BookWoman fights to keep site

By Edward Nawotka
SPECIAL TO THE AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Monday, November 26, 2007

In early November, on the same weekend Austin was celebrating two book festivals — the Texas Book Festival and the Austin Jewish Book Festival — Susan Post, the owner of Austin's BookWoman book store, quietly announced that she needed to raise $25,000 by last week if she hoped to pay off debt and keep the store open. The store would need another $25,000 by Christmas to pay for the down payment on a new lease and the installation of new store fixtures. The store, which has been located at West 12th Street and North Lamar Boulevard for the past 13 years, loses its lease Feb. 1.

Post's plea wasn't ignored. Well-wishers from across the country have donated money via the store's fundraising Web site, www.savebookwoman.com, and bought books via the store's Web site. Post says she's already raised some $20,000, $5,000 of which came from a small group of anonymous supporters.

"I'm optimistic that we'll make our goal," she says. "Little angels have always fallen out of the sky to help me along the way."

BookWoman is one of about 15 remaining feminist bookstores in the U.S. and the only one in Texas. Opened in 1975 by a dozen women who pooled $500 in seed money, the store was first opened in an abandoned storefront at 21st and Guadalupe streets, opposite the University of Texas, that had been firebombed in a drug feud. Originally called the Common Woman Bookstore Collective, the store's name derived from a famous feminist poem by Judy Grahan that reads, in part, "a common woman is as common as a common loaf of bread/and will rise."

Post, who was then working as a clerk at the Perry-Castañeda Library at UT, was recruited to work in the store because of her knowledge of books. She would rush from her job at UT at noon and open the doors at 12:15 and sell books until 6 p.m.

"After the first year, the separatist half of the collective left," recalls Post. Shortly thereafter, Post was virtually running the store single-handedly on a salary of $50 a week, donated by the remaining members of the collective; when money got tighter, she moved the store into her home at 1510 San Antonio St.

A native of New Jersey who spent her teen years in San Francisco, Post moved to Texas in 1964 and enrolled at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches to study painting. It was East Texas that radicalized her:

"I wanted to be a beatnik, but the people I met in college wore white bobby socks, black suede loafers, teased their hair and wanted to be Kilgore Rangerettes," she says. "At the time, Nacogdoches was still a segregated town, and it was easy to see all the prejudice that existed in the world."

Post still considers the late U.S. Rep. Mickey Leland a hero for his work to integrate Nacogdoches. A visit to Austin during her sophomore year of college convinced her that the capital better suited her disposition and politics.

The store made the transition from a nonprofit into a for-profit business in 1980, when Post moved the store from her home into a new location at 324 E. Sixth St. (now the Iron Cactus). The landlord rented the space on one condition: that Post and her new partner in the store, Karen Umminger, change the name.

"He said he didn't want to walk out of his own storefront across the street and see the original name, which offended him," Post says.

The first name they settled on was BookWomen: everywoman's book shop, but a linguist suggested that the use of the plural "women" was threatening, and it was later changed to "BookWoman."

Austin author Spike Gillespie discovered BookWoman in 1988, while on a cross-country trip.

"A feminist bookstore? I had no idea such a thing could exist," says Gillespie, "I have always said that having BookWoman here really factored into my decision to move to Austin permanently."

The first feminist bookstore in the U.S. was the Amazon Bookstore Collective in Minneapolis, Minn., which opened in 1970, and while the phenomenon might be considered primarily something of the 1970s and '80s, the number of stores peaked in 1993 with 124 women's bookstores across the country. The dissolution started soon thereafter.

"It didn't take long for women's books to get picked up by the mainstream," says Kristin Hogan, a professor at Louisiana State University who was inspired by a stint working at BookWoman in the late 1990s to write her doctoral thesis at UT on the history of the feminist bookstore movement. "Stores started closing as the titles were incorporated into bookstore superstore inventories; today, every Barnes & Noble and Borders has a big women's section."

Hogan, who later went on to manage the Toronto Women's Bookstore, says that as a graduate student lecturer at UT, she made it a point to bring her students to BookWoman to see writers in person. These ranged from Sharon Bridgforth to Alice Walker.

"Many of my students had never been to a literary reading, and it was really exciting for them to see how an author engages with an audience," says Hogan.

