From Bama to Ohio: Birmingham's Menasha Ridge, at 25

by Ed Nawotka -- Publishers Weekly, 6/11/2007

According to the Economist magazine, the second bestselling travel book worldwide in 2006 didn't originate with Random House, HarperCollins or one of the other juggernauts, but with tiny Menasha Ridge Press of Birmingham, Ala. The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World, which Menasha packages for publication by Wiley, has sold more than four million copies and has made big success out of the modest-sized publisher now celebrating its 25th anniversary.

Bob Sehlinger, who co-wrote The Unofficial Guide with Len Testa, formed Menasha Ridge Press in 1982 with the late E.D. Wallace (father of Algonquin Big Fish novelist Daniel Wallace), who'd purchased the assets of Thomas Press in Ann Arbor, Mich., where Sehlinger had been employed.

Sehlinger is still publisher and says any good fortune the press has had is the result of perseverance. “In the past 25 years, we've survived a mudslide, a fire and free-falling elevators,” said Sehlinger. “It's amazing we're still around.”

In addition to its bestselling Unofficial Guides series, which covers Las Vegas as well as Disney World, Menasha Ridge is known for its series of regional outdoor recreation guidebooks, including 60 Hikes Within 60 Miles and The Best in Tent Camping. Though the guidebook market can seem saturated, Sehlinger says that his introduction of “At-A-Glance” summaries in the guidebooks in the 1980s, a time when such summaries were not yet widespread, helped the books stand out and win users.

Stand-alone titles have also contributed to the company's coffers. Menasha's bestselling title under its own imprint is William Nealy's quirky, illustrated guide to kayaking, Kayak: The New Frontier, which has sold 80,000 copies since it was first published in 1986. A revised second edition has just been released.

“These kinds of niche titles have a smaller aggregate market,” Sehlinger said. “But the bottom line is that they are very viable. A New York publisher needs a minimum sale of 5,000–7,500 units for a title in the first year. In Birmingham, we're just fine selling 3,000 units.”

In January, Menasha Ridge Press merged with Clerisy Press of Cincinnati, a company founded by industry veteran Richard Hunt in May 2006 from the assets of Emmis Press, shuttered by its corporate namesake earlier that year.

Sehlinger met Hunt in the late 1990s on a USIA trip to educate publishers in eastern Europe. “We grew to respect one another,” said Hunt. Sehlinger echoed the sentiment.

The two publishers now operate under a single parent company, Keen Communications. The company's mission statement underscores its goal to help preserve the environment. It reads, in part, “We print our books on recycled paper. The only petroleum we burn is the midnight oil. Our every action aims to enlarge, not reduce; create, not consume; preserve, not pollute.... Join us in treading lightly and honoring the wonders of nature.” As an embodiment of its philosophy, the company is planting 25 pine trees at a campsite to mark its anniversary.

The publishers will continue to publish under their individual imprints—the names of which continue to evoke curiosity. “Menasha Ridge is fictional,” Sehlinger admitted. “It's not on a map.”

The name Clerisy was discovered by Hunt in a Robertson Davies passage: “The clerisy are those who read for pleasure, but not for idleness; who read for pastime but not to kill time; who love books, but do not live by books. As late as a century ago the clerisy had the power to decide the success or failure of a book, and it could do so now...”

While the sentiment was perfect, Hunt confesses it was one of a dozen possibilities and won out when it was discovered the Web domain name was still available.

In February, Hunt had his first bestseller under the Clerisy imprint: Crosley: Two Brothers and a Business Empire That Transformed a Nation by Rusty McClure, with David Stern and Michael A. Banks, which has some 45,000 copies in print. “A respectable start,” said Hunt said.”

Combined, the two presses employ 12 in Birmingham and four in Cincinnati, with Menasha concentrating on production and back-office operations and Clerisy handling marketing and sales.

The primary challenge in the future is to make the combined company function as a whole, with the books from each press complementing each other. Hunt reported that he's already commissioned an Ohio edition of the Best in Tent Camping series and said he'll help Menasha Ridge's signature series establish a greater coverage of the Midwest.

The other challenge—albeit one much more tangible—is how to bridge the geographic and psychological distance between Birmingham and Cincinnati.

Said Hunt, “We rely on conference calls, group e-mails—and Southwest's $44 one-way flights between Ohio and Alabama sure help.”

Mississippi Bookselling

By Edward Nawotka, Publishers Weekly, 6/11/2007

Though Mississippi ranks 50th in virtually every economic index you look at,” said Richard Howorth, owner of Square Books in Oxford, Miss., “I wouldn't want to be a bookseller anywhere else.”

The state, which has a population just shy of three million, has the lowest annual average household income—just $32,466 per year—in the United States.

As a consequence, the large national bookstore chains have not saturated the state: Barnes & Noble has just two stores, Borders has five and Books-A-Million has 11. Wal-Mart is the largest bookseller, with 72 locations.

When Howorth first opened his store in 1979, he calculated that there needed to be at least 12 families in town that wanted to buy books for the store to remain open. Howorth proved a popular resident—he's now in the middle of his second term as mayor—and his store thrived. Square Books has since added two more locations, Square Books Jr. (a children's store) and Off Square Books (an annex that sells remainders and is used for events).

Oxford has the national reputation—due in part to the presence of Faulkner's home, Rowan Oak, and the town's fostering of a variety of famous writers, among them John Grisham and Barry Hannah—but the true beating heart of Mississippi literary culture is Greenville, a city of 41,000 people in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta, according to Hugh McCormick, owner of McCormick Book Inn, founded in 1965 and the oldest independent store in the state.

“Greenville has more writers per capita than anywhere else in the state,” said McCormick, citing Shelby Foote, Walker Percy, Julia Reed and Brooks Haxton as some of the dozens of writers with Greenville connections.

Still, McCormick admitted, “Demographics alone would not sustain a bookstore in Greenville,” adding, “We're only still here because we're obstinate.” McCormick's secret is to create local bestsellers. His most recent success has been with Greenville writer Gayden Metcalfe and co-writer Charlotte Hays's Official Southern Ladies Guides, Being Dead Is No Excuse and Somebody Is Going to Die if Lilly Beth Doesn't Catch That Bouquet , which together have sold more than 3,500 copies at the store.

Down in the capitol of Jackson, Lemuria Books owner John Evans also cited the need to “self-generate” buyers as a key to success. “If it's an Oprah book, I don't even buy it,” said Evans. “Let Books-a-Million and Wal-Mart sell that at a 50% discount. Our focus is on the reader that prioritizes their reading and wants help picking out their books.”

Evans, who grew up within walking distance of his store, opened Lemuria in 1975 and it, along with Square Books, has become one of the premier destinations for author readings in the country. That's why Lemuria and Square Books are both able to sell a deep selection of signed first editions.

Together, Evans and Howorth have influenced a generation of booksellers—most notably, Tim Huggins, who modeled his (recently sold) store, Newtonville Books on Lemuria, and Jamie Kornegay, a former events manager at Square Books, who opened TurnRow Book Company in August 2006 in Greenwood.

Greenwood (pop. 18,000) is the home of Viking Range Corporation. TurnRow was opened as part of a citywide revitalization program funded by Viking owner Fred Carl, in part to attract students to the Viking Cooking School.

“We didn't come because the market was begging for it; in a way, we're begging for the market,” said Kornegay. He added, “At least we have it virtually to ourselves: there's not a chain bookstore within an hour and a half drive.”

NBCC Demonstration Draws Book Fans, TV Cameras

By Edward Nawotka -- Publishers Weekly, 5/3/2007 11:41:00 AM

About 50 protestors showed up outside the Atlanta Journal-Constitution today for a "read-in" organized by the National Book Critics Circle to protest the the dismissal of the newspaper's book editor Theresa Weaver. Protestors, who included area booksellers, novelist Joshilyn Jackson and the British essayist Alain de Botton, chalked "I’m a book lover, not a fighter" on the pavement in front of the paper’s offices. Emory University creative writing instructor Joseph Skibell read from his work; another protestor read a poem by Georgia poet-laureate David Bottoms, and others from Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer and Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird.

WAGA-TV, Atlanta’s Fox 5, interviews Philip Rafshoon, owner of Outwrite Bookstore, located in Midtown Atlanta. Behind the reporter is Jeff McCord, owner of Bound to Be Read Bookstore, which is located in East Atlanta Village.

CNN, Fox News and C-Span filmed the event.

Vivian Lawand, former director of Marketing and Public Relations for Atlanta’s all-but-defunct Chapter 11 bookstore chain, was impressed. "The media attention this is getting is also very encouraging," she told PW.

NBCC president John Freeman met with Julia Wallace, the editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and managing editor Burt Roughgon. He said he was told the paper remains committed to covering books and a features editor will be assigned responsibility for the section. "I’m not exactly sure how they plan to work it out without a book editor," Freeman told PW, "They also tell me they won’t have a traditional sports editor either, so it appears they’re doing some kind of editorial reorganization. At the very least, I think I convinced them to send an editor to BEA to talk to publishers."

For her part, Theresa Weaver told PW earlier this week that she has since applied for a writing position with the paper and will find out June 11 if she will get the job.

The campaign to save Weaver’s job began with an online petition, which has since attracted some 4,500 signatures, including more than 150 from writers such as Salman Rushdie and Richard Ford. It has since morphed into a larger "Campaign to Save Book Reviewing," supported by a series of essays posted on the NBCC blog, Critical Mass. Freeman has appeared on NPR’s Talk of the Nation to discuss the campaign and is scheduled to appear on WNYC’s Leonard Lopate show next week.

Robert Miller, president of Hyperion Books, is supportive of the effort. "With hundreds of thousands of books published every year, book reviews provide readers with guidance that they sorely need, he said. "In a world without book reviewing, only the authors who are already established will continue to sell. We need book reviewers to help us introduce readers to the authors of tomorrow."

