"Indie bookstores play a huge role in my life! I visit my indie bookstore every Saturday morning, and I never buy less than five books. It's DIESEL, A Bookstore, and they love to joke with me. The manager once said to me, 'You're in our Platinum club, both for buying books here and selling books here! And there are no benefits.' And I said, 'The benefit is seeing you guys every Saturday morning.'
 
"When I said that nothing makes me happier than sitting at my desk with my cup of coffee, the only thing that rivals that is an independent bookstore. I love them. It's the first place I go in every city that I visit. I often say book people are the best people. I stand by that. Every time you step into a new independent bookstore, it feels like being at home. Almost like a home you've never been in, because it's so specific to those people. And what a blessing to be in that new community."

Total net book sales in August in the U.S. rose 8.5%, to $1.65 billion, compared to August 2023, representing sales of 1,278 publishers and distributed clients as reported to the Association of American Publishers. For January through August, net book sales rose 7.8%, to $9.3 billion.

Net trade sales in August rose 13.4%, to $848.2 million, in part because of a 21.9% decrease in returns. Within trade print, hardback revenues rose 17.1%, to $297.4 million; paperbacks rose 6.7%, to $302 million; mass market fell 35.8%, to $8.6 million; and special bindings rose 3.6%, to $21.5 million. E-book revenues rose 6.1%, to $90.4 million.

Sales by category for August 2024:

Independent Publishers Group has joined Batch for Books, which simplifies the invoicing process for independent bookstores, allowing them to more easily manage, organize, and pay invoices. IPG will send invoices to Batch, which aggregates all invoices into an easy-to-use portal. Booksellers can also make single payments through Batch for multiple invoices, and Batch will separate and send payments back to IPG and other participating distributors or publishers. Batch is free for indie booksellers.

Batch was founded in 2000 by the Booksellers Association of the U.K. and Ireland and is used by booksellers in more than 80 countries. Fraser Tanner, CEO of Batch, said, "It's great to welcome IPG to Batch as part of their commitment to working with the independent bookselling community to help them to sell more books. Batch is dedicated to working with bookstores and publishers to create efficiencies and reduce costs. IPG is joining the growing group of vendors who are stepping forward to improve and streamline the business of bookselling."

IPG CEO Joe Matthews said, "While IPG works hard to empower independent publishers and simplify their lives, Batch is doing the same thing for independent bookstores. It's a partnership that makes sense and will benefit the world of indie publishing."

American Booksellers Association CEO Allison Hill said, "For indie bookstores, Batch streamlines invoices, reduces data entry, and frees up time for other priorities like selling books! All for free. If every bookstore signed up, then every publisher signed up, Batch could change the industry. There's always a reason not to do it, but participating is a vote for the future you want to see in the industry. This is the kind of innovation, efficiency, and technology that indie bookselling needs."

Book Bar, a 2,300-square-foot bookstore and bar, opened on a limited basis last weekend in Palmyra, Pa., WHTM reported.

Located at 50 North Railroad St., Book Bar features an assortment of new and used titles primarily focused on fiction. The bar sells coffee, tea, and mocktails with literary themes, and customers can also find a selection of bookish gifts. Initially, Book Bar is offering a limited drink selection; the full menu will become available when Book Bar hosts its grand opening in mid-November.

On Facebook, owner Brittany Haynes said "hundreds" took the time to stop by on Saturday, and she was "overwhelmed (in the best way)" by the warm welcome. So many customers came through, she noted, that Book Bar "sold out of several of our beverages and many bookshelves are looking a little light."

Haynes moved to the Palmyra area in 2019, and prior to launching Book Bar in fall 2023, she worked for an academic publisher. Despite primarily working in marketing, author relations, and e-book sales, "my soft spot for fiction and physical books endured. After careful consideration, it finally felt like the right time for me to make a leap and start my bookstore adventure."

Booksellers Aotearoa New Zealand has formed its first buying group. Books + Publishing reported that, beginning with 26 members, the buying group "provides access to an online ordering portal, which will assist booksellers in negotiating trading terms with Australian and Aotearoa New Zealand publishers." Current members of the organization may opt into the service for an additional NZ$100 (about US$60) monthly fee.

Association manager Renee Rowland said: "The board of Booksellers Aotearoa NZ has wanted a buying group established for a long time, so I'm pleased that I've been able to get it across the line and established this year, although we have a long way to go in optimizing it and growing it to the powerful tool we know it can be for our members."

