BTW News Briefs

April 03, 2008

NCIBA Names Book of the Year Winners

The Northern California Independent Booksellers Association has named the winners of its 2007 Book of the Year Awards. Voted upon by NCIBA member booksellers, the awards honor regional authors whose books were first published in 2007.

NCIBA booksellers chose from a total of 38 nominated books in seven categories. The winners are:

Fiction: Lost City Radio by Daniel Alarcon (HarperCollins)
Nonfiction: The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters (Clarkson Potter)
Poetry: Time and Materials by Robert Hass (Ecco)
Poet to Watch: Disposed by Steve Dickison (Post-Apollo Press)
Children's Literature: The Wild Girls by Pat Murphy (Viking)
Children's Illustrated: Penguins, Penguins Everywhere by Bob Barner (Chronicle)
Regional Title: Historical Atlas of California by Derek Hayes (UC Press)

For the complete list of finalists, visit www.nciba.com.

Dutton's Throws a Closing Party

Doug Dutton cuts cake at closing party. Photo by Guinevere Platt

This week, the Los Angeles Times reported on a party thrown by Doug Dutton, the owner of Dutton's Bookstore in Brentwood, California, in advance of the shop's April 30 closing. The paper noted that "the business, long considered the ground floor of the city's literary scene" is closing "because of debt and uncertainty about whether it could continue to operate in its current location." Dutton estimated that only 30 percent of its inventory remained.

More than 300 people, including authors and customers, attended the event, where they sipped white wine, listened to a four-piece classical quartet, and offered up memories of the store. According to the Times, "when it was Dutton's turn to speak, he thanked the crowd for their support and said he had several projects in mind, including teaching. He didn't rule out getting back into the bookselling business. 'It's a crummy business but a wonderful life,' [he] said."

AAP Reports Book Sales Rose to $25 Billion in 2007

On Monday, March 31, the Association of American Publishers (AAP) released its annual estimate of total book sales in the U.S., incorporating data from the Bureau of the Census and sales information from 81 publishers. The AAP report estimates that U.S. publishers had net sales of $25 billion in 2007, reflecting a 3.2 percent increase from 2006 and a compound growth rate of 2.5 percent per year since 2002.

AAP also noted that trade sales of adult and juvenile books grew three percent from 2006 to $8.5 billion, at a compound growth rate of 3.6 percent. "The strongest growth came from adult hardbound books whose sales rose 7.8 percent [compared to 2006] to a total of $2.8 billion, with a compound growth rate of 3.4 percent," said AAP. "Adult paperbound books rose by 0.2 percent from 2006 to $2.3 billion with compound growth of 4.0 percent."

The report found that sales of hardbound children's and young adult (juvenile) titles fell by 0.5 percent to 2.0 billion, as compared to 2006, while paperbound title sales increased by 4.1 percent to 1.4 billion. AAP added, "Over the longer term, juvenile books are performing well, with compound annual growth rates of 4.6 percent for hardbound and 2.1 percent for paperbound since 2002."

Read the complete statistical report, including audiobook and mass market sales, on the AAP website, www.publishers.org.

Consortium to Distribute Profile Books

Consortium Book Sales & Distribution, a member of the Perseus Books Group, will distribute Profile Books, beginning with this fall's titles. Profile is one of the largest independent publishing houses in the U.K.

Profile's U.S. backlist will continue to be distributed by Trafalgar Square Books through December 2008. Consortium will begin distributing Profile's fall frontlist, which includes history, memoir, current affairs, business, popular science, and some fiction. In 2003, Profile Books published its first million-copy seller, Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss, and was named the Small Publisher of the Year at the 2004 British Book Awards. In 2007, Profile Books acquired Serpent's Tail, also a Consortium client publisher. In November 2007, they set up GreenProfile, a green and ethical imprint headed by Rough Guides founder Mark Ellingham.

Topics: News - Bookselling,