Authors Karen Abbott and Joshilyn Jackson reading each other’s books beside other protestors

Author George Saunders, who was an early signer of the petition to save the book editor’s job at the Atlanta Journal Constitution, contributed an essay which argued that the decision of newspapers to reduce book reviews is a symptom of a larger trend toward anti-intellectualism in the culture. "Somehow we've taken to distrusting literature and, for that matter, all things cerebral or difficult or seriously critical," he told PW. "I'd argue that part of the reason we rushed into Iraq, for example, was that as a culture we've forgotten how to have a good, articulate, no-holds-barred argument that is able to invoke all levels of discourse: religion and morality and the whole nine yards - and not just materialist pragmatism or jingoism or the ritual incantation of catchphrases."

Freeman said he understands the financial pressures newspapers face, but argued that it’s in the newspaper’s self-interest to keep book sections. "What book sections do more than anything is foster reading. If newspapers have any hope to maintain their own readership, they would do well to promote books in their pages."

"Read-in" to Save Atlanta Book Editor Job

Does hell have no fury like a book critic scorned?

Tomorrow at 10 a.m., the National Book Critics Circle has planned a “Save the Book Review" protest in front of the Atlanta newspaper’s head offices. The rally was prompted by the firing of Theresa Weaver as book editor of the Atlanta Journal Constitution after nine years on the job.

So do the Atlanta police need to break out their riot gear? Probably not. “We’re asking protesters to bring a book and read silently or aloud, as they wish," said John Freeman, the president of the National Book Critics Circle. He anticipates more than one hundred people to participate in the “read-in.” The organization has already accumulated more than 4,500 signatures on a petition to save the book position of book editor at the paper; signatories include literary luminaries such as Salman Rushdie and Richard Ford.

For its part, management at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution have promised not to cut books coverage -- which encompasses approximately two pages on Sunday as well as a single review during the week, though the editorial responsibilities for book review editing will be given to an editor with other duties. The paper will also continue as the principle sponsor of the Decatur Book Festival, which was inaugurated last year and attracted some 50,000 people to readings by more than 100 authors.

Weaver said has applied for a writing position at the paper and will hear on June 11 whether she has been given a new job.

The Atlanta “read-in” is the outgrowth of a larger “Campaign to Save Book Reviewing,” In the wake of the a series of editorial decisions at newspapers that have seen book sections shrink at papers such as the San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, and Chicago Tribune.

The impact of reduced coverage of books in newspapers has the greatest impact on publishers, who rely on the book pages for what essentially amounts to free publicity. Michael Taeckens, publicity director of Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, a highly regarded publisher of mostly Southern literature, was especially aggrieved by Weaver’s firing. “Teresa has always been an advocate of new and undiscovered writers, which has been essential to awareness of Algonquin's authors.”

Robert Miller, president of Hyperion Books, a division of Disney, concurred. “With hundreds of thousands of books published every year, book reviews provide readers with guidance that they sorely need, he said. “In a world without book reviewing, only the authors who are already established will continue to sell. We need book reviewers to help us introduce readers to the authors of tomorrow.”

Author George Saunders, who was an early signer of the petition to save the book editor’s job at the Atlanta Journal Constitution, views the reduction of pages in newspapers to book reviews as a symptom of a larger trend toward anti-intellectualism in the culture. “Somehow we've taken to distrusting literature and, for that matter, all things cerebral or difficult or seriously critical. I'd argue that part of the reason we rushed into Iraq, for example, was that as a culture we've forgotten how to have a good, articulate, no-holds-barred argument that is able to invoke all levels of discourse: religion and morality and the whole nine yards - and not just materialist pragmatism or jingoism or the ritual incantation of catchphrases.

Ultimately, it’s all about the money. As advertising pages in newspapers dry up, editors are forced to look at which sections are profitable. Book review sections don’t generate nearly as much advertising as sections on real estate or automobiles.

Freeman says he understands the financial pressures newspapers face, but argues that it’s in the newspaper’s own self-interest to keep book sections. “What book sections do more than anything is foster reading, which, if newspapers have any hope to maintain their own readership, they would do well to promote books in their pages.”

Louisiana Bookselling

by Edward Nawotka -- Publishers Weekly, 4/30/2007

Hurricane Katrina did little to dampen Louisiana's enthusiasm for reading. With a total of 177 booksellers spread across the state—including 10 Books-a-Million outlets, nine Barnes & Nobles, six Borders, 98 Wal-Marts and more than 40 independents—book buyers have plenty of options.

Despite a reduction in population from 450,000 to 250,000, New Orleans remains at the heart of bookselling in the state. The city boasts a handful of highly regarded independent stores, including the Garden District Book Shop, Octavia Books, the Maple Street Book Shop (famous for its “Fight the Stupids” bumper stickers), and a variety of antiquarian and used stores. A new store, Beth's Books, opened in the vibrant Bywater arts community in 2006.

Faulkner House Bookstore, a tiny shop located in the French Quarter, specializes in new fiction and signed first editions. The owners, Joe DeSalvo Jr. and Rosemary James, report that the drop in tourism hit their sales hard, reducing it to 10% of previous levels in the months after the storm.

Joseph Billingsley, sales manager for New Orleans–based Pelican Publishing, remains optimistic. “I think it's safe to say that there are some post-hurricane changes,” he said. “The distinctions from bookselling in New Orleans and the rest of the state are more sharply drawn. The stores that cater to the tourist market suffered, but now the tourists have started to come back at 75% to 80% of their pre-Katrina level, so that, too, is changing.”

Remarkably, the Garden District Book Shop and Octavia Books, both of which are in residential neighborhoods and cater primarily to locals, reopened within six weeks of the storm. They both report booming business, in part due to tremendous interest in Katrina-related titles.

Britton Trice, owner of the Garden District Book Shop, said, “Our store has been doing great, bounced back remarkably quick. We're at a level equal and greater than before.” Tom Lowenberg of Octavia Books said sales at his store have increased in each of his six years in business—including 2005, the year of Katrina.

The flooding in New Orleans led to the closure of three independents: Beaucoup Books, formerly on Magazine Street, and two locations of the Afro-American Book Stop, one of which was in a shopping mall connected to the Superdome. Michele Lewis, owner of Afro-American Book Stop, continues to sell online and hopes to open a new storefront sometime this year. The Community Book Center, another African-American bookstore, was also flooded, but moved to a new location.

Of the chain stores, Barnes & Noble's Metairie superstore was worst hit by Katrina. That store remained closed for eight months, until its gala reopening in March 2006, an event New Orleans Times-Picayunebook editor Susan Larson told PW was “like Mardi Gras.”

“People were so happy to have a place to go, it was just wonderful to see,” she said, adding, “The booksellers here have a strong sense of the greater good. There's a renewed spirit of cooperation there. They're activists on behalf their own survival. “

In addition to using the reopening of its Metairie location to raise money for the Jefferson Parish Library, Barnes & Noble showed early support for post-Katrina Louisiana by announcing plans to open a new store in the capital, Baton Rouge, just weeks after the disaster.

Elsewhere in Louisiana, destination booksellers thrive. These include Author's Alley in Deridder, near the Texas border; the Book Merchant in Natchitoches in the northwest corner of the state; and Paddy's Book Nook in Gueydan, deep in the heart of Cajun country. The best known of all is Windows a Bookshop in Monroe—a result of its regionally syndicated radio talk show, The Book Report, which helps attract touring authors to remote northeast Louisiana.

Rick Riordan and the Olympians

The San Antonio author and UT grad brings the latest volume of his wildly popular children's series to Austin

By Edward Nawotka
Special to the American-Statesman
Tuesday, May 01, 2007

With the Harry Potter finale fast approaching and J.K. Rowling hinting that she might kill off her main character, readers are increasingly protective of their literary heroes. According to San Antonio author Rick Riordan, the question he hears over and over again from worried fans across the country is: "Are you going to kill Percy Jackson?

Jackson is the eponymous hero of Riordan's "Percy Jackson and the Olympians," a projected five-volume series chronicling the adventures of contemporary teenagers who happen to be the children of Greek gods. Much to the relief of hundreds of thousands of children — many of them in Austin, where the books are very popular — the third book in the series, "The Titan's Curse," brings good news: Percy lives. (Though not everyone does.)

Riordan is not fond of series that kill off their main character at the end. "For a reader to put all the investment in a character and to write 'And then he dies' feels a little cheap to me," he says. "I think it's better to let the character live on in the reader's imagination."

The dilemma of how to end a series is something Riordan will have to face up to twice in the next few years, first with Percy Jackson and then with his award-winning Tres Navarre mystery series. Navarre, a San Antonio private investigator, debuted in 1997's "Big Red Tequila" and has appeared in five more books, including 1999's Edgar Award-winning "The Widower's Two-Step." The penultimate Tres Navarre mystery, "Rebel Island," will land in bookstores in August.

"Once the Percy Jackson books took off, they became a huge demand on my time," admits Riordan. "But I feel a responsibility to wrap up the Tres Navarre story for all the people who have been following the series over the years. They deserve closure."

While Tres Navarre brought Riordan critical acclaim and modest success, Percy Jackson offered a far larger audience. Together, the first two Jackson books have sold nearly 400,000 copies in hardcover and paperback combined. Riordan's publisher, Hyperion, is betting big on "The Titan's Curse," publishing 150,000 copies of the new hardcover, which arrives in stores today.

Granted, these numbers are no match for Harry Potter. The sixth Potter book, "Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince'' sold 6.9 million copies in the United States in the first 24 hours it was on sale, and Scholastic is printing some 12 million copies of the finale, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows." Nevertheless, Riordan's numbers make him one of the top-selling children's authors of the last two years.

His own Percy

The appeal of the Percy Jackson books can be attributed to Riordan's savvy adaptation of Greek myths to a contemporary setting. Percy has dyslexia and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, which have helped him attract "reluctant readers," especially boys, who identify with the hero.

