in the back--just him usually. Nine times out of 10 he would know who it was. It amazed me going to work with him how he knew the names of just about everyone who walked in the store," said his daughter, Sarah Plaisance Breckenridge, adding: "People would come in and say I'm trying to decide between this book and this book, but I don't have enough money for both. My dad would make sure they left with both. He would always give them a book when necessary."

In a 2022 post announcing the bookshop's closure after not being able to find a buyer, owners Danny and Nancy Plaisance had written: "Cottonwood Books has given our family so many wonderful memories and experiences. We have made lifelong friendships with our amazing customers and we cannot express how grateful we are for each and every one of you. Thank you for being so loyal and supportive all these years, we couldn't have done it without you. Thank you for 37 wonderful years, it's been a great ride!"

Danny Plaisance told WBRZ at the time: "It was a big part of my life... that's an understatement. If it's one thing I feel like I'm going to miss, it's going to be my customers, without a doubt."

The most popular book club titles at Reading Group Choices in May were Like the Appearance of Horses by Andrew Krivak (Bellevue Literary Press) and The Library of Borrowed Hearts by Lucy Gilmore (Sourcebooks Casablanca).

The Lahaska Bookshop, Lahaska, Pa., shared photos on Facebook of the shop's Pride Month displays, noting: "Celebrate Pride Month with Stories and Gifts that Shine Bright! This Pride Month, embrace and uplift LGBTQ+ voices with a selection of must-read books and thoughtful gifts that celebrate love, diversity, and pride. Whether you're looking to deepen your understanding, find community, or simply enjoy an amazing story, we've got something special for you."

Posted on Instagram Friday by Inkwell Books & Threads, Rockton, Ill.: "It's almost Pride month and as allies we're here to celebrate, encourage, support, and champion our LGBTQIA+ community, this month and all year long. Some new pride month goodies and books in stock and don't forget Rockford's first Pride Parade tomorrow!"

Claire Fallon has been promoted to event coordinator and marketing director at Community Bookstore, Brooklyn, N.Y. She has been a bookseller and marketing coordinator with us since May 2023. She also recently completed her MFA at Sarah Lawrence College.

When a Loved One Won't Seek Mental Health Treatment: How to Promote Recovery and Reclaim Your Family's Well-Being by staff and graduates of the St. Louis Behavioral Medicine Institute (New Harbinger Publications).

Oscar winning directors Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi (Free Solo, Nyad) have come aboard as part of the package to helm an adaptation of Eruption, the new novel by Michael Crichton and James Patterson. Deadline reported that Chin and Vasarhelyi "will be in the center of meetings to be held next week in which they'll pitch the book, a large scale earth-threatening thriller about a volcano explosion in Hawaii.... The aim is to pitch studios and financiers with the expectation that a deal will be made before a screenwriter is hired." They might also be directing a documentary on the life of the late Crichton.

Eruption "will be their biggest challenge to date, but their background in extreme sports makes them an intriguing choice, which prompted producers Sherri Crichton, James Patterson and Shane Salerno to choose them over numerous other helmers," Deadline wrote.

Finalists have been named for the 2024 Bloody Scotland Debut Prize. On September 13, opening day of the Bloody Scotland festival in Stirling, the shortlisted authors will appear on a panel at Central Library. The prize presentation will take place in the ballroom of the Golden Lion Hotel and winners will be interviewed, after which they will join a procession led by the Stirling Schools Pipe Band to the first event of the evening at the Albert Halls. This year's finalists are:

Crow Moon by Suzy Aspley 
Dark Island by Daniel Aubrey 
The Silent House of Sleep by Allan Gaw 
Blood Runs Deep by Doug Sinclair 
Double Proof by Martin Stewart 

photo: Michael Jershov

Charles Palliser's The Quincunx was awarded the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, which is given for the best first novel published in North America, and it has sold more than a million copies internationally since its publication in 1990. His other novels include The Sensationist, Betrayals, The Unburied, and Rustication. His new novel, Sufferance (Guernica Editions, May 1, 2024), is a deeply unsettling psychological story set in Eastern Europe during World War II.

Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:

In a country under occupation, a man offers shelter to a young girl of a different faith. Gradually it becomes clear that he has put his family in grave danger.

On your nightstand now:

I'm reading Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh, which is the most astonishing and gripping first-person account of an old woman recalling her appalling relationship with her disgusting alcoholic father. She describes how, at 24, she was working in a boys' prison in the mid-'60s when she became obsessed with a glamorous new female counselor there. Explosive consequences follow from that situation. You gradually realize that the narrator is on the edge of insanity and probably has a personality disorder. Her anger at the people around her is matched only by her self-disgust. The novel is compellingly horrible.

