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Tony Miksak

WORDS ON BOOKS by Tony Miksak for KZYX&Z-FM, 90.7 Philo CA
Airs Sunday, July 8, 2007 at 10:55 am, & Wednesday, July 11 at 1 pm

Title: The 1981 Spring Announcements

(MUSIC UP) This is Tony Miksak with a few Words on Books.

Ahhh, the pleasures of hindsight! "1981 Spring Announcements" "Bookstore-Cafes: A Special Report" "The Ecotopian Encyclopedia for the 80's" "75 Years of Family Bookselling."

You remember the Ecotopian Encyclopedia" don't you? It was published in Berkeley by And/Or Press for $9.95 in paperback.

At least Berkeley's still there. Not the Cody's on Telegraph, or Avenue Books, or the textbook stores like Berkeley Book that used to populate Bancroft Avenue, but Berkeley's still there.

I'm wallowing here, if you'll allow. I have uncovered a stack of American Bookseller magazines I saved from the 80s. In 1981 I had about one full year of bookselling experience, with another 25 to go. Yikes. I wonder how we ever did it?

American Bookseller Magazine used to come with membership in the American Bookseller's Association. It is no longer published. Many of the stores that subscribed are no longer on the planet. And of course the world and the world of bookselling has radically changed in the past three decades.

Still, it's fun to relive those thrilling days of yesteryear.

Looking through the publisher ads I see books and authors who were famous then, forgotten now. And the prices! $4.95 would buy a paperback edition of stories and essays by Herb Gold, or the 1981 "Fodor's Budget Italy."

"Woman in the Year 2000" ($6) was a "provocative and farsighted anthology by 26 writers and thinkers (who) project what they believe will happen for women in the beginning of the 21st century."

Whatever became of Woman? Writers included Bella Abzug, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Alvin Toffler, Gloria Steinem, all looking ahead twenty years, now seven years ago already.

So many publisher ads, so many publishers no longer publishing. Books in Focus, "America's fastest growing publisher of books that matter" apparently stopped mattering and growing and eventually disappeared. Also gone or subsumed: The Eurail Guide Annual, which published its 11th Edition in 1981, and its last (16th edition) in 1986. Long gone are Peace Press in Culver City, Arbor House, Newsweek Books, Garden Way, Arlington House, Control Data Arts, Dodd Mead, The Subterranean Company, Van Nostrand, Tab, North Point, and so many more.

At the same time, there's a joyful article celebrating "75 years of family bookselling" at the Otto Bookstore in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Out here in the year 2007 the Otto Bookstore still is going strong, now in its 130th year; maybe its 166th year if new research can be verified. On its web site, Otto cites evidence of "a succession of splits and mergers that date back to the 1841 establishment of A. D. Lundy and Co., at 24 East Third St., a business dedicated to the selling of window shades, wallpaper and books as well as insurance."

Otto Books either is one of the ten oldest bookstores in the country or one of the five oldest. Stay tuned for further research.

So. I have this stack of old bookseller magazines. I had put off looking through them for fear of the sadness I'd feel for the loss of stores, publishers, friends, and hopes and dreams current then, lost now.

Instead, here is the Otto Bookstore, still in the family. University presses pressing onward, publishers surviving with a stunning variety of new business plans, the same old complaints, same old hopes for the future.

It is not depressing, but energizing. You and I and many others still are here. We are reading, writing and trading in books. Despite losses there are new readers, writers and booksellers. We still feel the 1980s-style enthusiasm pre-Amazon, pre-mega-chainstores. We're all keeping on keeping on.

Barrons? Fodors? Cliffs Notes? Still there. Houghton Mifflin, William Morrow, Doubleday, Harper, Holt, Norton, Klutz, Pantheon, Workman, Putnam, Rodale, Schocken, Scribner's, Shambala, Ticknor & Fields... all transformed, all still publishing.

(MUSIC UP) It's a great feeling to be part of a tradition like that.

(MUSIC) As always, transcripts of Words on Books are available through the KZYX web site.

Notes:

The American Booksellers Association on the web:
http://www.bookweb.org/index.html

Tony Miksak
Words on Books: http://www.gallerybooks.com/bkm/index.html
personal home page: http://amiksak.googlepages.com/home

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