It might come as no surprise to learn Percy Jackson was inspired by one of Riordan's two sons, who was diagnosed with dyslexia and ADHD in the second grade. "At the time, he was only interested in Greek mythology," says Riordan. "When I ran out of the original stories, he told me to make one up."

Riordan, who taught middle school for 15 years, most recently at St. Mary's Hall in San Antonio, found the transition to writing for children suited him. "I was always a storyteller in the classroom, and my students would ask me why I wasn't writing for children," he says. "It took me a long time to figure out that they were right."

Storyteller emerges

The books are gripping from the start. The first book in the series, "The Lightning Thief," begins during a field trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where Percy's math teacher transforms into a Fury and attacks him.

It's a perfect concoction of fast-paced action (as well as humor) for a generation raised on video games and the Internet.

Riordan says the one thing that surprises the students he meets during his many school visits, which he does to promote his books and "test out his jokes," is that he plays video games. "I'm 42 years old and was raised on 'Dungeons & Dragons' and 'The Lord of the Rings' books," he says. "Now, I play 'World of Warcraft' with my sons. When adolescent boys find this out, they are blown away and always try to find out my screen name."

A San Antonio native and University of Texas grad, Riordan found an early champion right here in Austin in Topher Bradfield, a bookseller at BookPeople. Bradfield, the store's 36-year-old children's outreach coordinator, is responsible for visiting Austin-area elementary schools to do readings and run book fairs. "Often," he says, "I found myself reading from the first chapter of 'The Lightning Thief,' " he says. "It was a great way to get the boys to pay attention."

Bradfield's relentless pushing of the books has paid off; BookPeople has sold nearly 2,000 copies of "The Lightning Thief" and nearly 1,000 of the sequel, "The Sea of Monsters." For Riordan's appearance at BookPeople tonight, the store has ordered 900 copies of "The Titan's Curse."

Enthusiasm for the book has run so high locally that last year Bradfield was inspired to create "Camp Half-Blood," a summer "book camp" that took place last year in Zilker Park. The event, which was based on a camp of the same name that Percy attends in the books, offered mythology lessons, Greek dancing and drumming, sword fighting and a weeklong quest to refashion "The Apple of Discord" (which was in part responsible for the Trojan War).

In a suitably postmodern twist, Percy Jackson's Camp Half-Blood was modeled on the real-life Camp Capers, an Episcopal summer camp in Waring, where Riordan spent three summers during college as musical director. "I incorporated all the goofiness and practical jokes I saw there into the books," he says.

With two of three sessions planned for this summer already sold out, Camp Half-Blood has become something of a phenomenon. It has even inspired imitators, with another Camp Half-Blood taking place this summer in Atlanta. (As a show of appreciation for all he has done, Riordan dedicated "The Titan's Curse" to Bradfield and Toni Davis, a bookseller in the U.K.)

The fourth, as-yet-unnamed, book in the series is all but finished and, says Riordan, "concerns the most dangerous place in all Greek mythology: the labyrinth."

Readers can rest assured that even book five won't be the end of the story: Two weeks ago, Chris Columbus, who directed the first two Harry Potter movies, signed on to direct the film version of "The Lightning Thief."

As for Riordan, he says he's hooked on adapting classic myths to a contemporary setting. "Next, I'm toying with the idea of modernizing the Norse myths," he says, adding, "We Texans have a reputation to uphold for telling tall tales. Mythmaking is in our blood."

Changing Hands Bookstore PW's Bookseller of the Year

A very good New Age vibe leads to success.

By Edward Nawotka -- Publishers Weekly, 4/30/2007

Maybe it's the perfect 80-degree weather or the scent of fresh coffee wafting from the Wildflower Bread Company next door, but when the staff at Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe, Ariz., gather at 9:45 a.m. around the front cash wrap for their morning meeting, most are smiling—beaming, even—when faced with the work ahead of them.

Co-owner Gayle Shanks runs through the day's events, which include a performance by a Putumayo recording artist, a seminar on journaling and a visit from the C-Span Book TV bus, before sending everyone bustling off to their stations.

Unlike most bookstores, there's not a curmudgeon on-site.

When I later ask Shanks if the staff is putting on a show for the visiting PW reporter, she replies, “No, they're like that all the time. The people working here are happy, and they're happy to be working here.” She adds, conspiratorially, “Anyone who is a downer doesn't stick around for long.”

Shanks says her only major problem with her 48 employees is when they call in sick. “There are too many smokers on staff,” she says. “Two or three times a month they call in sick, and when they do, it really screws up my schedule.” The schedule at Changing Hands is a finely tuned instrument, one that instructs each employee on their responsibilities hour-by-hour.

As the first customers filter through the door, many exchange personal greetings with the staff; others immediately head into the 10,000-sq.-ft. showroom. A few customers linger outside to browse the store's bargain books, which are displayed in a year-round “sidewalk sale.”

The name Changing Hands derives from the store's origins as a used bookstore, where books were not so much purchased as they “changed hands.” One consequence of the hippie-ish name is that new customers often mistake Changing Hands for a New Age bookstore.

Yvette Roeder, the store's PR manager, says nothing could be further from the truth. “We're a world-class, full-service bookstore in the fifth largest city in the United States,” she says, referring to the Phoenix metro area. “We cater to suburban moms, dads, kids—anyone who treasures great books. Our demographic is more Trader Joe's than poor student.” Tempe is home to Arizona State University.

Nevertheless, a bit of New Age vibe still clings to the store. A few minutes after my conversation with Roeder, I find her sitting in an empty room staring at a blank wall. “I'm testing the room's feng shui,” she says, explaining that we are standing in a new office, one that's been created to give room to the five-person marketing team, which includes a full-time graphic designer. When I leave, Roeder is trying to find the most auspicious place to put her desk.

As for feng shui, the store's must be pretty good: last year Changing Hands racked up nearly $4 million in sales—50% from new books, 25% from gift items and sidelines and 25% from used books and remainders.

Throughout, Changing Hands combines a laid-back Southwest aesthetic with a 21st-century sensibility. Take, for example, the new floors, which Shanks selected for their environmentally conscious materials as well as the way they helped define the sales space. She points out how the section of gifts and sidelines is distinguished by subtle parquet-patterned bamboo; a path leading around the cash wrap is demarcated by a soft, thatched vinyl walkway, while everywhere else is covered in a carpet in the comforting hue of red earth.

The store's most striking visual feature is a series of hand-painted murals depicting nature scenes lining the walls above the shelves. Hand-lettered signs—one in blue and yellow announcing “community” beneath an image of people walking hand-in-hand—hang from the ceiling, and a smiling orange sun is suspended over the doorway to the back office, all reminders of the store's priorities.

Pinna Joseph, who has worked at the store for 28 years and serves as Changing Hands' marketing and events manager, points out that these artifacts date to the store's first location in downtown Tempe; after each move, first to a two-story location, and now to its present spot in a suburban strip mall, the signs and the sun came along. “Some new employees don't like them,” she remarks, “but I think they help connect us with our past.”

Changing Hands opened in 1974 with a communal ownership scheme that gave every employee a share of the business. Only Gayle Shanks and her husband, Bob Sommer, remain as owners. Suzie Brazil later came on as a third partner. The three divide the duties of ownership equally: Shanks handles front-list buying, Sommer buys remainders and oversees finances, Brazil is night manager.

The owner's principles may be rooted in the 1960s, but their attitude toward business is as rigorous as that of any other 21st-century business. Various booksellers tell me they're encouraged to keep abreast of management trends and incorporate best practices strategies gleaned from ABA education sessions and books such as Paco Underhill's Why We Buy.

It's understandable. Changing Hands needs to be on the top of its game if it is to prevent its customers from transferring their loyalty to any of the half-dozen chain bookstores within a short drive.

As part of their own effort at self-preservation, Changing Hands was a founding member of Arizona Chain Reaction, a 500-strong consortium of independent businesses that encourage customers to shop at locally owned stores.

The store's watershed moment happened a decade ago, when Shanks had an epiphany. “I realized that if I wanted the store to be sustainable while maintaining the same values—being able to pay the staff a living wage, give money and services back to the community, while still providing a wonderful customer experience—Changing Hands had to be profitable,” says Shanks. Accordingly, profit is a word that comes up in nearly every conversation at Changing Hands.

“Each employee is invested in the success of the business,” says Shanks. Year-on-year sales figures from the previous day are posted next to the time clock. A storewide profit-sharing program guarantees a check to every employee at the end of each quarter, provided sales surpass those of the same quarter the previous year.

Cindy Dach, director of marketing and events, believes this emphasis on profitability empowers employees. “If you come up with an idea that will make the store more money, you can create a new role, if not an entirely new job for yourself.” Three years ago, an employee suggested the store list its used books on ABEBooks.com. Now, three employees spend up to four hours three times a week listing used books online, an effort that generates $4,000 a month for the store.

The owners also encourage employees to experiment. Dach cites herself as an example. Searching for a way to promote debut authors, she conceived of the First Fiction Tour, which took authors from five presses to a half-dozen bookstores and bars around the West. She did this despite a demanding in-store events schedule, one that consists of 350 events annually, from readings to book clubs. Though the First Fiction Tour wasn't profitable, it did “generate enormous amounts of publicity and goodwill.”

Together with in-store graphic designer Brendan Stout, Dach has created a variety of programs to promote books in-store, including a “We Love These Books” display of discounted staff recommendations, and “New Essentials” and “Forever Favorites” sections in the children's area for parents.

Changing Hand's most recent marketing program is “Page 23,” devised to highlight “contemporary fiction that is all too often overlooked by mainstream culture.” The first “Page 23” display offers some two dozen edgy titles, such as The Little Girl and the Cigarette by Benoit Duteurtre (Melville House) and African Psycho by Alain Mabanckou (Soft Skull).