Writer Marion Winik praises BookWoman for supporting her from the beginning of her career and, in particular, for hosting some of her favorite events.

"When my book 'Telling' came out in 1994, we had a book party at the Acropolis nightclub downtown," recalls Winik. "They had a fabulous bathroom — all red velvet and couches — so Susan Post decided to sell books in the bathroom."

BookWoman moved to its present location in 1993, occupying a space previously held by Hill Country Weavers.

"This little mall held a lot of iconic Austin businesses, including Vulcan Video and Eclectic," says Post, "But the times are a-changin' and now we have high-end boutique clothing stores moving in."

The past few years haven't been easy on the store. Construction on North Lamar Boulevard reduced foot and driving traffic, while competition from the Internet proved fierce. As a consequence, BookWoman has struggled to attract a new generation of customers. Some potential customers still mistakenly believe the store is exclusively for feminists or lesbians, but a more common reaction is similar to that of Lindsay Franklin, a mother of two young children, who says "I'm reassured to know BookWoman is still there, but I'm also genuinely embarrassed to admit that I haven't shopped there in years. When I was a student it was important to me, but I don't live near downtown anymore, and with the demands on my time, I don't buy many books, and the few I do, I am ashamed to admit, I pick up while running errands at Target."

Franklin needn't be embarrassed: A majority of women spoken to for this article expressed much the same sentiment.

Ultimately BookWoman's greatest service to Austin is not as a bookstore, but as a lodestone for likeminded people. When Carol Petrucci moved to Austin three years ago from Madison, Wis. — a town that has its own women's bookstore, A Room of One's Own — she sensed that BookWoman would offer her kinship. Petrucci has since made the store a part of her life as a regular at its monthly book club.

"The women in the book group are really intelligent, diverse in age, sexual orientation, and read books that wouldn't insult me," says Petrucci. "I used to buy more books online, but after joining the group and making friends with Susan and realizing that's how she made her living, I changed my shopping habits. The store is the centerpiece of an important community of women here, and I would hate to see it go away."

As Speakers' Bureaus Grow, Booksellers Cast Wary Eye

Publishers' in-house units are a boon to authors, but booksellers worry about impact on tours

by Edward Nawotka -- Publishers Weekly, 11/12/2007

One of the most surprising revelations to emerge from Dead Certain, Robert Draper's new bio of President George W. Bush, was that the president plans to make his post–White House fortune on the speaking circuit. Perhaps he can join his daughter Jenna, whose children's book, Ana's Story, has become a bestseller and who has just signed up to be a client with the in-house speakers' bureau at her publisher, HarperCollins. “It's a vote of confidence for us that she didn't go with an outside firm,” said HarperCollins speakers' bureau director Jamie Brickhouse.

When it started its speakers' bureau in 2005, HarperCollins was at the vanguard of a trend. In the past two years, Knopf has opened an in-house bureau, as has Penguin. Currently, the number of authors each bureau represents ranges from 50 or so at Knopf to 100 each at Penguin and HarperCollins. In addition to the three in-house bureaus, Random House has an exclusive relationship with American Program Bureau, and Hachette Book Group USA is currently in discussions with an outside agency, according to spokesperson April Hattori. “We think it's a great idea and an opportunity to expand the exposure for our authors,” she said. “We've been working on it for a while and hope to finalize something soon.”

Publishers are moving into representing their authors as professional speakers at a time when traditional outlets to present authors to a wider public—in particular, book review sections—are eroding. “If there's a pruning at the top, there's growth at the bottom,” said Paul Bogaards, executive v-p of publicity at Knopf, who started the Knopf speakers' bureau in January 2006. “We're trying to extend the life of books beyond the six-month window that a publicist typically works on a book,” he said.

While publishing sales are generally flat, speakers' bureaus represent a growth area. “We're growing at a rate of about 30% per year,” said Brickhouse of his division at HarperCollins. This ultimately leads to more money added to the bottom line: Knopf and HarperCollins take 20% of a speaker's fee, which typically ranges from $5,000 to $7,500, but can balloon to six figures for a celebrity author.