Rowland added that it was "a priority for me to begin it this year in response to the really difficult--and worsening--trade environment. Operational costs for bookshops have increased and the squeeze on profitability is an iron fist: working together in a collective way to achieve better trading terms on books seems like an obvious move but one that I hope has an immediate impact."

The buying group is based on the model used by BookPeople, the Australian booksellers association. Rowland noted: "I couldn't have gotten this far without the generous support and knowledge sharing of BookPeople, but we are a very different market; not only are we smaller--one tenth of the size--we have very unique supply chain challenges, less domestic editorial publishing by the big international publishers, different parallel import rules and a lot more agency representation."

Mary Wadsworth, co-owner and manager of Dorothy Butler Children's Bookshop in the Auckland suburb of Ponsonby, told the Post that the trade was "very excited" about the buying group as part of a concerted effort to keep costs down in the current environment. Her shop was already working hard with suppliers "to maximize our margins, and they are very aware margins are tight with prices going up, but the association-wide initiative would help with a renewed focus on keeping costs down."

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Simon Armstrong

The Booksellers Association of the U.K. & Ireland has appointed Simon Armstrong as press and public relations manager, a newly created role that was previously overseen by Midas PR, the Bookseller reported. This marks the first time press and PR has been handled in-house for the BA.

Armstrong will take on press relations responsibility across the Booksellers Association Group, which includes National Book Tokens and Batch. He will focus mainly on consumer and corporate PR for the BA, and will work with the senior management team to create and maintain PR work across all activities, including corporate, policy-based, consumer and trade-facing.

Armstrong begins the role effective November 20, reporting to Emma Bradshaw, head of campaigns; and Laura McCormack, head of policy and public affairs. Crotty Communications will continue to handle media outreach in Ireland and its committee of booksellers based in Ireland (Bookselling Ireland).

Armstrong has a decade of experience in publishing, having worked on the publicity teams of both children's and adult divisions of Penguin Random House, HarperCollins and Walker Books. 

Bradshaw said: "We are delighted to welcome Simon to the Booksellers Association team. With the growing success of our Books Are My Bag campaigns and a slew of legislation on the horizon which will directly impact booksellers, the appointment couldn't be timelier. We can't wait to work with him to amplify our members’ voices in the media and Parliament."

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The first episode of RISE Bookselling's new podcast series, dedicated to the 2024 RISE conference in Lisbon, is out. Curious how some bookshops have become community favorites? The episode explores the topic with Jan Smedh of the English Bookshop in Sweden; Tom Rowley of Backstory in the U.K.; and Pasi Vainio of Vinhan Kirjakauppa in Finland. They share strategies that have helped them connect with readers in unusual ways. Bookselling Ireland's Sheila O'Reilly moderates. --Robert Gray

Charles Brandt, author of the book that inspired the film The Irishman, died on October 24 at the age of 82.

His bestselling true crime book, I Heard You Paint Houses: Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran and Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa (Steerforth), was adapted by Martin Scorcese into The Irishman, starring Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci. He also wrote the detective novel The Right to Remain Silent. His final book, Suppressing the Truth in Dallas: Conspiracy, Cover-Up, and International Complications in the JFK Assassination Case, concluded that the Mafia played a role in the assassination of President Kennedy. In addition, Brandt co-authored Joe Pistone's Donnie Brasco: Unfinished Business and Lin DeVecchio's We're Going to Win This Thing: The Shocking Frame-Up of a Mafia Crime Buster.

Brandt was a former junior high school English teacher who worked his way through Brooklyn Law School as a welfare investigator in East Harlem. After graduating law school, he became a homicide detective and prosecutor in Wilmington, Del., and served as the state's chief deputy attorney general. During his years in law enforcement, he handled more than 50 murder cases. In private practice since 1976, he was a president of the Delaware Trial Lawyers Association and the Delaware Chapter of the American Board of Trial Advocates.

Congratulations to Bookworks, Albuquerque, N.Mex., which celebrated its 40th birthday last Saturday with a day of sales and surprises for customers, as well as a big party. Local authors, store staff, and community partners all gathered to toast four decades of books and events. The store commissioned a special 40th anniversary T-shirt and the party centerpiece was a cake decorated with that design.