Dach explains the idea originated in response to the NEA's 2004 Reading at Risk Study, which cited a decline in reading among 18–35-year-olds. Accordingly, the program is being promoted in the store with hip-looking signage, as well as on MySpace (www.myspace.com/_page23). Dach is striving to persuade other stores to pick up the program and contribute their own suggestion.

Unsurprisingly, a store as finely tuned as Changing Hands has even managed to put a succession plan in place—something that eludes many booksellers. Dach, together with head trainer and floor manager Mary Martiniak, are in line to take over when Shanks and Sommer retire, perhaps two years from now.

When that time comes, Shanks says she'll have no regrets. This honor from Publishers Weekly is simply the culmination of decades of rewarding work.

Ultimately, Shanks credits her staff with winning the PW Bookseller of the Year Award. “They and my bookseller colleagues have enabled me to have a profession that still thrills me each and every day,” she says. “The books, the customers, the conversations, the energy that surrounds my life is a gift.”

Abu Dhabi Book Fair Bridges East and West

By Edward Nawotka

Simultaneous translation facilities helped the non-Arabic speakers get a handle on the professional programming featured at this year’s Abu Dhabi Book Fair, held March 31-April 7 in the United Arab Emirates. It was the first conducted in partnership with the Frankfurt International Book Fair, who introduced a wide variety of sessions addressing publishing issues in the Arab world, including translation, censorship, and, especially, rights.

The Fair, now in its 17th year, took on a radical new look, moving from outdoor tents in the city center to Abu Dhabi’s shiny new multi-billion dollar exhibition center on the fringe of town. Some Arabic-language publishers grumbled about the imposition of German “efficiency” on the Fair, finding the higher fees (raised from $45 to $150-$300 per booth) and new antiseptic environs less accommodating than the traditional souk-like atmosphere of previous years.

In total, 406 publishers from 46 countries participated, putting approximately 600,000 titles on display. Though the Fair had no official tracking facility, organizers estimate some 400,000 people visited the Fair, most of whom were locals who attended to buy books. In particular, school children, both boys and girls, flooded the floor, many armed with one of the 3 million dirhams ($1 million) worth of book vouchers donated by local government.

Brandishing a fistful of such vouchers exchanged for books at his booth, Chris Terry, international sales and marketing manager for the American University in Cairo Press, told PW he was having a difficult time converting them to cash. “As is typical throughout the Arab world, there’s a little bit of chaos involved,” he said. “The line to cash in the vouchers is out the door, and, of course, the Fair is closed between one and four in the afternoon [for the traditional Gulf States siesta], so I will have to wait and see how it goes.” Watching as readers, librarians and teachers descended on his booth to buy up titles on display, Terry admitted that he wasn’t fully prepared to sell so much of his stock. “It’s more of a book bazaar atmosphere than I initially imagined,” he said.

Among the vendors, Scholastic was the only American publisher to have a booth, though translated editions of books by a wide variety of American and European authors were on display -- many of them in pirated editions.

Cecile Barendsma, a literary agent at Janklow & Nesbit Associates, roamed the show floor purchasing pirated editions of her agency’s authors. She explained to PW that piracy was as much the result of competition as an outright disregard for the law. “I think the Arabic language market is professionalizing, but it's not fully realized yet: For example not all countries have signed up to the Berne Convention [for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works],” she said. “Though there are publishing houses elsewhere that would live by the law, they are up against their own competitors who don't live by the law. If a publishing company wants to secure rights, there's the possibility that if the author or topic is hot and getting international attention, another publisher will put out a different, unauthorized edition without bothering to secure rights.”

One issue confronting US publishers who wish to sell rights to the Arab world is, though distribution in the region is piecemeal, it’s still often possible for an edition from one country to seep into another country, making it counterproductive for publishers to try and break up the territory, thus limiting the potential profitability.

Mohamed Hashem, publisher of Egypt’s influential Dar Merit Publishing House and winner of the Association of American Publishers’ 2006 Jeri Laber International Freedom to Publish Award, agreed. “I suppose my typical print run of 2,000 copies is not appealing to them,” he said. “Perhaps they think it isn’t worth their time,” adding that while he was still eager to acquire legal rights to American books “publishers rarely ever return my calls or emails.”

At the Al Markez Al Thaqafi Al Arabi booth, a publisher from Morocco told PW he found it much easier acquiring rights from French and Japanese publishers and showed off translated books by Foucault, Amelie Nothomb and Haruki Murakami as proof.

Barendsma from Janklow & Nesbit, who described her trip to the Fair as “a reconnaissance mission” said she believes there’s still a strong potential market for American publishers in the Arab world. “Having done a number of Arabic language agreements, I know the market is difficult, but it’s also expanding,” she said. “We’re certainly getting more requests.”

Barendsma also found an unexpected upside: “For people like myself, I think it was wonderful opportunity to meet colleagues and editors from Southeast Asia, China, Pakistan and India, which is something that is more difficult at fairs like Frankfurt or London. Abu Dhabi is a great gateway from East to West and the Emirates is used to having international guests and expatriates. The Fair may be in its infancy, but I was impressed.”

Son of Poseidon Gaining Strength

By Edward Nawotka

Originally appeared in Publishers Weekly, 4/23/2007

As booksellers await the seventh and final Harry Potter title, due in July,another promising fantasy series has quietly gained traction among young readers and booksellers. It has even attracted Hollywood and an award-winning Potter film director. The third installment of Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, titled The Titan's Curse, is due from Hyperion next month, with a 150,000-copy first printing.

Riordan's first book in the series, 2005's The Lightning Thief, has sold 275,000 hardcover and paperback copies combined; his second, The Sea of Monsters, which sold more than 100,000 copies in hardcover, has just been released in paperback. Last week Variety announced that Chris Columbus—who has directed two Harry Potter films—has signed on to direct and produce The Lightning Thief.

Percy Jackson is a wisecracking dyslexic boy with ADHD who also happens to be the son of Poseidon; in a modern-day setting, he finds himself caught up in stories from Greek mythology. Booksellers are keen on Riordan's approach, complimenting not only his use of classic story lines but the contemporizing twist of having the hero be learning impaired.

At Wellesley Booksmith in Wellesley, Mass., children's buyer Alison Morris reports The Lightning Thief sold 128 copies in hardcover and 525 in paperback, and was the bestselling title at her store last year. “And Sea of Monsters was our third bestselling title, behind Lemony Snicket.” Smith has ordered 400 copies of the new book for a launch party.

She says that the books are especially appealing to reluctant readers, particularly boys. “The action takes off on the first page,” she said. “Riordan takes the old familiar stories, which have gore, action and romance, and makes them work in a contemporary setting.” Morris added that the books' sympathetic portrayal of Percy's dyslexia and ADHD helps some readers identify with the characters more easily.

BookPeople in Austin, Tex., got behind the books very early, and has moved more than 500 copies of The Lightning Thief in hardcover and some 1,200 paperbacks. Last year the store promoted the hardcover of The Sea of Monsters, and has sold more than 800 copies thus far. They've ordered 500 copies of The Titan's Curse for their own May 1 party.

Riordan's sales at BookPeople can largely be attributed to Topher Bradfield, the store's children's outreach coordinator, who in 2006 was inspired to create “Camp Half-Blood,” a summer camp based on Riordan's series.

BookPeople plans three more Camp Half-Blood sessions this summer, each with different mythological underpinnings, including Labors of Heracles, the Lyre of Orpheus, and Theseus and the Minotaur. “We've got 80% of the kids from last year coming back,” said Bradfield. Hyperion Books for Children is providing $6,000 to help cover the cost of the camps and pay for one student from a disadvantaged school district to attend each of the camps for free.

Bradfield's Camp Half-Blood idea caught the attention of Diane Capriola, owner of Little Shop of Stories in Decatur, Ga. She has been working with Bradfield to devise her own Camp Half-Blood to take place this summer. “Parents like the idea of a literary camp because it is educational,” Capriola says. “Kids like it because it doesn't seem educational.”

Scott Meyer, owner of Merritt Bookstore in Millbrook, N.Y., said he only recently discovered the series—after a sales rep sent him copies on tape. “I came late to the books,” said Meyer, “but once I heard them I immediately knew I wanted to handsell them in the store. We're always looking for the next Harry Potter, and this is a very good series to promote in that vein.”

Nancy Gallt, Riordan's agent, says she always knew Riordan's books might bear comparison to those about the boy wizard. But she sees one distinct advantage her author has over J.K. Rowling: “Rick is writing them faster—one per year—which means his readers won't grow up faster than the characters in the book.”

With the total number of Percy Jackson books set at five, that means Riordan's fans will be able to read their final installment in spring 2009. After that? “We're already talking about prequels and spin-offs,” Gallt says. “Rick has tons of ideas.”

Abu Dhabi Book Fair Bridges East and West

By Edward Nawotka

Originally appeared in Publishers Weekly, 4/23/2007

After a reorganization and relocation, the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair, held March 31–April 7 in the United Arab Emirates, attracted large crowds and exhibitors from 46 countries—in addition to raising a few Western eyebrows over the number of pirated editions on display. A total of 406 publishers from 46 countries participated at the revamped book fair and organizers estimated some 400,000 people attended, mostly locals there to browse the 600,000 books on display.

Now in its 17th year, the fair took on a radical new look after partnering with the Frankfurt Book Fair last year, moving from outdoor tents in the city center to a shiny new multibillion-dollar exhibition center on the fringe of town. Some Arabic-language publishers grumbled about the imposition of German "efficiency" on the fair, finding the higher fees (up from $45 to $150–$300 per booth) and new antiseptic environs less accommodating than the traditional souk-like atmosphere of previous years.

Scholastic was the only U.S. publisher to have a booth, though translated editions of books by a wide variety of American and European authors were on display—many of them in pirated editions.