Favorite book when you were a child:

I first read The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien when I was 11, and I read it again every few years. Very few writers have achieved the narrative drive of that trilogy which keeps you gripped through hundreds of pages and numerous intertwined stories. It's hardly an exaggeration to say that Tolkien invented almost everything in fantasy that has been worth doing since his time.

Your top five authors:

Saul Bellow's fiction made a powerful impact on me in my late teens: the wit, the comedy, the invention of a language that could soar from the street-gutter to the heights of speculative thought inside a sentence. Herzog is one of the greatest novels of the last 60 years.

Kurt Vonnegut showed me how much you can achieve by writing in almost the opposite way to Bellow: laconic, stripped down, darkly ironic.

I find it astonishing that Bernard Malamud, writing in the '50s and '60s, is not better known now. The Fixer and The Assistant are immensely powerful and moving novels in which he explores with extraordinary insight the mystery of human emotions in all their bewildering complexity.

Carson McCullers is a giant of the novel. Is there a better study of early adolescence than the girl, Frankie, in The Member of the Wedding? Her transition from child to teenager is captured with understanding and sympathy--but with irony, too, as the reader sees and understands much more about adulthood than she can, even as she longs to enter the world of grownups on which she spies. McCullers's work is deeply concerned with "outsidership"--with people being or feeling excluded from what they see as a more rewarding form of life. Her work is deeply compassionate and never remotely sentimental.

Jane Austen is the novelist I reread most often. Her work, however familiar, is always fresh and I think that's because of the wit of the dialogue, the steady focus on the motives and values of her characters, and the pared-down elegance of her prose.

Book you've faked reading:

I never got far into James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. In my defense I will say that, on the other hand, I came to know and love his Ulysses, which, though far more accessible, is still not an easy read.

Book you're an evangelist for:

Lanark by the late Glasgow writer and artist Alasdair Gray is an astonishing masterpiece. It's about--among so many other things--the struggle of a creative person against both an environment hostile to the arts and also against his own inner demons that threaten to drive him into madness and violence.

Book you've bought for the cover:

I once bought a copy of Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White because it had an extraordinarily haunting and evocative painting on the cover that depicted a big old house at night with only a few windows lit up. I already owned another edition of that book and it's one of my favorites. I bought that copy for the cover, which was a painting by the underrated Victorian artist John Atkinson Grimshaw.

Book you hid from your parents:

At 13, I got access to a copy of the unexpurgated Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence, which had just been published for the first time.

Book that changed your life:

I read Franz Kafka's The Castle at 16, and it showed me how deeply into your unconscious a novel can lodge. The narrative turns the reader into a dreamer in the way the setting and the events and the mysteries and obstructions that baffle and frustrate the central character have the strange logic of a dream in which what is happening is, on one level, absurd and irrational and yet, at the same time, has a deeper meaningfulness that is the logic of the unconscious.

Favorite line from a book:

In Jane Austen's Emma the heroine says to her father: "One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other." So true!

Five books you'll never part with:

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad, The White Hotel by D.M. Thomas, The Music of Chance by Paul Auster, and The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt.

Book you most want to read again for the first time:

Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose: a vivid imagining of life in a medieval monastery and an intriguing murder-mystery.

Amy Leach's third book, The Salt of the Universe: Praise, Songs, and Improvisations, upholds the singular spirit of Things That Are and The Everybody Ensemble with a deepening of personal and spiritual subject matter. Whimsical, frank, funny, shrewd, and ever unpredictable, Leach's phrasing and concepts continue to surprise, delight, and edify.

Where her previous works explored the world with curiosity, awe, an endearing silliness, and joy, The Salt of the Universe picks up with a new focus on Leach's upbringing and the Seventh-Day Adventist Church in which she was raised. "Now, in this book, I will let my soul speak for itself... I figure I've heard about five thousand sermons in my life, and now... I have something to say too." What she has to say will be familiar in tone to her established readers, but fresh in its more personal angle.

Leach remains the master of the list, especially lists of the unexpected. Look out for how Walmart has taught her to find items she was not searching for, including "inflatable bathtub neck pillows and tropical Popsicles and Guinness Baltimore Blonde and misty-scented candles and Minions whistles." Her subjects include not only gods but music and poetry; babies generally and her own two children in particular; snake grass and daffodils; brown dwarf stars and muons; an "interior Texas" and an outdoor heart and everything in between; the wide, wide world, both the small and the large; and the wonder and wondrousness of all forms of art, life, and love. In examining her relationship with Adventism and religion in general, Leach can be drolly tongue-in-cheek, and though earnest, never unfun.