Co-owners Nancy Guinn (left) and Shannon Guinn-Collins (center) joined by store founder Nancy Rutland (right)

Bookworks opened in October 1984, in a tiny shopping plaza in Albuquerque's north valley. Over the next 25 years, founder Nancy Rutland tripled the size of the store, hosted many events, and engaged the local community. Her first-ever national author event brought in Martha Stewart and included erecting a large "wedding tent" in the parking lot to showcase Stewart's book. Other events included Steven King in conversation with George R.R. Martin, Margaret Atwood, Tom Robbins, and Anthony Doerr. Rutland sold the store to Danielle Foster and Wyatt Wegrzyn, who owned it for 13 years, building a children's program and shepherding the store through Covid. The community rallied to ensure the store would survive the pandemic by buying books online.

In 2023, Shannon Guinn-Collins and Nancy Guinn, with the help of 13 community investors, purchased the store. They expanded the inventory and refreshed the interior, including commissioning whimsical murals from a beloved local artist. Bookworks restarted events, beginning with a reading by all of the poets laureate of Albuquerque and New Mexico. Since then, Joy Harjo, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Colson Whitehead, Ann Napolitano, and Christopher Paolini, among others, have traveled to Albuquerque to read. The store continues to build and maintain community partnerships with many groups, including the Leopold Writing Program, the Albuquerque Library Foundation, the Native American Community Academy and Read to Me, a non-profit that distributes books in food banks, city buses, and laundromats.

We Will Be Jaguars: A Memoir of My People by Nemonte Nenquimo and Mitch Anderson (Abrams) is the November pick for Reese's Book Club, which described the book as "an unforgettable story about fighting for your home and your heart. With her partner Mitch, Nemonte writes about her upbringing in the Ecuadorian Amazon and the leadership efforts that led to a historic legal victory against the oil industry."

Reese wrote: "We Will Be Jaguars follows the life of internationally acclaimed activist Nemonte Nenquimo and her journey to protect her people and indigenous lands. I was so moved by this story."

Bookstore and bar Visible Voice Books, Cleveland, Ohio, includes books in its happy hour specials.

Per Axios, Visible Voice Books runs happy hour specials every Tuesday from 4 to 7 p.m., and as part of those specials, all books are 20%.

Visible Voice Books resides at 2258 Professor Ave. and sells a wide variety of new and used titles with an emphasis on books "marginalized by commercial concerns."

At Sourcebooks:

Kimi Loughlin has joined the company as regional indie sales manager, New England.

Sophie Juhlin has joined the company as inside sales manager.

Emma Bagnall has joined the company as digital marketing associate.

Even Yetis Get Colds by Carlianne Tipsey (Pixel + Ink).

Today:
Fresh Air: Justene Hill Edwards, author of Savings and Trust: The Rise and Betrayal of the Freedman's Bank (W.W. Norton, $29.99, 9781324073857).

Tomorrow:
CBS Mornings: Boris Johnson, author of Unleashed (Harper, $40, 9780063387263).

Virgin River and Sullivan's Crossing author Robyn Carr has partnered again with creator/showrunner Roma Roth to adapt her nine-book Thunder Point series into a dramatic scripted TV project, Deadline reported.  

This is the third Carr property that Roth has adapted through her company, Reel World Management, which she runs with Christopher E. Perry. Roth is the creator, showrunner, executive producer, and head writer on Sullivan's Crossing, which she set up as a straight-to-series order with CTV and Fremantle. She is also executive producer of Netflix's Virgin River, which recently announced its seventh season.

"Thunder Point has drama, mystery, and romance, all the ingredients you need to successfully build a global hit series," said Roth. "It is certain to appeal to fans of both Sullivan's Crossing and Virgin River but this time the story is told from a male perspective. We are beyond excited to be continuing our incredibly successful run with bestselling author Robyn Carr." 

"I'm so thrilled that Roma will be producing Thunder Point," added Carr. "She did such an exceptional job with her previous adaptations of my work, and I just can't wait to see who she casts for this fan favorite small-town series. Roma is a gifted artist whose creative eye is a joy for viewers! Brava, Roma." 

Poet, publisher and editor π.ο. (Pi-O) won the 2024 Patrick White Literary Award, honoring an author who has "made an ongoing contribution to Australian literature but may not have received adequate recognition," Books+Publishing reported. Established by Patrick White with the proceeds from his 1973 Nobel Prize in Literature, the award is worth A$20,000 (about US$13,125).