Cecile Barendsma, a literary agent at Janklow & Nesbit Associates, roamed the show floor purchasing pirated editions of her agency's authors. She explained that piracy was as much the result of competition as an outright disregard for the law. "I think the Arabic-language market is professionalizing, but it's not fully realized yet. Not all countries have signed the Berne Convention [for international copyright protection]," she said. "[Law-abiding publishers] are up against competitors who don't live by the law. If the author or topic is hot, another publisher will put out an unauthorized edition."

Mohamed Hashem, publisher of Egypt's influential Dar Merit Publishing House and winner of the Association of American Publishers' 2006 Jeri Laber International Freedom to Publish Award, agreed, but also placed some blame on Western publishers. "I suppose my typical print run of 2,000 copies is not appealing to [rights holders]," he said, complaining that American book publishers "rarely return my calls or e-mails."

While the Arabic market may be difficult, Barendsma said it still has "strong potential" and is expanding. And she noted that the Abu Dhabi Fair has another up side: "It was a wonderful opportunity to meet colleagues and editors from Southeast Asia, China, Pakistan and India, something that is more difficult at fairs like Frankfurt or London."

Walls tumbling down: Jonathan Lethem satire blurs the lines of artistic ownership

By EDWARD NAWOTKA

YOU DON'T LOVE ME YET
By Jonathan Lethem.
Doubleday, 224 pp. $24.95.p>

The February issue of Harper's Magazine featured an article by novelist Jonathan Lethem titled "The Ecstasy of Influence," in which he issues a manifesto calling for "open source" culture, based on the share-and-share-alike underpinnings of jazz and the Internet.

He suggests that the very idea of "intellectual property" is preposterous and proposes that art is better suited to a "gift culture" in which creators freely borrow from others works. "Most artists are brought to their vocation when their own nascent gifts are awakened by the work of a master," he writes. "That is to say most artists are converted to art by art itself. ... Inspiration could be called inhaling the memory of an act never experienced. Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist of creating out of void, but out of chaos."

On his Web site, Lethem has been putting his theory into practice by offering the rights to a handful of his own short stories for a dollar. It's a program he calls "the Promiscuous Materials Project." In addition, he's running a contest to give away the film rights to his new novel You Don't Love Me Yet so long as the winner agrees to return the rights to the public domain after five years. The new novel itself explores questions of proprietary ownership via a Los Angeles rock band coping with stardom.

First, let's introduce the band. Lucinda, bassist, answers phones for a faux "complaint line" that's part of a performance art experiment run by a former lover. Lead singer Matthew has kidnapped a kangaroo from the zoo where he works and is hiding it in his small apartment. Denise, the drummer, is relegated to a dead-end day job at a porn emporium. Bedwin, the band's reclusive muse and guitarist, rarely ventures into daylight and instead spends his days compulsively watching Fritz Lang's Human Desire on his VCR looking for discrete visual clues.

As the novel opens, Lucinda and Matthew have just broken up, threatening to break up the band, which is already struggling to produce a playlist that goes beyond the five clichéd songs the four have already written and played to death.

What initially appears to be a fanciful tale of slacker sex and introspection — the kind of quirky setup seen in a dozen indie comedies — quickly becomes something deeper: a critique of artistic inspiration and ambition.

After Lucinda begins a mystifying phone relationship with a man she calls "the Complainer," a talker with beguiling tales of romantic misadventures, the band's fortune changes. The stories serve as the raw material for a series of new songs — Dirty Yellow Chair, Secret From Yourself and Monster Eyes, the last a likely hit that also provides the band with a name.

The band is invited to play at a highbrow happening. Dubbed "Aparty," it has a farcical twist: The band is expected to play silently while headphone-wearing party goers dance to their Walkmans (it is the early '90s, thus no iPods). Aparty — apart, a party, get it?

Fortunately, the organizer's absurd plans are thwarted, and Monster Eyes plays a full-volume set, one that leads to its big break: a chance to showcase its talent on the absurdly named Fancher Autumnbreast's radio show, a local music kingmaker who has launched numerous careers and appears based on the real-life Nic Harcourt, a famous DJ on Los Angeles' KCRW.

But here's the dilemma: The songs technically don't belong to the band, since they originated with the Complainer's calls. Carl — Lucinda discovers the Complainer's real name after impulsively becoming his lover — is upset and demands to become part of the band, which throws the quartet into disarray.

This somewhat absurdist plot is Lethem's way of illustrating his theory that art is not created in a vacuum, that it does not arise sui generis from its creator.

Besides embodying an agenda, the novel offers real pleasure, particularly in the witty way Lethem depicts the milieu of the L.A. art/rock scene: a gaggle of aging record producers are "unyouthful men in youthful clothes"; a local alternative weekly is titled "The Echo Park Annoyance"; perhaps best of all, he proffers a number of clever, hipster coinages, such as "Astronaut Food" as a metaphor for the meager sustenance one gets from an unfulfilling relationship. In this lovely sentence he describes a middle-aged man's body hair: "His hair, white at his throat, darkened below the curve of his stomach, as though night's setting had recorded itself across the field of his body."

The book's jacket may feature a stern-looking Lethem posing with a guitar — the very picture of artistic ennui — and promise "a romantic farce." But this slick, entertaining novel offers a relationship with the writer and his characters far more satisfying and serious than mere "Astronaut Food."

Mark Doty's 'Dog Years'

The latest chapter in Mark Doty's ongoing autobiography focuses on his love for his canine companions

By Edward Nawotka
SPECIAL TO THE AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Sunday, April 15, 2007

Among the hundreds of poignant images to come out of the Hurricane Katrina tragedy was a photo of a dog swimming through the floodwaters, most likely searching for its lost family. Undoubtedly, its owners were just as distraught by the separation.

As Mark Doty writes in his new memoir, "Dog Years," "One of the unspoken truths of American life is how deeply people grieve over the animals who live and die with them, how real that emptiness is, how profound the silence is these creatures leave in their wake."

"Dog Years" spans a decade of Doty's life, one filled with many deaths, including those of his lover Wally from AIDS in 1994; an acquaintance on Sept. 11, 2001; and, most central to this book, his beloved dogs Beau, an energetic golden retriever, and Arden, a loving black lab.

A peripatetic writing instructor, Doty takes his dogs with him to numerous locales — Vermont, Iowa, New York, Provincetown, Mass., and Houston (where he now teaches half the year at the University of Houston). The canines explore each landscape with their noses to the ground and as much, if not more, enthusiasm than their owner.

Anyone who has read any of Doty's seven books of poetry and three previous volumes of prose knows that he has long dwelled on the "always present" specter of death: "peeking out of the pocket, down in the socket of the bone, the shadow in the photograph, the fleck in the iris of a living eye." His 1996 memoir, "Heaven's Coast," offered a vivid and moving diary of Wally's battle with AIDS. "Dog Years" serves as a companion piece to that volume, one that documents every detail of his affection for his dogs and their eventual demise: Beau, at age seven, from kidney disease, and Arden, at 16, from old age.

Beau, who was introduced to Wally just a month before Wally's death, was intended as a new companion who would comfort him in the bed he was confined to. Arden, whom the couple had raised since a puppy, had become too fat to jump on the bed after eating so much of the hospital-cooked bacon that Wally was surreptitiously feeding to him. Beau ultimately serves his purpose, providing one of Doty's enduring memories of his lover — that of Wally fighting his crippling disease to lay a trembling hand on Beau's flank.

After Wally's death, Beau and Arden become Doty's primary companions, reminding him to pay attention to the quotidian demands of life — walking, eating and sleeping. Later, a new partner, Paul, makes the family a foursome again.

Doty is a capital "L" literary writer who separates his chapters of narrative with brief "Entr'acte" — short meditations on topics such as dog names and photographs, grave sites, time and God. These observations alternate between pithy — "The saddest dogs in the shelter are the ones without any names" and downright sententious: "Sometimes I think the place where God is not is time; that is the particular character of the mortal adventure, to be bound in time, and thus to arrive, inevitably, at the desolation of limit."

In short, "Dog Years" isn't "Marley and Me" — John Grogan's saccharine 2006 best-seller that was loved and loathed in equal numbers by dog owners. For starters, it's unlikely Grogan would ever consider comparing the smell of a dog to the richly scented rooms described in Joris-Karl Huysman's 1903 novel "Against Nature."

Doty challenges time-worn clichés about pets, asking, for example, "Does everyone truly want a baby, or a baby substitute? The idea seems reductive. But the truth within it is that we are charmed by certain kinds of limitation: the dog's dependence, like that of the little child, engages rather than repels. There is a certain pathos in the fact that they cannot speak to us, that they can be so fully present without entirely communicating."

"Dog Years" is itself something of a personal challenge for Doty. He strives to match, in prose, his poetry's ability to communicate the paradoxical emotions in our lives, such as simultaneous feelings of love and despair. Doty's touchstone is Emily Dickinson, whom he calls "the great teacher of contradiction," and her verse serves as a kind of refrain throughout. But, he realizes, there are moments poetry itself fails: In January 2001, near the sixth anniversary of Wally's death, Doty experiences what he calls "the worst moment of my life" when he suddenly feels an urge to drown himself by diving off the Staten Island Ferry. He relents after looking down at Beau and, he writes, "something in me breaks." He continues, "The purpose of poetry, it has been said, is to bring more of the unsayable into the world of speech, but poetry fails me in my attempt to evoke that moment."

Unsurprisingly, there are moments when Doty still finds poetry to be a reliable medium of expression. Doty's most acclaimed book, 1993's "My Alexandria," which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, opens with a poem titled "Destruction." It describes the razing of an old building in New England, where "Suddenly the stairs seem to climb down themselves, /atomized plaster billowing." A similar image resurfaces here when Doty describes the tumbling of the first of the World Trade Center towers, which he watches, as it happens, on a computer in the New York Public Library: "One of the twin images on the screen begins, it seems, to consume itself, from the top down, the smoke billowing out only a little before it is sucked down into the great earthward rush and road. Well, no road, on the computer screen: a silent, shimmy column of smoke climbs down itself, in a few seconds time."