The reasons an author might stay in-house with a publisher for arranging speaking engagements, rather than going with a well-established speaker's bureau, are varied. For many, it is about the money: where typical speaker's agents might charge a commission of anywhere from 25%–33%, the in-house agencies represent a discount. Some authors, like Douglas Brinkley, view staying in-house as a convenience. “The HarperCollins speakers' bureau has been truly amazing,” he said. “Because I'm considered an in-house historian—one who has written my last five books for them—the bureau seems hyper-committed to booking me around the country at festivals and lecture halls.” Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked, said he finds it useful to be represented by the HarperCollins speakers bureau because it serves as a filter for offers. And for others, it's about taking advantage of exotic opportunities: Gay Talese recently traveled to Bogota, Colombia, to participate in a book festival—an appearance organized by the Knopf speakers' bureau. Penguin has arranged for John Perkins, author of The Secret History of the American Empire, to go to Panama.

Those who are benefiting most of all are the midlist writers. Julie Otsuka, author of the 2002 novel When the Emperor Was Divine, credits the Knopf speakers' bureau with bolstering her career a full five years after her novel was published. “They've enabled me to do nothing else but write—when I'm not speaking, that is—and have helped me build an audience for my next book,” she said. Knopf keeps her busy: earlier this month, Otsuka had four events scheduled at various California colleges and libraries in a four-day span.

Still, the in-house bureaus are not beloved by all. Some booksellers, in particular, feel threatened and expressed concern that this may be a harbinger of the eventual demise of the free book tour, on which so many depend to draw in customers. Bogaards bristled at the idea: “This augments, and does not replace, the traditional author tour, which is not going away.”

Despite such assurances, bookstores remain suspicious that publishers may be siphoning off their best authors to event managers willing to pay generous honoraria. “To be honest,” said Hut Landon, executive director of the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association, “we don't know all the events in our area that publishers set up. If it turns out they are arranging events and using their special sales department to sell books, thus excluding booksellers—all booksellers, indies and chains—from having an opportunity [to] participat[e] in that, it's a distressing trend. One instance where that happens isn't bothersome, but when you add it all up, it is definitely a problem.”

At the University of Washington Bookstore, event coordinator Stesha Brandon said she isn't threatened by the events she knows the in-house bureaus are arranging in the Seattle area. “Often, the events they set up are different from our own, or else we'll partner with them to sell books.”

Jane Moser, manager of the Brazos Bookstore in Houston, Tex., said, “Sometimes, the publishers will come to me with a big-name author, but since we have a small store, I will set them up with an outside organization, like the World Affairs Council, who can accommodate a bigger audience.” Booksellers receive a cut of the overall fee—5% from HarperCollins; 10% from Knopf—as a commission when they help set up an event. One of Brazos's outside partners is Houston's popular Inprint Brown Reading Series. Director of the series Rich Levy books nearly two dozen speakers per year, some of whom come for free and as part of their tour, while others receive an honorarium.

“The fact that we're willing to pay ensures our audience gets to see authors the publishers would not otherwise be willing to send to Texas,” Levy explained. “At the same time, my main concern is that publishers will move away from touring authors to a model where organizations like my own will exclusively be asked to pay.” Though he's had longstanding relationships with several outside speakers' bureaus, he's yet to work with an in-house agency. “I just hope that if publishers are doing this themselves, they keep the fees reasonable,” said Levy. “In the 12 years I've been in this position, I've seen the fees quadruple. The reason we get good audiences is that we still charge the same as we did in 1995—often just $5 a person—and if the prices go up further, I may be forced to pass along that expense.”

Austin’s BookWoman in Jeopardy, Texas Book Fest a Success

By Edward Nawotka -- Publishers Weekly, 11/6/2007 1:02:00 PM

On the same weekend Austin, Tex., played host to a pair of annual book festivals—the Texas Book Festival and the Austin Jewish Book Festival—the city’s venerable BookWoman bookstore announced it will close unless it is able to raise $50,000 before mid-December. The store, which opened in December 1974, is one of the last dozen remaining feminist bookstores in the country.

“We need the money to cover existing debt and to pay for the down payment and build-out for a new store,” said Susan Post. “Our lease is up in January, and though we only need 1,100 to 1,200 square feet, Austin’s booming economy has put most retail locations in the city center out of reach.”

