If you buy your books, buy from an indie, especially now.
The pandemic, of course, has pummeled independent bookshops. In the best of times, they are constantly undercut by big discounters. Since COVID-19 arrived, more than one indie has gone under each week, says the American Booksellers Association. “Many of those still standing are staring down the crucial holiday season and seeing a toxic mix of higher expenses, lower sales and enormous uncertainty,” The New York Times reported.
It’s not that people aren’t reading; book sales are up 6% over last year. But people aren’t buying at indies, and online events typically bring in little to no money. Sellers hope Barack Obama’s memoir, due Nov. 17, will help; it’s expected to be the year’s biggest title.
Vroman’s, the huge, 126-yearold Pasadena store, says sales and foot traffic are down 40%. It’s asking customers to, among other things, move up their holiday buying. At least one GoFundMe campaign is in progress.
Loyal customers do help. The Strand, in New York, put out a call for customers on Oct. 23: Its sales were down 70%. A boom the next day set a single-day record of 10,000 online orders, crashing the website. In 48 hours, the store handled 25,000 online orders; normally it’s 600. (Publishers Lunch, NYT, Shelf Awareness)
Remember “A Warning,” by “Anonymous,” a Trump administration official? The book, and its predecessor op-ed piece in 2018, sharply criticized President Trump as unfit for office and set off a hunt for the writer’s identity. Wednesday, one Miles Taylor, exchief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security, confirmed he was the writer. (NYT)
Meantime, in the pipeline: Alexander S. Vindman, who as a national security aide offered key testimony during the impeachment of Trump and later accused him of running a “campaign of bullying, intimidation, and retaliation,” has a book deal. His memoir, whose arc includes his family’s emigration from the Soviet Union, is “Here, Right Matters: An American Story.” Due in the spring from Harper. (AP)
Don’t forget Norfolk’s Together in Justice Book Club Series, part of an exhibit called “Come Together, Right Now: The Art of Gathering.” The next books: Saturday, “White Fragility” by Robin DiAngelo; Nov. 29, “Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates; Dec. 12, “Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption” by Bryan Stevenson. Sessions, via Zoom, start at 3 p.m. Free; register at Chrysler.org. The exhibit, at One Memorial Place through Jan. 3, looks at the experience of gathering (sweet, bitter and more) during this time when it’s hard to gather safely.
Between pandemic and politics, people hurt. They need sustenance. Thus, reading. Check Oprah Winfrey’s list of “The Books That See Me Through,” chosen instead of a single club pick; she values these for “their ability to comfort, inspire, and enlighten.” The list: James Baldwin, “The Fire Next Time”; TaNehisi Coates, “Between the World and Me”; Jon Meacham, “The Soul of America: The Battle For Our Better Angels”; Toni Morrison, “Song of Solomon”; Mary Oliver, “Devotions”; Eckhart Tolle, “The Power of Now”; and an anthology edited by Joy Harjo, “When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry.” (AP)
Obituary notes: Tom Maschler, a legendary British publisher behind the Booker prize for fiction, was 87. Maschler also published Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Nadine Gordimer,
Doris Lessing and others. … Beat poet Diane di Prima was 86.
New and recent
Rick Bragg’s “Where I Come From: Stories from the Deep South” collects pieces from Southern Living and Garden & Gun. (Knopf, 252 pp.)
From former CIA director John O. Brennan, a memoir, “Undaunted: My Fight Against America’s Enemies, at Home and Abroad.” (Celadon, 464 pp.)
Also: From James Patterson (with Shaun Serafin), “Three Women Disappear” … Fannie Flagg, “The Wonder Boy of Whistle Stop” … Richard Paul Evans, “The Noel Letters” … Bryan Washington, “Memorial,” the November Good Morning America club pick.
—Erica Smith, erica.smith@pilotonline.com