BOOKSELLERS IN A PINCH.

Status: On vacation.

Doing: Writing on this blog; answering e-mails; working out, and well...you know the rest! :0)

Watching: TV still offline.

Listening to: Nothing at the moment.

Reading: Kushiel's Scion. Page 288.

STAR TREK: THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD-BOOK 1. Page 206.


TOPIC: TANKING ECONOMY FORCES CHANGES IN BOOK INDUSTRY

Despite some reservations about e-books and independent book sellers, many publishers are now having to come to grips with not only a changing economy, but the changing face of book publishing.

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Booksellers talk big, act quietly at convention

LOS ANGELES (AP) — They spoke of revolution this weekend at BookExpo America, of changing how we read and how we shop.

But the biggest noise happened miles away from the Los Angeles Convention Center, at the Beverly Hills mansion of Prince.

"It was quiet, very quiet," Simon & Schuster CEO and president Carolyn Reidy said of the industry's annual national gathering, which lacked a "buzz" book or spectacular speech, but did offer a rare private concert from the enigmatic rock star.

"I think when this is over, we're going to do some soul searching," said CEO David Shanks of Penguin Group (USA). "There are people in this hall who have spent way more than a million dollars at a time when we all should be pinching pennies."

The numbers were harsh at BookExpo. New annual releases keep increasing (more than 276,000, according to researchers R.R. Bowker), while the number of books purchased is expected to drop, according to a report by the Book Industry Study Group, an industry-supported organization.

But the visions were big. In simultaneous presentations over the weekend, held in nearby conference rooms, Amazon.com head Jeff Bezos and the American Booksellers Association, representatives of the country's independent stores, each talked of revolutionizing the business.

Bezos continued his advocacy of the Kindle e-book reader, billed as "revolutionary" by the retailer, although at this point more as a concept than as a way of life. His talk disappointed many attendees, who had hoped that he would announce some major news, but it did continue the ongoing discussion of the e-future. Reidy said Simon & Schuster would make thousands of additional titles available on the Kindle, even as one famous futurist, "Fahrenheit 451" novelist Ray Bradbury, envisioned only paper.

"There is no future for e-books because they are not books," said Bradbury, speaking to The Associated Press before a convention lunch Friday. "E-books smell like burned fuel."

While Bezos pushed the Kindle, officials at the ABA's annual "town hall" meeting rallied for their new marketing/branding campaign, IndieBound. Association president Russ Lawrence described it as, ideally, "a movement, a revolution, a force of nature" that would inspire the public not just to shop at independent bookstores, but at other kinds of locally-owned retailers. Booksellers, Lawrence announced, would soon be receiving "Literary Liberation" boxes that include cards, stickers and other materials meant to build communities nationwide.

The response was positive from a bookselling community that continues to shrink, nationwide, thanks in part to Amazon.com. Core membership dropped to 1,524 as of this spring, 56 fewer than the year before, and booksellers filled less than half of the roughly 500 chairs set up for their meeting. Still, said ABA vice president Gayle Shanks, noting that more new stores have opened in recent years, "We're on the way up, not on the way down."

Publishers wished success for IndieBound, but Reidy and Shanks questioned whether the public distinguishes between shopping at local stores and shopping at an independent, saying that a neighborhood bookshop could be a Barnes & Noble.

"I don't think people see it in terms of independents or chains. A bookstore is a bookstore," said Shanks, who doubted, with sadness, whether independents can regain their old power. "Real estate is major. It's not lost on people that the most successful independents often are in out of the way places. They have been ceded those areas."

The idea of "revolution" differed among attendees, like Deborah Shnookel of the Ocean Press, which publishes "radical books" about Latin America and will issue the tie-in to Steven Soderbergh's epic film about Che Guevara. "A lot of smaller stores and publishers have been wiped out by the so-called revolution in publishing," she said, referring to the industry's dramatic consolidation over the past two decades.

"When it comes to revolution in the business, I'm kind of a reactionary. I'm one of those people who'd like to see things go back to the good old days."

Guevara likely would have sympathized with the roughly 300 food workers at the convention center who staged a brief walkout Saturday, in protest over wages and benefits, according to union leaders. BookExpo staffers helped serve lunch in the main ballroom, where the news was taken far more lightly than if one scheduled speaker, filmmaker/activist Michael Moore, had not been forced to cancel because his plane was stuck in Chicago.

Few releases at BookExpo inspired widespread interest, although attendees spoke hopefully about such novels as Marilynne Robinson's "Home," Andrew Davidson's "The Gargoyle" and "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society," co-authored by Mary Ann Shaffer, who died recently, and her niece, Annie Barrows. The real buzz boomed from the amps of Prince, who kept his guests — and perhaps some neighbors — up late with a poolside, after-after hours concert, in promotion for a planned book in the fall.

Publishers are better at indulging rock stars than behaving like them, as noticed by guitarist Don Felder, the former Eagle whose memoir, "Heaven and Hell," was just released. "Publishing people seem very upfront, very decent and very honest," he told the AP, adding with a laugh, "I don't think they'd last long in the music business."

The past matters for book people, who regret the decline of independent stores and adore the paper text. Shanks complains that the convention is in a "time warp," yet speaks fondly of a simple, low-tech tradition: Walking the floor in search of new books, like when some 20 years ago he spotted a novel being released by The Naval Institute.

"I didn't even know the Navy published novels, but I thought this had potential. We bought it for $49,000," he says, smiling at the memory of how he acquired Tom Clancy's "The Hunt for Red October."