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Tony Miksak
WORDS ON BOOKS by Tony Miksak for KZYX&Z-FM, 90.7 Philo CA
Airs Sunday, January 7, 2007 at 10:55 am, repeated Wednesday, Jan 10 at 1 pm
(copyright 2007 Tony Miksak)
Title: It Was A (Kind of) Very Good Year (In Some Ways) (Except the War) (Which is Terrible) (& Isn't Over Yet)
(MUSIC UP) This is Tony Miksak with a few Words on Books.
So much good news, and so much that was disappointing this past year in the world of books and publishing.
On the positive side, Judith Regan got summarily fired, ending her reign as the Princess of Almost Porn under her own imprint, Regan Books.
Booksellers definitely were NOT looking forward to what would have been Regan's latest trashy book, if it hadn't been canceled before she was fired: OJ Simpson's "If I Did It." Few cared to find out how OJ's ghost writer would explain how OJ did it, or would have done it, if in fact he did do it, which of course he didn't, or did he?
Every time the HarperCollins sales rep and I got to the Regan Books pages, we turned them so fast I got wind burn. Even though she and I were on the phone and a continent away, we always were in perfect harmony on this.
Regan was not the only purveyor of hatefully dumb books, but she was by far the leader in that embarrassing category. So that is good news. The rumor now is she may sue to get her job back, and win.
Peering at the bottom line on the celestial Bookstore Balance Sheet it appears that about the same number of independent bookstores closed as opened in 2006.
More than a dozen new independent bookstores opened. They were located in places as diverse as San Carlos and Los Angeles; Glen Falls, NY; Rocky River, OH; Prairie Crossing, IL; Williamson, WV; Boise, ID; Bradenton, Fl; Bridgeton, NJ; Ft. Collins, CO; Greenwood, MS; and St. Paul, MN.
The new store in St. Paul was founded (and no doubt funded) by Prairie Home Companion's Garrison Keillor. He calls the store Common Good Books.
These projects are welcome and highly admirable, yet they are vastly outshone by news from China.
The Xinhua News Agency announced that over the next five years China intends to open 200,000 bookstores to serve some 900 million people in its rural areas. My broken calculator tells me that works out to four and a half books per person, if each store serves an audience of about 4500 readers and stocks a thousand titles, as planned.
Then, I wonder, could there possibly be 200,000 bookstore names in China? New York City stopped naming schools and went for PS1, PS2, and so forth. China could name new bookstores BS1, BS2 all the way up to BS200,000. Just a thought.
Again by my unreliable count, independent bookstores last year closed in New York City; Beverly Hills; New Milford, CT; Dallas, TX; Salem, OR; Buchanan, WI; New Canaan, CT; and Gaithersburg, MD.
Reasons given for closing included high rents, nearby chain bookstores, online competition, simple retirement, a decline in mall traffic, clientele that got older over the years, a failed downtown improvement, and high property taxes passed on as rent.
In the case of Murder Ink. on upper Broadway in New York City, owner Jay Pearsall said among the reasons for closing his 34 year-old store is the death of many longtime customers, "lots of them immigrants, lots of them Jewish, educated, liberal."
As usual in recent years, a ridiculous amount of new books were published, more than any human will ever be able to read.
After you parse out the ones you couldn't possibly be interested in, and the ones you'll never see anyway, what you are left with is new books by beloved authors, and new books by authors you've never heard of, and new books with titles so intriguing you can't possibly not pick them up for at least a little peek.
For me, one peek-worthy book turned out to be the surprisingly moving and very much overlooked new novel, "Measuring the World" by German writer Daniel Kehlmann.
Full review forthcoming. In the meantime, a couple of million books await us. So what are YOU waiting for?
(MUSIC UP) You can subscribe to the email version of Words on Books by writing to amiksak@mcn.org. Transcripts are available on the KZYX web site.
Notes:
Thanks to editor John Mutter and the other dedicated folks who produce the email newsletter Shelf Awareness Daily News. By studiously reading back issues, I came up with my unscientific review of store closings and openings. You can find all that information and more at http://www.shelf-awareness.com/
"Measuring the World" by Daniel Kehlmann. Pantheon Books hardcover $23. ISBN 0375424466.
Tony Miksak
Bookseller Emeritus & member, Board of Directors, KZYX&Z
read "Words on Books" at http://www.gallerybooks.com/bkm/index.html
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