When Doty returns to his apartment later that day, it is Arden whom he seeks solace from, as much as Paul. Arden, too, is affected by the tragedy: he can smell the acrid scent of the fire for many months thereafter.

The passage is key to Doty's overall message: Animals are not divorced from the greatest events of our lives, as we are not from theirs. We share life and death equally, but it is our duty alone to try to understand the meaning of it — they're just dogs, after all.

Despite occasional lapses into highfalutin' aphoristic moralizing, "Dog Years" delivers an eloquent meditation on the symbiotic relationship between humans and their dogs, one that is likely to provoke owners to view their dogs less as pets and more like partners. As Doty writes, dogs are blessed with "a fixity of devotion, a deep reliability" — something only the truly fortunate can expect from their human companions.

Third Spring Book Show Blossoms

More aggressive advertising and a partnership with the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance helped boost bookseller attendance 18%, to approximately 650, at the third annual Spring Book Show, held March 23–25 in Atlanta. SBS director Larry May said he was encouraged that the new initiatives had helped lift the turnout this year.

The most dramatic change was the addition of educational seminars, held in conjunction with SIBA. "I primarily came to the show to attend the SIBA education panels," said Elizabeth Grant-Gibson, co-owner of Windows a Bookshop in Monroe, La., "but after perusing what was offered on the show floor, I decided to spend about $2,000 on books from AMS and Daedalus Books. We don't carry remainders, but I thought I'd get my feet wet. I'll definitely be back next year."

Joining independent booksellers on the floor were buyers from the national chain stores. Joey Middendorf, used product manager from Hastings Entertainment, said, "I did just as much business there, if not more, as I did in CIROBE. I had more time—I think the selection was a little better, and the vendors had exactly what I was looking for. I was charged with looking for bargain software and DVDs, and it was nice to see some of those there as well."

There were 130 exhibitors at this year's SBS. Buyers from both indies and chains were noticeable around the Advanced Marketing Services booth, which appeared to be having a fire sale of titles from AMS imprints not acquired by Baker & Taylor. John Weber, a buyer for remaninder dealer US Media Partners, was struck by some other fallout from the demise of AMS—a number of former distribution clients of PGW were at SBS. "Maybe some small and mid-size publishers are finally catching on to the idea that you can recoup 60%–80% of the manufacturing cost of your unsold books by selling hurts and remainders—something the majors understand very well," Weber said.

Perhaps as a result of SBS's Southern location, Christian vendors reported strong sales. Barry Baird, executive director of Bargain Books at Thomas Nelson, said, "This show was bigger in terms of orders and dollar amounts than this past CIROBE, and CIROBE was good. We've been going to the Spring Book Show since it started, and this was the best one yet."

Baird indicated that some of his top customers this year were not "mom-and-pop" bookstores, but rather nontraditional outlets. He said that general retailers, such as the bargain clothing store chain Ross Dress for Less and City Trends, a chain with 300 stores that cater to the African-American urban market, have been purchasing larger and larger quantities of books.

In addition to the educational panels, SBS held a two-day writing conference concurrent with the trade show. While about 70 aspiring writers attended the conference, some vendors complained that the competing events caused slow periods on the floor.

One of the busiest people at the show was Larry May, whose company L.B. May and Associates recently purchased Nashville's five-year-old Onboard Remainder Book Show. May was signing up vendors and attendees for the revamped, as-yet-unnamed event, which last year drew only 100 attendees. May had already registered more than 200 attendees and sold 300 tables for this year's show, set for August 10–12 at the Georgia World Congress Center, the same venue as the Spring Book Show.

Larry Brown's Last, Unfinished Country Epic

A Miracle of Catfish

By Larry Brown

ALGONQUIN BOOKS; 455 PAGES; $24.95

Reviewed by Edward Nawotka, from the San Francisco Chronicle, March 30, 2007

---

The famed Ole Miss journalism Professor Jere Hoar was once asked in an interview, "Why, exactly, does Oxford produce so many writers?" The northern Mississippi town has fostered writers as diverse as John Grisham, Tom Franklin and William Gay, and of course, William Faulkner, now immortalized in bronze on the town square. Hoar replied that when growing up as a child in Oxford, "You saw writers walking down the street every day and grow up thinking that it's a normal thing, wanting to be a writer, the sort of job anybody can do."

Larry Brown was no different. The ex-Marine spent 16 years as an Oxford firefighter before dedicating himself to writing full time. When Brown died of a heart attack at age 53 in November 2004, he'd just delivered the bulk of his sixth novel, "A Miracle of Catfish," to his publisher. In an essay that introduces the book, Brown's friend and fellow Oxford resident Barry Hannah describes Brown as a "late bloomer" who hectored him at the local bar with story after story, some "so bad" Hannah would duck out the back of the bar when he "saw him coming down the walk with the inevitable manila envelope." Brown did improve: In total, he delivered five powerful novels (including "Dirty Work" and "Joe"), a pair of affecting memoirs ("On Fire" and "Billy Ray's Farm"), two story collections, and this unfinished final manuscript.

Sadly, since "A Miracle of Catfish" was left unfinished, it is impossible to ultimately judge. The publisher, who offers ellipses to indicate cuts to the text, provides a single page of notes Brown outlined for the final chapters of what is already a sprawling country epic. As it stands, the book chronicles a year in the life of a small community outside Oxford in the year 2004-2005, beginning with septuagenarian Cortez Sharpe bulldozing the white oaks from his property to make way for a new catfish pond -- an event Brown notes in a syntax that could just as easily have come from the pen of Faulkner:

"The soft earth that had lain hidden beneath rotted leaf mold for millenniums was torn up and printed with dozer tracks and shown to the unflinching sun, where it lay curled and cracked and began to dry and flake and be clambered upon by red fire ants," writes Brown.

Sharpe himself is the most vividly drawn of the large cast of locals, which includes his wife, a stroke victim who sits idle in a wheelchair watching endless infomercials on TV, waiting to die; a young neighbor boy named Jimmy who disturbs Shape's idyll with a noisy red go-kart; and Jimmy's father (who is known solely by that moniker), a factory worker, who, when not drinking beer, is watching hunting videos and worrying over the state of his '55 Chevy and newly pregnant mistress. Sharpe's daughter, a plus-size lingerie model, lives in Atlanta with a painter suffering from Tourette's syndrome who speaks in rhyming vulgarities, whom Sharpe refers to exclusively as the "damn retard."

It may sound as if Brown is indulging in the horny, smoky, trailer-trashy cliches of Southern-fried fiction, but Brown is better than that, and generates tremendous pathos for his people, rendering them far more human than mere caricatures. He's equally adept at incorporating infrequent and surprising picaresque elements, especially in the form of anthropomorphized animals, such as a pair of crows that talk in African American patois, and a behemoth catfish named Ursula who shares Sharpe's pond with 3,000 far smaller catfish.

Eventually, Sharpe teaches Jimmy to fish, an act that begins to close the circle of the generations and the community, but soon thereafter, the story abruptly ends.

Since there can be no resolution to the action -- which includes a number of accidental deaths and pregnancies, as well as a murder -- the cursory plot is ultimately incidental to the vivid, if lengthy depictions of the everyday obsessions of the locals: hunting, drinking beer, smoking cigarettes and mulling their lot in life.

Knowing from the start that the book is unfinished -- lacking a roof, so to speak -- means the reader can only take pleasure from being lashed by the elemental energy of Brown's imagination, rather than ever fully inhabiting it.

Ultimately, the experience of reading this finely wrought but unrealized novel is not unlike the satisfaction fishing on a hot, sunny day offers: One sits in a daze, halfheartedly in anticipation of those little tugs on the end of the line that awake you to consciousness. And even if you don't return home with a single catch or a new trophy to mount on the wall, you still believe that your time was well spent.

Review of Matthew Sharpe's 'Jamestown'

Matthew Sharpe's 'Jamestown'

SPECIAL TO THE AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Sunday, March 18, 2007

For reasons that are too obvious to belabor, over the past five years storytellers have become obsessed with the apocalypse. Think of Cormac McCarthy's haunting "The Road," the stunning film adaptation of P.D. James' "Children of Men" and television series such as "Jericho," "Heroes" and "Lost." The common thread among these stories is that each features a group of refugees trying to recover some semblance of their old lives.

Add to this list Matthew Sharpe's "Jamestown," a gonzo re-imagining of the founding of the famous Virginia colony. Sharpe moves the story from 1607 to a post-apocalyptic near future in which the boroughs of Brooklyn and Manhattan are engaged in a war that has left New York besotted with ninja-like assassins.

After watching the Chrysler building tumble into ruin, a coterie of Sun Tzu-toting business executives representing the "Manhattan Company" set forth along Interstate 95 ("whoever controls I-95 controls the world," we're told) in an armored bus for Virginia, where they hope to find food and oil for their war machine. Soon, the would-be colonists/occupiers encounter the "spectacularly ugly" natives, all marked with "an unnaturally reddish hue."

A key element of Sharpe's beguiling, but ultimately baffling, satire is to refashion historical figures into contemporary caricatures. Jamestown's leader, John Smith, has become Jack Smith, a mechanic responsible for maintaining the bus; Algonquian chief Powhatan is recast as a lethargic, fat patriarch; Pocahontas (nicknamed "Poke a Huntress," among other, bawdier names), becomes a gabby, sex-starved "irreverent scamp"; her husband, the tobacco farmer John Rolfe, is reimagined as the book's narrator, Johnny Rolfe, the Manhattan Company's designated "communications officer" who is recording the events on his PDA. New to the story is Powhatan's right-hand man, a psychiatrist named Sidney Feingold (sometimes referred to as "Sit Knee Find Gold").