The store launched a fund-raising campaign at www.savebookwoman.com and was selling T-shirts with the site address on the back at the Texas Book Festival. “We had so many friends and well-wishers stop by our booth at the Book Festival that I was encouraged,” said Post. “Sales of shirts and books at the festival were great—these are often the best days of book sales we have each year.”

“Little angels have fallen out of the sky to help me along the way,” she said, adding that the store has already raised a “quarter” of its goal.

Elsewhere at the Texas Book Festival, a roster of more than 209 authors, scholars and musicians entertained the crowds.

Festival literary director Clay Smith told PW that this year the festival, which is known for having heavy-hitting political panels and speakers, had this year opted to emphasize fun and humor. Stars appearing included first daughter Jenna Bush—a graduate of the local University of Texas—who read from her new children’s book, Ana’s Story; homegrown hero Marcus Luttrell, whose Lone Survivor topped this summer’s nonfiction bestseller list, who appeared on a panel; and NPR personality and writer Roy Blount Jr., who gave numerous talks.

“We were initially concerned that since we didn’t have a Barack Obama or a Bill Clinton, fewer people might come,” said Smith. “But the numbers look to be about the same as last year—which was more than 40,000 people—and book sales appear to be about the same.”

In previous years, Barnes & Noble had shared responsibility for book sales with Borders, but this year was the sole official bookseller. Sales at the festival routinely top $100,000, with a portion returned to the festival and subsequently donated to Texas public libraries. Other retailers on hand included Amarillo-based Hastings (which has no store in Austin, but four in surrounding towns), and Intellectual Property bookstore, which is owned by Follett.

The Austin Jewish Book Festival, which lasts through November 11, kicked off with a presentation by a freshly shaved A.J. Jacobs, who discussed his latest experiment as a human guinea pig, The Year of Living Biblically.

Authors Lose Air Time as Writers Strike

By Edward Nawotka -- Publishers Weekly, 11/8/2007 10:23:00 AM

The Hollywood writer’s strike has reverberated in the halls of New York publishing, in particular with the suspension of production of the late night talk shows that have become integral to launching a book to a national audience.

This week Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart had interviews scheduled with Karen Greenberg, author of The Torture Debate in America (Cambridge Univ. Press), Robert Reich, author of Supercapitalism (Knopf), CNN talking head Lou Dobbs, author of Independents Day (Viking), and former UN Ambassador John Bolton, author of Surrender Is Not an Option (Threshold). No interviews have made it on air. And The Colbert Report planned to interview David Levy, author of Love And Sex With Robots, AJ Jacobs author of The Year Of Living Biblically, and radio producer David Isay, author Listening Is An Act Of Love.

“For the right author, they are the gold standard,” said Lisa Johnson, v-p executive director of publicity and marketing for Dutton and Gotham. Gotham author Jared Cohen was scheduled to appear next Monday on The Colbert Report to talk about his book Children of Jihad. “It is his first book and getting him booked on Colbert was a coup.”

Johnson pointed out that Stewart and Colbert’s shows are not the only late night gab fests that hosted authors: The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson is also known for promoting books. Johnson’s author Jenny McCarthy, whose latest book is Louder than Words, had an appearance cancelled this week due to the strike.

“It’s not as if our business is going to collapse,” said Paul Bogaards, executive director of publicity at Knopf. “But we publicists are desperate to get our authors in front of readers and these are lost opportunities, especially as we enter the holiday shopping season.”

"We go through this all the time," added Johnson. "There's always something in the news to contend with, either politics, a natural disaster, a war," said Johnson. "It's rarer when it doesn't happen."

A conversation with Roy Blount Jr.

The esteemed Southern humorist explains how Texas is (and isn't) part of the South and how Austin is (and isn't) part of Texas.

By Edward Nawotka
SPECIAL TO THE AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Sunday, November 04, 2007

'Humor,' writes George Saunders in his new essay collection 'The Braindead Megaphone,' 'is what happens when we're told the truth quicker and more directly than we're used to.' Nowhere is that definition more apt than in the work of Roy Blount Jr., who, like Saunders, will be appearing at this weekend's Texas Book Festival.

