Eleanor Roosevelt and the Seeds of Victory

The second broadside of a series celebrating feminists has arrived. The broadside, illustrated by Chandler O'Leary of Anagram Press and printed by Jessica Spring of Springtide Press, features Eleanor Roosevelt. Printed in an edition of 76 copies and signed by both this is another beautiful print by these artists.

From the text of the broadside: "Anna Eleanor Roosevelt (1884 - 1962) transformed the role of the first lady in the White House, where she served from 1933 - 45. In an effort to cultivate self-sufficiency and patriotism, she planted a Victory Garden on the White House lawn. Spurred in part by the first lady's example, more than 20 million Americans had home gardens and grew 40% of the country's produce during World War II. Today, amid rising food prices, climate change, and the finite supply of fossil fuels, we encourage the next first lady, Michelle Obama, to follow in Eleanor Roosevelt's footsteps and set an example for sustainability and hope once more - beginning on the White House lawn."

The Future is One Year Away?

Over the long holiday weekend we were having discussions with new book sales representatives and the prospects of the world of publishing. There was talk of the announcement by Houghton Mifflin that they wouldn't be acquiring new manuscripts which struck us as a very bad idea for a company that publishes new titles. We were concerned with the seemingly anachronistic publishing method of acquiring manuscripts from authors and then beginning the process of editing, marketing, producing then distributing the title. A process that can take up to a year if not longer for the title to arrive at your bookstore. A process that's about as nimble as an elephant in quicksand. This system is the way publishing's been done since the beginning of time, and that time is over.

It seems the only authors this will be workable for in the future are authors that publishers want to cultivate to customers that already have an unwavering love for the author. An author like Toni Morrison who gives you a "big" book every four years or so.

More and more titles are being published that are derivatives of blogs and bloggers and the 24/7 world of information is quickly making the old time frames of publishing moot. How many customers will be willing to lay out $35.00 for the next Bob Woodward hardback expose in the near future when his latest was concurrently available for the Kindle at $9.99?

James Gleick recently had an article in the New York Times that addressed this problem and the future of publishing. While he rightly believes that the book will not disappear because in its essence it's the perfect medium for reading he does come to an unavoidable truth:

"For some kinds of books, the writing is on the wall. Encyclopedias are finished. All encyclopedias combined, including the redoubtable Britannica, have already been surpassed by the exercise in groupthink known as Wikipedia. Basic dictionaries no longer belong on paper; the greatest, the Oxford English Dictionary, has nimbly remade itself in cyberspace, where it has doubled in size and grown more timely and usable than ever. And those hefty objects called “telephone books”? As antiquated as typewriters. The book has had a long life as the world’s pre-eminent device for the storage and retrieval of knowledge, but that may be ending, where the physical object is concerned."

Save the plodding world of publishing books for books that we'll want to savor again and again. As Gleick states, "Go back to an old-fashioned idea: that a book, printed in ink on durable paper, acid-free for longevity, is a thing of beauty. Make it as well as you can. People want to cherish it."

Chestnuts and Elizabeth Cady Stanton

We've recieved a beautiful new broadside from Jessica Spring of Springtide Press and Chandler O'Leary of Anagram Press. Illustrated by O'Leary and printed by Spring in recognition of a woman's right and responsibility to vote. 44 copies (in recgonition of the upcoming election of the 44th president of the United States) were printed by hand at Springtide. A quote from Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who wrote many of the speeches for Susan B. Anthony, graces the broadside, "Come, come my conservative friend wipe the dew off your spectacles and see the world moving."
If only the election process could be as well done as work like this.

Here at Kings Books we always know when autumn has hit full bore. We know by the chestnut tree across the street and from the throngs of local citizens wielding thier brooms and extendable poles slapping at the tree and knocking down the chestnuts to make that Japanese delicacy Ku Ri. That's really taking the local food movement to heart I'd say.

Seattle Loses More Bookstores

Couth Buzzard Bookstore in the Greenwood neighborhood of Seattle closes it doors as reported by the Seattle Times. And Couth Buzzard is not the only one, M Coy Books and All for Kids Bookstore also closed this year, among others. Although Seattle still has the most bookstore's per capita then any other city, rents and buying habits are taking its toll on the traditional open bookshops left open.
Yes, you can buy your book from Amazon but you can't get the same satisfaction of browsing a well stocked local store and find the book you weren't looking for. It's what I call the happy accident of discovery that makes the difference.

thanks to Shelf Awareness for the lead.

It Was Great and Bad Beginning

The annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest was announced. Named for the author who brought us the famous opening line, "It was a dark and stormy night". This year's effort was entered by Garrions Spik of Washington, DC:

"Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped "Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J."

I love the taxi reference, good work Mr. Spik!

Bombproof Horses, Nude Mice, and Joyous Chickens

From theBookseller.com a forthcoming book celebrating 30 years of the oddest book titles of the year. An annual prize, The Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year, will be having a vote for the oddest title in the last 30 years. The people at the Booker prize recently did this but this is so much more fun. "To mark the occasion, Aurum Press will be releasing an illustrated collection of some of the winners and nominees of yesteryears, How to Avoid Huge Ships (£9.99, ISBN: 9781845133214). It features original jackets of 50 of the best-loved titles since the prize began, and an introduction from The Bookseller's former deputy-editor Joel Rickett."
I can't wait to see the book as it looks quite delicious.
Here's a list of some of the winners, enjoy!

Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice
The Joy of Chickens
The Theory of Lengthwise Rolling
The Book of Marmalade: Its Antecedents, Its History and Its Role in the World Today
How to Avoid Huge Ships
Reusing Old Graves
Bombproof Your Horse
People Who Don't Know They're Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It
The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification

Thanks to Shelf Awareness for the tip.

Roller Coasters, Smoke Jumpers and Amazon Flexes

I just returned from the road on business and pleasure and here's the landscape as I saw it. There's nothing like forgetting the business of books for an afternoon of riding Santa Cruz's famous wooden roller coaster, The Giant Dipper, the third oldest in the country, with your teenage daughter. A great ride, so much fun in fact that we rode it all day. A memorable afternoon with life's rich pageant on the boardwalk.
Yreka, CA at the Oregon/California border has been living in a smoky fog since the 800+ forest fires starting in California. Asked to the locals, it's been like that for months. It's very eerie.
Ashland has several great plays this season; Othello, with one of the strongest casts I've ever seen of this play, and Arthur Miller's "A View From The Bridge" are stunning productions. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival is always a great stop.
Visited several bookshops - Albany, Corvallis, Ashland, Santa Cruz, San Francisco - and the general consensus is that business is well, difficult all over. Everyone is tuning to the 'buy local' campaigns to keep a foothold on the slippery slope of retail book selling. Some are doing better than others, but none are seeing much growth at all if any. In the 90s it was the rapacious targeting by Barnes and Nobles and Borders that buried local independents. Now, its Amazon that's thrusting the final twist of the knife. As more and more people buy on-line though Amazon less people are making the effort to go into their local shops. A shame, as going into a good local bookshop is a far better experience than shopping on line. Couple this with the news when I returned from the road that Amazon just bought ABE Books.com, the largest on-line used book site, it seems only a matter of time before Amazon chases into the corner the on-line book market. The third largest on-line bookseller, Alibris, I predict will be bought out by Amazon in some form within five years.
So it goes, its always a challenge for booksellers and now the landscape will just get more interesting.