Born in Greece in 1951, π.ο. immigrated with his family in 1954 to Australia. For the past 40 years, the poet has worked as a draughtsman to support his creative practice, which the judges said was "informed by his working-class, non-Anglo background and his anarchist politics."

According to award trustee Perpetual, the award honors π.ο.'s "achievements as a legendary figure in the Australian poetry scene" as a publisher, editor and the author of many collections, including the epic works 24 hours; Fitzroy: The Biography; and Heide, which won the 2020 Judith Wright Calanthe Award and was shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Literary Award for poetry.

In addition to his work as a poet, π.ο. edited 925 and Unusual Work, magazines focusing on experimental literature, as well as Off the Road, an anthology of performance poetry (1985). He is also a publisher at Collective Effort press.

The judging committee said: "A pioneering practitioner of spoken word and performance poetry in Australia, π.ο. campaigned for its acceptance as a valid poetic form. On the page, his poems continue to display a lively and witty interest in spoken language: migrant idioms, working-class speech and Australian colloquialisms jostle and unsettle standard English in his work. Similarly, an encyclopedic range of sources--proverbs, science writing, historical documents, classical mythology and children's games to name a few--provide disparate linguistic elements that are juxtaposed in his poems to brilliant effect. The range and diversity of his registers remind us that π.ο. is always, and foremost, an intensely political writer."

Madison Gaines is the publishing assistant at Shelf Awareness and a former bookseller at Third Place Books. She has an MFA in Creative Writing and Poetics from the University of Washington Bothell.

On your nightstand now:

I just finished reading Dead Silence by S.A. Barnes, and I absolutely loved it. The atmosphere (or should I say lack thereof?) was delightfully uncomfortable. Next up for me in the horror scene is The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling.

I'm reading two books on rotation right now: Assata: An Autobiography by Assata Shakur and Black Bone: 25 Years of Affrilachian Poets edited by Bianca Lynne Spriggs and Jeremy Paden.

I recently took a break from romance books, so I'll probably reread The Ornithologist's Field Guide to Love by India Holton to ease myself back into it. It's a guaranteed laugh, every time.

Favorite book when you were a child:

My first ever favorite book was Savvy by Ingrid Law, but I don't often tell people how it came to be.

In Maryland, there's a student choice award called the Black-Eyed Susan Book Award. Students who've read at least three books from the reading list (determined by the Maryland Association of School Librarians) may cast one vote. But my elementary school librarian was like, super cool and made a deal with my third grade class: read all the nominated books, and you could take one book from the list home.

Needless to say, I read all the nominated books and chose to take my library's only copy of Savvy. The copy still sits on my desk, battered from 15 years of rereading.

Your top five authors:

Eve L. Ewing, Warsan Shire, and Naomi Novik were easy choices.

Since the first three are adult writers, I felt the need to reserve the last two for children's writers. I had to sit down and examine my bookshelf for quite some time before I could decide, but I love too many children's authors to narrow it down. Here's a list of children's authors I love, in no particular order: Axie Oh, Julia Golding, Sabaa Tahir, Keah Brown, Ally Carter, Amélie Wen Zhao, Heidi Lang and Kati Bartkowski (co-authors), and Tamora Pierce.

Book you've faked reading:

Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino. It's the only book I've ever faked reading, and I could still give you pretty convincing plot summary.

Anyway... don't fake reading books, kids. It's bad for your shelf.

Book you're an evangelist for:

Tannery Bay by Steven Dunn and Katie Jean Shinkle! Tannery Bay reckons with the cyclical nature of exploitation and greed­­. (Literally. The characters are trapped in an eternal loop.) Dunn and Shinkle masterfully weave their perspectives together to explore Black joy and queer joy as unifying forces of change, and the result is propelling.

I took a class with Steven Dunn in 2022, and I have so much respect for him. Mostly because his passion for life and love is evident in his writing, but also because he refers to himself as Uncle Velvet Disco, which entertains me to no end.

Book you've bought for the cover:

Vengeance Road by Erin Bowman and the companion novel, Retribution Rails. Gorgeous, western-style black-and-white illustrated covers with yellow and orange accents. The only reason I didn't spend more time staring at those book covers was because I was too busy reading the darn book.