Blount has become, over the course of his 40-year career, a kind of national mascot for the clichéd curmudgeonly Southern writer. It's a self-conscious role he's been willing to play, much in the same way Garrison Keillor plays a Northern country rube on "A Prairie Home Companion," only to undermine the stereotype. Here's a guy who doesn't like NASCAR; tosses off knowing references to Voltaire, Emmanuel Kant and Edmund Husserl (often on the same page); and has lived in New England for most of his adult life — though he's retained his Georgia accent.

"One difference between Garrison's franchise and mine," says Blount, "is that nobody on a national, much less international, level knew about bachelor Norwegian farmers and Midwestern Lutherans and lutefisk until he came along. Everybody already thought they knew about Southern stuff when I came along. Also, he can sing. I wish to hell I could sing."

Ironically, Blount wasn't born in the South, but in Indianapolis in 1941, though he was raised in the Atlanta suburb Decatur and attended Vanderbilt University (a proud Southern institution if there ever was one). He then moved to New York City in the late '60s and has since divided his time between there and the Yankee stronghold of Western Massachusetts. His expatriate existence, he writes in his collection of essays, "Long Time Leaving: Dispatches from Up South," entails explaining to people that "y'all" is always second person plural (not singular) and "trying to get Aunt Dixie and Uncle Sam on speaking terms."

Blount was scheduled to be one of the headliners at the Book Festival's opening night gala Friday, participate in Saturday's Molly Ivins tribute and today will read from "Long Time Leaving" and co-host the festival's debut "Define-A-Thon," which promises to "separate the vocabulary geniuses from the vocabulary wannabes." (Blount's co-host Steve Kleinedler, a lexicographer with the American Heritage Dictionary, is said to have a phonetic vowel chart tattooed on his shoulder — which sounds like the punch line of a Blount joke.)

"I always loved coming to Austin for music and high times in the '70s, and now I enjoy coming to it for the food and the countryside and to see my sister, Susan," says Blount. "As I am not the only person to have observed, Austin is not like the rest of Texas. Of course, you could probably say the same about Abilene or Amarillo, but I like the ways in which Austin is unlike the rest of Texas, and I even like the ways in which it is, in my eyes at least, thoroughly Texan."

It's tempting to suggest that Blount is a modern-day Mark Twain, but the comparison doesn't rate. First, Blount seems less inclined toward get-rich-quick schemes and taking on debt. Second, of Blount's 20 books, only one (1990's "First Hubby") is a novel and one of his best is about ... football. "About Three Bricks Shy of a Load: A Highly Irregular Lowdown on the Year the Pittsburgh Steelers Were Super but Missed the Bowl," was written in 1974 and remains among the finest books about the sport ever written. Twain wrote about frog races.

Blount is best known — aside from his regular gig on the NPR quiz show "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" — as the editor of "Roy Blount's Book of Southern Humor," which made him the de facto expert on the topic of joke telling south of the Mason-Dixon line. That book includes a contribution from Edgar Allen Poe, so we know he considers Maryland to be part of the South. How about Texas?

"Texas is Texas," he said, "When I edited an anthology of Southern humor, I included several Texans — Molly Ivins, Dan Jenk ins — because I wanted to. But there are differences, of course. When I was growing up in Georgia, we were cowboys until we were maybe 11, but after that we moved on."

Blount, an "avowed non-Republican" — because "Democrats are bad enough" — has, like many other great humorists, found that politics provides some of his best material. In "The Story So Far," the tour-de-force essay that closes "Long Time Leaving," he offers a faux-epic lineage of modern American presidents as seen from the perspective of a Southern liberal.

It starts with John F. Kennedy, "A Hero of the North," who was "martyred in Texas" only to be followed by "The Texan" (Johnson), then the "Dark-Jowled Embodiment of Evil" (Nixon, who was brought down by the "Hero Storytellers, Sir Woodward and Sir Bernstein"). The Georgian (Carter) begets the Aged Genial One (Reagan) who is followed by the Sidekick (George H.W. Bush) and his Glorious War Story in the Televised Sky (Gulf War I). He is succeeded by the Arkansan (Clinton) and finally by the Knothead (George W.) and his war to Vanquish the Evil Ones.