For the most part, Sharpe hews to what details are known from the historical record. Nearly half of the original Jamestown colonists were self-described "gentlemen" who knew little about surviving in the wilderness. Centuries later, the suit-wearing refugees are no different, derided by the natives as a "pack of weaklings" without "a single skill to live beyond their fortress town up north."

This inability to cope with their new circumstances has transformed the men into brawlers who, spurred by even a moment's frustration, turn on each other with knives drawn. As Rolfe writes early on: "Some great, quaint pre-annihilation philosopher described the movement of history as thesis, antithesis, synthesis, whereas I've seen a lot more thesis, antithesis, steak knife, bread knife."

A number of historical events are recreated here, the most mythological of which is the saving of Capt. John Smith from execution by Pocahontas. (In Sharpe's version, Smith is to be beaten to death with baseball bats.) But Sharpe's true agenda lies in recasting language and storytelling itself.

While typing her journal on her own PDA, Pocahontas explains why she is recounting her story in English, instead of her native "secret" language: "I feel like if I were to lie or dissemble in English you would know right away because every English sentence goes by so slowly that you have this time to examine it and decide if it's true." Sharpe's prose demands such close attention: "Jamestown" is narrated through a trippy barrage of different forms, including snatches of pop songs, vulgar frat-boy limericks and, in particular, a hilarious and bizarre exchange of instant messages between Pocahontas (whose online name is CORNLUVR) and Rolfe (GREASYBOY).

It's all quite entertaining, but will baffle anyone hoping for a more conventional narrative (not to mention anyone unfamiliar with the history of the real Jamestown colony). If Sharpe's exuberant prose has any literary forebear it's Samuel Beckett, especially the early satirical novel "Murphy," which revels in wordplay, literary pastiche and also stars a sexually charged heroine. In fact, Sharpe even offers an exchange of dialogue between two voices described as "A Couple of Fops" that sounds like a reworked riff from "Waiting for Godot":

'How did we get here?'

'By bus.'

'No, I mean how did we get to the end of the world.'

'By bus.'

'I mean metaphysically.'

'By bus.'

'Do you ever wonder what did it, finally, what killed civ?'

'What's civ?'

'Civilization.'

'You have a nickname for civilization?'

'We were close before it died.'

"Jamestown" is a sui generis work of the imagination, but, like much of Beckett's work, it often feels cold in its cleverness. At one point, Pocahontas breaks the fourth wall to explain that she has a "secret name" that, if uttered, will kill the reader — the very model of the sort of postmodern game Sharpe enjoys playing with his readers.

It's also unclear whom we're supposed to sympathize with here — the ill-mannered settlers come to a bad end or the naïve natives who are transformed for the worse by exposure to the nefarious Manhattanites. Perhaps it's best to root for the lovers Pocahontas and Rolfe, who in their gleeful IM exchanges offer a glimmer of hope that love might persevere in the face of annihilation.

Despite his literary curlicues, Sharpe's rather complicated novel boils down to the old saw about what happens to those who ignore history — a point, perhaps, too obvious to repeat.

L.B. May Purchases Nashville Remainder Show

by Edward Nawotka, PW Daily -- Publishers Weekly, 3/14/2007

L.B. May and Associates, owners of the Spring Book Show in Atlanta, has purchased Nashville's five-year-old Onboard Remainder Book Show from founder Larry Austin for an undisclosed sum. "We purchased the show because we felt we had economies of scale to do it right and it offered us an opportunity to enter into a new market," explained Larry May, president of L.B. May and Associates.

The show will be relocated to Atlanta, where it will take place from August 10-12 at the Georgia World Congress Center, the same location as the Spring Book Show set for later this month. Both shows focus on the sale of remainders, though the summer show will add sidelines. The summer show is also likely to be 20% smaller than the Spring Book Show, reducing the number of tables available to vendors from 530 to 430.

The still-to-be named show will take place a few months before the big CIROBE event. "A lot of retailers and vendors feel CIROBE is just too late in the season to get books into stores for Christmas," said May. "The Onboard Remainder Show was originally called the Onboard Remainder Christmas Show, specifically so people knew they could come in and get their product in time for Christmas. With this second show, we aim to sell to booksellers who want to get their bargain stock in time for the holiday shopping season."

May is inviting interested parties to suggest names for the relaunched event. The winning name will be selected by May and the new event will be christened on the first day of the show. The individual who submits the winning name will receive a grand prize that includes air fare, hotel accommodations, dinner and a skid of books. Three runners-up will be given a free skid of books.

Abu Dhabi Tries to Put Its Book Fair on the Map

By Edward Nawotka

From Publishers Weekly, 3/12/2007

Now in its 17th year, the Abu Dhabi Book Fair is undergoing a radical transformation, via a new, six-month old partnership with the Frankfurt Book Fair. The event, which takes place in the capital of the United Arab Emirates from March 31 through April 7, aims to help establish new relationships between Arab and Western publishers, authors and agents. For the most part, book publishing in the Arab world is a fractured and unregulated industry, with no central distribution, little copyright enforcement and limited retail outlets. "By partnering with Frankfurt," said Abu Dhabi Book Fair director Jumaa Abdulla Al Qubaisi, "we saw an opportunity to try and professionalize publishing in the region."

In previous years, the Abu Dhabi Book Fair—which is run by the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage—was an opportunity for local residents to purchase books from around the Arab world, primarily from publishers from Egypt and Lebanon, many of which were not available through local bookstores or online. Approximately 200,000 people visited the fair last year and 350 publishers exhibited books.

This year, the venue has moved from outdoor tents, which offered approximately 10,000 feet of space, to a wing of the new multibillion-dollar Abu Dhabi Exhibition Center, which offers some 40,000 sq. ft. of exhibition space. The additional space allows the fair to dedicate a special section to children's books, as well as provide room for new exhibits covering production and distribution. But the revamped fair is struggling to attract Western publishers in its first year. About 12 small European publishers had registered to exhibit at press time, and no American houses had committed to attend. For his part, Al Qubaisi has tempered his expectations. He told PW, "We partnered with Frankfurt because they are most organized, recognized and professional brand in the business. We have a lot to learn from them. This year we are just getting experience."

The partnership with Frankfurt has yielded a new slate of professional seminars, covering such publishing practices as marketing, public relations and rights acquisition. There are also panels on "Tolerance as a Pre-Condition for Peace" and "Fundamentalism and Terrorism." Among the Americans speaking at the fair will be Rick Vanzura, president of Borders Group International, who will discuss Borders's franchise deal with Dubai-based Al Maya Group to open stores in the UAE.

As in previous years, books will also be for sale. Al Qubaisi emphasized that the fair will be open to all types of publications, save those that "discriminate, are pornographic or foment conflict in the region."

Central to the fair's new agenda is the launch of the Sheik Zayed's Book Awards. The new book award program, named for the late president of the United Arab Emirates, offers eight awards in categories ranging from children's books to best technology in the field of culture, and all carry a $200,000 cash prize. A ninth category, for "person of the year in the field of culture," offers a $270,000 prize. Any work published in the Arabic language and/or a translation from or to Arabic that was published within the last two years is eligible.

Mohamed A. Al Shehhi, a project coordinator for the fair, said he hopes the event will be one part of a larger effort to raise the standing of reading in the Arab world. "Traditionally, leisure book reading has not had as significant a role in Arab culture as religious scholarship, poetry and even reading newspapers. Through the book fair, we hope to help that change," Al Shehhi said. He added, "Ultimately, Abu Dhabi aims to be a safe haven for arts and culture in the Middle East and become a gateway for the West to the region. The Book Fair is an important part of that larger goal."

Georgia: Bookselling in the Peach State

By Edward Nawotka

From Publishers Weekly, 3/5/2007

Georgia boasts 188 bookstores, including 68 chain stores, with the heaviest concentration in Atlanta, the state's largest city and one of the fastest growing metropolitan areas in the United States. There, a coterie of dynamic specialty booksellers—including the feminist Charis Books & More, gay Outright Bookstore and children's bookseller Little Shop of Stories—thrive amid the burgeoning chains, which include some 22 Borders and Waldenbooks stores (out of 31 total in the state), as well as five B&Ns and B. Daltons (out of a total of 21, with a new B&N store expected to open in Newnan, Ga. shortly).

Marlene Zeiler, owner of Atlanta's Tall Tales Book Shop, said her 28-year-old 3,000-sq.-ft. general bookstore caters to a "sophisticated" readership that includes employees of the Centers for Disease Control and Emory University. "Some people in other parts of the country may think we Georgians are dumb, but they're wrong," said the former New Yorker.

All this growth and prosperity has its downside. "Bookselling in Atlanta has definitely become more challenging. Atlanta is now so big and with so much happening, it's hard for a bookstore to get noticed," said Frank Reiss, owner of A Cappella Books, which started in 1989 as an antiquarian bookstore, but has transitioned to offering new and used titles from its location in the hip Five Points district.

Likewise, Doug Robinson, owner of nearby Eagle Eye Books, said growth at the four-year-old store has been "modest" if not "flat," and it is primarily the store's Web business that continues to grow, as students are more and more comfortable ordering books online.

The competitive environment in Atlanta has had the greatest impact on the home-grown Chapter 11 bookstore chain, which at its peak had 16 stores and was lauded in the Wall Street Journal as a model independent bookseller. The chain has since fallen into bankruptcy and been reduced to three locations.

Outside of the metro area, the concentration of stores is less dense, but the market no less interesting, said Tom Murphy, v-p of book reps George Scheer Associates. "Though it's true Atlanta has some wonderful bookstores, the real action for me is now in the more rural corners of the state," said Murphy, who has been selling academic and small trade press books, including those from the University of Georgia Press, for 18 years. He pointed out that stores such as Cowan's Book Nook in East Ellijay (est. population in 2005: 706), which is in the mountains near the Tennessee border, and Hattie's Books in Brunswick along the southeast coast, are in out-of-the-way locales isolated from competition and have readers hungry for regional titles.