Book you hid from your parents:

When my oldest sister went off to college, she let me sleep in her room so long as I didn't mess with her things. (Translation: I could mess with her things if I put them back before she came home.) She didn't have as many books as I did, and the ones she did have were tucked in the bottom of her closet. One of those books was Just Listen by Sarah Dessen.

It wasn't that I thought I'd get in trouble for reading it--I was so disinterested in "girlhood" that my mom encouraged any and all engagement with the concept. But Just Listen wasn't just about the tragedies and traumas of girlhood. It was about vulnerability. It was about honesty.

To an 11-year-old, those were intimidating concepts. I saw the similarities between the Greene sisters and the Gaines sisters, but I was nowhere near ready to talk about it. So, I returned the book to the bottom of my sister's closet and never spoke of it. My sister came back home, I stopped sleeping in her room, and then it was my turn to grow up and go to college.

But I took the book with me. (Sorry, Banana.)

Book that changed your life:

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. I read it in an undergraduate Black Literature class, and it stuck with me in ways I don't think I can verbalize. It was surreal and uncomfortable and I'm not even sure I actually enjoyed reading it, but I was captivated. In the months that followed, I referenced it constantly--in other classes, in conversation, in my writing.

Of course, there have been books that have changed me since then. But I believe Invisible Man prepared me for change and, more than that, for challenge.

Favorite line from a book:

"You can't choose blindness when it suits you. Not anymore." --Black Tom, right after cutting off a cop's eyelids.
From The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle.

Five Six books you'll never part with:

Banana [      ] / we pilot the blood by Paul Hlava Ceballos and Quentin Baker
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
Cactus Country: A Boyhood Memoir by Zoë Bossiere
Professional Crocodile by Giovanna Zoboli, illustrated by Mariachiara Di Giorgio
Little Witch Hazel by Phoebe Wahl
The Garden Witch by Kyle Beaudette

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

The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner. If you've read it, then you know exactly what I'm talking about. If you haven't, then this is your sign.

Shoutout to my best friends (booksellers, obviously) who got me to read it. 10/10, would befriend you again.

Young siblings are lured into a late-night musical adventure by the beckoning sound of their father's jazz band in The Band in Our Basement, a tuneful and exuberant picture book by Kelly J. Baptist, with illustrations from Jenin Mohammed.

On the title page a child spots visitors in their driveway at bedtime. "Daddy's band is in our basement.../ We can't fall asleep!" Mama gives a knowing glance while tucking in the narrator's brother, then backs from the room with a loving directive: "Go right to bed/ and do not make a peep!" But a trumpet soon sounds while a bass guitar thrums and, before long, the siblings' wiggly toes and giggles give way to full-blown smiles and silent dancing on their beds. With the page turn, "Kenny grins and whispers" a plan to "sneak downstairs and watch them play" while, on the righthand page, readers see the silhouetted scene in his imagination. When the narrator concedes, the pair tiptoe "Careful, careful down the stairs." They creep further still to where "the music gives a ROAR!" Tucked low behind the banisters, the siblings are moved by the music and thrilled to recognize a guest singer--"That's Mama's voice/ stealing the show!" She tenderly admonishes the little spies: "My my my, funny as can be!/ Got four li'l eyes think I don't see./ My my my, hear what I say:/ Those four li'l feet betta scurry away!" But the band calls the children back and extends an invitation to join them, making the jam session a full family affair. Eventually, exhausted, the kids "say goodnight" and "head to bed without a fight."

Baptist rekindles the linguistic exuberance she used in The Electric Slide and Kai by mixing rhyme schemes and occasionally splitting stanzas across page turns to sustain a bopping, jazzy cadence. There is an innocence to the children's mischievousness, both in text and as visually portrayed, that exemplifies their sibling bond and exudes the pure joy of a family that shares a common interest. Mohammed (Song in the City) layers warm golden shades with cool blue tones of the night using gelli print collage and digital mixed-media illustrations. The artist uses jagged marks and sharp angles to effectively indicate the children's movement, and a line that moves sinuously across every page oozes musicality.

This toe-tapping read-aloud seems destined to prompt bedtime hijinks among budding musicians in the best possible way. --Kit Ballenger, youth librarian, Help Your Shelf

Shelf Talker: Young siblings are lured into a late-night musical adventure by the beckoning sound of their father's jazz band in an exuberant, toe-tapping read-aloud.