The "Knothead" coinage is vintage Blount: It evokes Bush's convoluted thought processes (if his speech patterns are any indication) and his heels-in-the-ground stubbornness ("knot" being a homophone for "not!").

In a mere two syllables, Blount manages to deploy the verbal and the aural aspects of language to capture two essential characteristics of his subject. It's an efficient bit of word play — the very essence of the nimble sort of truth-telling that George Saunders values so highly.

Texas Bookselling, All Hail the Mighty State?

by Edward Nawotka -- Publishers Weekly, 10/29/2007

The only U.S. state that was once its own country, Texas is massive, with a land area of 261,797 sq.-miles, second only in size to Alaska. With some 23 million people and three of the 10 most populous cities in the country—Houston (fourth with two million people), San Antonio (seventh, with 1.25 million), and Dallas (ninth with 1.21 million)—Texas has long made significant contributions to the national bookselling scene.

In the 1980s, the state capitol of Austin gave birth to Gary Hoover's BookStop bookstore chain, one of the pioneers of heavy discounting. BookStop quickly expanded to 22 stores in four states before it was sold to Barnes & Noble for $41 million in 1989 (a handful of B&N storefronts in Texas still retain the BookStop name).

Today, the state is home to two burgeoning bookselling chains: Half Price Books and Hastings Entertainment. The first Half Price was opened in a converted laundromat in Dallas in 1972 by Ken Gjemre and Pat Anderson, who stocked it with 2,000 titles from their personal libraries. The store expanded into a chain by selling remainders in a superstore environment. It remains family-owned and has since expanded to 14 states.

“We've signed leases on a total of 100 stores,” said Half Price executive v-p Kathy Doyle Thomas, with 38 of those stores located in Texas. “Texas is an attractive place to open bookstores because of the growing population and low cost of living, and consequently lower expenses,” she said. Rent in Texas is typically half of that in the Northeast or even the Midwest.

Hastings Entertainment, founded in 1968, offers a mix of books, music and video games in 153 locations. The chain is headquartered in Amarillo (in the Texas panhandle) and has 43 locations in Texas, most in small and medium-sized cities, such as Waxahachie, Sweetwater and Paris.

Matthew Gildea, Hastings's senior director of books, came to the company in 2006 after 13 years with Borders in Ann Arbor. He said Hastings's focus on smaller, often overlooked communities, proves there are indeed book buyers in rural areas. “It's telling what we sell—a mix of literary things and commercial things,” he said. Smaller markets, said Gildea, are “impossible to stereotype” because they are less influenced by book reviews and hype, opening opportunities to handsell. “When you bring an author to a small town, people aren't already jaded by having so many events, and you get a pretty good turn out.”

Of the three major bookselling chains, Books-A-Million has the least number of locations in Texas, with just nine stores. B&N operates 60 stores and Borders has 59.

The state's largest cities typically have just one or two independent stores fighting for market share against the chains. San Antonio for example, has The Twig Book Shop (and its children's offshoot, The Red Balloon). El Paso has the Cactus Café and Bookshop. Galveston boasts one fine independent—Midsummer Books.

The Brazos Bookstore in Houston nearly closed in 2006 and was only saved after a consortium of local book lovers banded together to save it. Manager Jane Moser reported steady sales and said that the store appears out of danger and sales are steady. “Everyday I get encouragement from people who still enjoy shopping at the bookstore,” she said.

Murder by the Book, which is just down the street from Brazos, has developed a strong following among Houstonians, particularly for its author events. Considered among the top two or three mystery specialty stores in the country, Murder by the Book was founded in 1980 and is having one of its best years, said assistant manager David Thompson. The staff is especially adept at converting older titles into bestsellers—this year, they've handsold 200 copies of Cara Black's 2000 novel Murder in the Marais and some 500 copies of Paul Levine's Solomon vs. Lord, published in 2005. Thompson has even started his own publishing company, Busted Flush Press, to do reprints.

In the Houston suburbs, Blue Willow Books and Katy Budget Books have managed to survive despite the competitive crunch. Stacy Morris, public relations officer for Katy Budget Books, said that at 8,000 sq.-ft., her store can compete with the chains and has the advantage of selling used books along with new titles, much like Half Price and Hastings.