This is a serious investigation into how to live, while coming from a religion that outlaws pickles and dancing. "We know not to read Shakespeare, or Boethius, but what are we to think of Snoop Dogg or Chubby Checker?... It is so hard to be stranded in the twenty-first century with only God as our guide." Leach has split from Adventism, rejecting the prohibitions on spicy foods, literature, and, yes, pickles (though she still refrains from eating meat), but retains her sense of marvel and reverence at the vast and varied world--the tubax, dancing robots, sloths, Edith Wharton, Bob Dylan. "The apocalypse can't be had for the hankering but the concerto sometimes can." She does not profess to prescribe, but will still inspire. Sincerely inquisitive and wildly, fancifully imaginative, Leach's perspective is a gift. The Salt of the Universe may be life-changing, even life-saving. --Julia Kastner, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

Shelf Talker: Playful, celebratory, wise, impertinent, Amy Leach turns her lyricism and wit on a fundamentalist upbringing and the wealth of experiences beyond.

There will always be books. There will always be conversations about books. The way that conversation happens is what will continue to evolve.

--Rick Joyce, former chief marketing director, Perseus Books Group, speaking at BookExpo America in 2010

It happened again last week, as it does annually to many of us in "the trade." Facebook started haunting me with BookExpo "Memories" like some annoying but lovable uncle at a weekend family barbecue who begins every other sentence with, "Back in the day...."

The flood of "Memories" on our Facebook pages always triggers comments by people who miss or don't or kind of miss BookExpo. We chat for a day or two about each other's pic retrospectives, then it all fades away until the next spring. Nostalgia is sometimes counterbalanced with negative recollections about NYC (crowds, traffic, heat, prices, Javits Center wi-fi, etc.). It was, I suspect, a trade show relationship many of us would label "It's complicated" on a Facebook profile. 

BookExpo (or BookExpo America until its 2016 downsizing) was all about the future, not the past, and a reminder every year that a promising future always trumps a muddled present. Book trade folks tend to be futurists and at BookExpo the full utopian vision was on display. Books that would be published next fall had not failed yet; first-time authors were always promising; any book might grow up to be a bestseller. The past was largely absent, except in the shadows of the remainder pavilion. 

During BEA 2009, in the depths of the economic collapse, I wrote about having lengthy conversations with book people who were looking to the future as enthusiastic devotees of texting and Twitter and FaceBook; with casual tech adapters; as well as with e-cynics. 

The future was always now at BEA. In 2010, I noted that the book business hadn't gotten any easier for indies. Times were tough. Our industry morphed hourly; the future was a bully threatening to punch indie booksellers in the mouth every day and steal their lunch money.

But I also heard something else in their tone of voice at that show. I heard the sound of booksellers talking primarily about their vision for the future, exploring possibilities, working hard to figure out what diverse pieces of the changing book environment--digital options, community partnerships, in-store POD sales, shop local movements, etc.--they might be able to thread together to make indie bookselling a business with a viable future; to make the bully use his own damn lunch money for a change.

BookExpo visions of the future were derailed, of course, in 2020, when all I could write about the virtual show was: "Imagine thousands of book people convening annually for a few days in Manhattan. Imagine a city hotel full of booksellers. Now imagine the book world we're living in this spring. Imagine bright lights, big city, no BookExpo. Imagine people who would be talking books all day--and well into the night, face to face--suddenly becoming Zoom watchers. Imagine that being the best-case scenario under tough, even life-threatening circumstances. Covid-19 hit hard, Javits became a hospital, BookExpo went virtual and we don't know what the book world will become in six months, one year or even five years."

Well, now we do. BookExpo is a ghost that materializes on Facebook Memories once a year. 

Glancing over my shoulder at all those BookExpos I attended as either a bookseller or Shelf Awareness editor, two non-bookish images have stayed with me to counter the show's "future is now... back in the day" time warp.

In 2012, I was heading up the West Side Highway on a shuttle bus from Javits when I realized that the retired space shuttle Enterprise (once a vision of the future itself) was supposed to "land" on the deck of the Intrepid Museum that day. I took out my camera. Seated on the right side of a moving bus, I knew my only shot would be through the opposite window and across the highway. When the moment arrived, I snapped two quick photos. Like many aspects of our business, it all came down to planning, reaction, adaptation and execution, plus a generous dose of blind luck.

The other recollection is from 15 years ago, in 2009, when I noted that many people at BEA were saying the future of the book trade was, at best, cloudy. Shortly afterward, I imagined being on a train (not a leap, since I had taken Amtrak to NYC for the show), which was not even as futuristic an image as the outmoded space shuttle.

Something had happened during BEA 2009, however, that made me realize not everybody on the future train had to ride up front in the engine, scanning the track ahead warily for what might be coming round the next bend. I wondered if the best place to ride might be the caboose, since I would arrive where the engine was within seconds, but still had a great view of where we'd come from out the back window. I wanted to hang on to that perspective, and I guess I have. The caboose offers past, present and future all for the same low price, and throws in Facebook Memories for free.