Leigh Baumann, owner of Jekyll Books at the Old Infirmary on Jekyll Island, one of the Sea Islands, agreed. "We do have a strong regional bias in our book selection," she said. "There's a sense of history here—it's where Vanderbilt, Pulitzer and Morgan had their summer homes and remains a high-end tourist destination—so people who come here want to read about the history and local community." She cited the novels of the late Georgia author Eugenia Price, as well as titles on ecology, birding and the store's self-published Golf Lovers Guide to Jekyll Island as big sellers.

Jeannie Young, manager of G.J. Ford bookshop on St. Simons Island, agreed that her store's temperate island locale is a boon. The wealth of the year-round residents—which include celebrities and athletes, such as golfer Davis Love III—ensures a consistent trade in hardcover books. Tourists are also important customers, and Young sends her store's newsletter to residents in 40 states who continue to order books throughout the year. "I feel very fortunate," said Young. "We continue to grow year after year."

Florida: Bookstores in the Sunshine State

By Edward Nawotka

From Publishers Weekly, 2/26/2007

In the literary world, Florida may be best known for having produced its own indigenous genre—the Wacky Florida Mystery. Purveyors, including Carl Hiaasen, Bob Morris and Tim Dorsey, are big sellers up and down the state. "Those authors—especially Hiaasen— easily draw hundreds to every reading," said Crystal Chancellor, district marketing manager for Borders Bookstores in south Florida. "But that's not all that sells," she added. "Florida is so diverse that you might have one store in which Jewish-interest and health books sell especially well, and another just a few miles down the road where the customers are primarily Spanish-speaking and interested in high-quality literature."

With 284 bookstores, Floridians have plenty of choice: the Sunshine State has the fourth-largest number of bookstores of any state in the country, behind only California, Texas and New York. Of the major bookselling chains, Borders has the greatest saturation, with 66 stores. The breadth of bookstores is as varied as the geography, which ranges from the beachy southern end of the peninsula and the hurricane-prone eastern seaboard to the Georgia border and the balmy panhandle.

Books & Books is Florida's best-known independent bookseller; it's celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. Owner Mitchell Kaplan, a former president of the ABA, said that for many years he fought the stereotype that due to the weather, the residents of the Sunshine State wouldn't be interested in reading.

"Florida has traditionally been a place where there was a strong market for indies," he said. "When the superstores expanded into the state, there were initially a lot of closings. But smaller niche stores have begun to spring up." For his part, Kaplan has built a minichain with three locations: Coral Gables, Miami Beach and the upscale Bal Harbour mall.

"When we first opened, Miami was going through a rough period. But we've seen the city remake itself," said Kaplan, who pointed out that half of his sales are to bilingual Spanish/English readers.

Kaplan told PW that his idea of a successful bookstore was shaped by Haslam's Book Store in St. Petersburg on the Gulf coast. Founded in 1933 during the Depression, Haslam's remains the largest independent in the state. It offers 100,000 new titles, as well as several hundred thousand used books, in a 20,000-sq.-ft. setting. Co-owner Ray Hinst, the third generation of the family to run Haslam's (his son is a manager there), said that the "size of the store is the biggest statement we can make." It stays true to its "olde-timey" roots: no mailing list, no sidelines, and it's not open evenings.

In contrast, the Book Mark in Atlantic Beach in the northeast corner of the state is a mere 1,500 sq. ft. The store opened in 1990; Rona Brinlee purchased it in 1995. She said that her location serves three distinct types of clientele: locals, snowbirds who come for a few months and tourists. The combination, said Brinlee, means that her business isn't as susceptible to seasonality or weather. Brinlee is regularly interviewed by tastemaker NPR to recommend books.

Its Own Brand of Southern

Another misconception about Florida that needs correcting: "It's not really the South," says Leslie Reiner at Inkwood Books in Tampa. "Stereotypical Southern books like the Sweet Potato Queens don't work for us. Our customers pretty much read what the nation is reading."

Tom Rider, co-owner of Goerings Book Store in Gainesville in the panhandle, concurs. "We're not quite as empty-headed as we might seem," he said.

Located just a mile down the road from the U. of Florida, Goerings is both a 5,000-sq.-ft. trade bookstore and a separate textbook store. Rider said Gainesville has been experiencing significant growth in recent years, like many larger cities in the South. As a consequence, the chains saw an opportunity; two Books-a-Millions, a Borders and a Barnes & Noble are all nearby.

The boom in population also creates unique challenges: "Since we're still chopping down trees and plowing fields for suburban tract developments," explained Rider, "our customers continue to move further away from us. That means that a location you picked 10 years ago might not be as good, and you need to reassess constantly. Now that's a problem that we in Florida have that others around the country don't."

A punishing road to wisdom: Review of US Guys by Charlie LeDuff

Reporter pursues male psyche through fights, football, Burning Man event

By EDWARD NAWOTKA

US GUYS: The True and Twisted Mind of the American Man
By Charlie LeDuff.
Penguin Press, 242 pp. $25.95.

Is there something ominous and seething in the soul of the American man? Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter Charlie LeDuff thinks so.

In his new book US Guys LeDuff adopts the mantle of George Plimpton and throws himself into a variety of dangerous situations: He joins a fight club in Oakland; cruises the dirt streets of the neo-hippie Burning Man festival in the nude; worships with snake-handling Christians in Tennessee; participates in a gay rodeo in Oklahoma City; follows around a wisecracking Detroit homicide detective; and joins an arena football team. In the end you come away with the distinct feeling all is not well in Middle America.

LeDuff bucks the stereotype of the media-elite journalist as someone out of touch with the real America. The journalist's job, he writes, is to be "someplace you are not supposed to be, asking questions that no decent person would, things that would make your mother ashamed." His first book, a collection of Times columns titled Work and Other Sins, dealt with the denizens of New York City bars and back alleys. As a consequence, he's an old-school, rough-and-ready reporter, in the mold of Jimmy Breslin.

The media machinery these days favoring images over ink, it quickly subsumed someone so sui generis as LeDuff. This second book was born of LeDuff's experience filming a Discovery cable TV series called Only in America. The show ran for 10 episodes (it's still showing in reruns) and featured nearly all the stories in US Guys.

But anyone who watches the series will find stark differences in the presentation. While the series is marred by a breezy "gee whiz, look at all the freaky things I'm doing" tone, US Guys is more provocative, cerebral and, frankly, self-loathing. LeDuff is really using America as a mirror in which to measure himself.

And he's not satisfied with what he sees. When he joins a traveling circus of immigrant performers from Russia, Venezuela and Mexico, he's trained to be a clown. "I am, of course, already a clown," LeDuff writes. "A stupid man who hides behind his outrageousness. A scared, stupid little man who would rather people laugh at what he does than at who he is."

Elsewhere, he is preoccupied with provoking others to beat him up. At the "Nouveau Nihilist" Burning Man festival in Nevada, LeDuff tries to provoke the drug-fueled crowd of 40,000 nude, sunburned hipsters by throwing eggs at their giant neon-lit Burning Man effigy, which he sneers at as an "ephemeral piece of 'highly conceptual art' " worshipped "as though it equaled the Acropolis."

In the most memorable episode in the book LeDuff pals around with fight-club members, a gang dubbed the Rats. The club consists of 30 members and eight prospects, ages 21 to 38, and includes "not your run-of-the-mill misanthropes and boneheads. But former Marines, sharpshooters, mechanics, car salesmen, doctors of philosophy, missionaries, bureaucrats, government agents, fine painters, cardsharps," all "physically fit, wild and on the edge of insanity." LeDuff calls them "the most complete-incomplete men there are."

Their parties involve a punk band, bottles of whiskey and a boxing ring in which they beat each other black and blue, much as in the Chuck Palahniuk novel Fight Club (later turned into a film starring Brad Pitt).

To prove his mettle, LeDuff challenges Big Mike, a 330-pound dreadlocked 29-year-old psychology student at UC Berkeley. Big Mike is the only African-American member of the Rats, a man LeDuff views as the embodiment of the "black bogeyman."

The 30-something LeDuff is a slender 160 pounds, smokes, has soft hands and is fond of wearing a foppish black suede vest. (Later in the book he will go to New York and try and fail to become a model.) Before the bout, onlookers mock him as "Oscar Wilde the faggot." One sullen Rats member says, "I hope he kills you."

But by the very act of sacrificing himself in the ring, taking his punches and having the guts to ignore his fear, LeDuff wins over the mob, which cheers for him even as he's getting bloodied: "The little man! The primordial. This is the meaning of fight club and riding on the edge and fire and explosions. The exhilaration of life," LeDuff exclaims.

Less punishing is his stint as a member of the Amarillo Dusters Arena 2 football team. The players, who earn a paltry $200 per game, are motivated by dreams of making the big time. Most will fail. Surely this is a metaphor for broken dreams, but in Amarillo he also finds the racial divide between the black players and white players telling. While the white players have the advantage of their skin color when re-entering the job market, the black players, though admittedly "physically superior," have far dimmer prospects.

So why does LeDuff risk so much in the service of his journalism? As he tells a snake-handling Christian: "Well, I don't like the place we're headed, you know? Fat, stupid, scared and [masturbating] to porno."

Taken as a whole, it's hard not to feel that American men have lost their central place in the culture and as a consequence have demeaned themselves. LeDuff sees the possibility of redemption, and self-transformation in fomenting the American man's anger. The danger, of course, is that this energy, so often manifesting itself in violence, will consume itself and leave behind nothing but ashes and a hollow shell of humanity.

Reading US Guys is like taking a brisk slap in the face from someone who's demanding you slap him back. It's not pleasant, but it will give you a sense of how you measure up. And it does leave a sting.