Still, Alice Meloy, senior bookseller at Blue Willow, believes that ultimately Texans are not pre-disposed to shopping at independent stores. “It's the bigger is better mentality,” she said.

One place where that mentality has had a significant impact is in the Big D—Dallas. Twenty-five years ago there were 25 independent stores in Dallas. Today, there are none. In January, the last of Dallas's independent bookstores—Shakespeare, Beethoven and Black Images Book Bazaar—shuttered.

In all, the ABA lists 66 member stores in Texas—a deceptive number, since 38 of those are Half Price locations. The CBA is far stronger, with 142 locations; but the largest bookseller by far is Wal-Mart, which has 423 stores in Texas, nearly twice as many as any other state. Niche stores, such as the Marfa Book Company, which specializes in art and architecture titles and is open only four days a week, and BookWoman in Austin (a feminist bookstore) also hang on, though in fewer numbers than in the past.

Austin, the state capitol, continues to have the strongest literary reputation, much of it attributable to BookPeople Bookstore. The store, which was named PW's 2005 Bookseller of the Year, has become a destination store for authors visiting the state. Sales, driven in part by the local population of 40,000 college students from the University of Texas, continue to thrive. “We're having the best year in the history of the store and don't see any reason that our sales won't increase every year as they have for the past decade,” said owner Steve Bercu.

While some people may equate the big-box dominance with a sign of literary dullness, many believe the chains are doing a fine job in Texas. Among them is Valerie Walley, Random House retail field sales divisional director for the South. Walley, who moved to Austin from San Francisco in 2006, said that she's “been favorably impressed with both the national accounts and the independent stores,” but nevertheless still believes there's potential to be mined in Texas. “Texas is a microcosm of the country because it's so big,” said Walley. “There's a long literary heritage and people love to buy the printed word. That also means there's a lot less emphasis on buying books electronically, so bookstores can do well. With the fast-growing population, I would expect to see even more stores open in the future.”

Walley may well be right. In the past two years, a handful of new stores have popped up across the state, including The Bookworm in Frisco, Berkman Books in Fredericksburg, A Thirsty Mind in Lakeway and Intellectual Property—a Follett-branded store—in Austin.

Tennessee Bookselling

by Edward Nawotka -- Publishers Weekly, 10/22/2007

Cambridge University Press sales rep Robert Barnett admits that there are only a handful of bookstores he sells to in Tennessee. “I think of it as dominated by chains and Christian bookstores,” he said. According to the numbers, Barnett is correct: overall, Tennessee has 39 chain stores (including 10 Barnes & Nobles, 14 Books-A-Millions and 13 Borders) and 17 ABA stores.

There are also 49 CBA stores, and Nashville is home to the headquarters of the Cokesbury bookstore chain operated by the United Methodist Publishing House. Cokesbury has 71 locations across the U.S., of which four are in Tennessee.

Nashville may have a reputation based on its musical pedigree, but it also has a strong literary life and boasts the headquarters of numerous publishing companies (including Christian publishing juggernaut Thomas Nelson); the Southern Festival of Books (which switches between Nashville and Memphis annually); and BookPage, the book review newsletter produced in Nashville since 1984, cofounded by Roger Bishop—a now-retired former bookseller at both the University of Vanderbilt Bookstore and the Nashville location of Davis-Kidd Booksellers.

A part of the Cincinnati-based Joseph-Beth Group, the Nashville location is one of two Davis-Kidd stores remaining in the state; the other is in Memphis. Founded in 1980 by two social workers, Karen Davis and Thelma Kidd, the chain once had four stores in Tennessee. A Knoxville branch closed in 2000, while the other, in Jackson, closed in 2005. In 2005, a trio of former booksellers from the defunct Davis-Kidd Knoxville store regrouped and opened the highly regarded Carpe Librum book store.

Joel Tomlin opened Landmark Booksellers in 2004 in Franklin, a wealthy suburb of Nashville. Initially, Tomlin stocked his store with some 60,000 antiquarian and rare books purchased from Nashville's now-defunct Dad's Old Book Store. Lately, though, about 30% of his sales are new books, fueled in part by customers learning that he can get special orders to them faster than Amazon.com. “One distinct advantage of being in Nashville is being close to Ingram,” said Tomlin. Ingram Book Group, the largest book distributor in the country, is located in nearby LaVergne. “So,” said Tomlin, “if I place a book order before 11 a.m., it's delivered the next morning. Customers love that.”

“One of my favorite accounts in Tennessee is Burke's Books in Memphis,” said Rebecca Roberts, sales rep for Houghton Mifflin. Opened in 1875, Burke's is one of the oldest bookstores in the country. “But,” said owner Corey Mesler, “the Internet, the decline in reading, the economy all combined to nearly sink us.” Mesler, who bought the store in 2000, sent out a plea for help.

Mesler said that the local Memphis newspaper Commercial Appeal added to his troubles when it cut most of its book coverage. “I'd like to say we're big readers, but without any book coverage in the local paper, it makes it difficult for us to get any publicity for our events.” (Mesler has experienced the neglect firsthand: his own novel, We Are Billion Year Old Carbon, published last year by Livingston Press, was never reviewed.)

In the end, well-wishers (including many authors) donated $20,000 to keep the store open. Now, ensconced in a new storefront in a bohemian neighborhood rife with foot traffic, Mesler said he's “feeling reinvigorated and optimistic for the first time in a long while.”

Just two years ago, Michelle Burcky, a former B&N bookseller, opened Cover to Cover Bookstore in the burgeoning Memphis suburb of Arlington. She said her 1,400-sq.-ft. store is “just big enough” and has thrived by catering to schools and to families. “It's important to have a niche,” she said. “We have four B&Ns and a Borders nearby, so it's not as if people don't have another place to shop.”

Texas Book Festivals adds a little pop

BOOKS: Austin event takes on a pop culture tone

12:00 AM CDT on Sunday, October 28, 2007

By EDWARD NAWOTKA / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News

Now in its 12th year, the annual Texas Book Festival in Austin is evolving from an event for literary swells into something more populist.

In addition to the usual literary lineup of national prominence (Jane Hamilton, Diane Ackerman, Judith Thurman, Joseph Ellis) and notable Texans (Kinky Friedman, Rick Riordan, Dagoberto Gilb, Shelby Hearon), the organizers of next weekend's festival have injected a pop culture element.

The last two years, the opening speakers in the state Capitol's House Chamber (the festival's premier venue) have been politicians, specifically Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, but this year it is the best-selling thriller writer Michael Connelly. Later, Tom Perrotta reads in the House from his new novel, The Abstinence Teacher, which depicts suburban turf war between Christian evangelists and liberals.

It marks a change in the otherwise self-serious festival from only a few years ago, when writers of such a, well, democratic (with a lowercase "d") sensibility would have been unlikely candidates to appear in such an august forum.

Noting the changes, Texas Book Festival literary director Clay Smith acknowledged that politics have always been important to the festival – it was originally championed by former first lady of Texas Laura Bush. But, he said, the festival remains "a mutable creature that's based on what's being published each year around the country."

Publishing, like much else in the culture, has been transformed by television, and increasingly publishers are producing books purely for entertainment rather than edification. Pop books such as Stephen Colbert's I Am America (And So Can You!) outsell any of the National Book Award finalists by a ratio of approximately 1,000-to-1.

Unsurprisingly, some of the events in Austin are looking more and more like television brought to life. One example is the "Cooking Tent," which this year features Padma Lakshmi, hostess of Bravo reality series Top Chef. A new "Lifestyle Tent" is offering sessions covering diverse topics, from parenting to Texas wineries.

Even children will find themselves faced with printed byproducts of the big and small screens: Longtime Sesame Street regular Roscoe Orman ("Gordon") and Oscar winner Marlee Matlin will present their children's books, as will Rob Kidd, who has written a series of books based on Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.

Does this all mean that literature – or, as Roy Blount Jr. (another 2007 festival attendee) calls it in Long Time Leaving, "stories that have no selling point" – is being edged out of the festival?

No. Numerous literary luminaries, such as George Saunders, Vendela Vida and Sherman Alexie will be there, but these are authors best known to fans of inside the book review sections, rather than those who simply glance over the best-seller lists.

Fans of literary fiction can take solace in that, starting next year, the Texas Book Festival is co-hosting a Spring Fiction Festival with the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas. The first event is scheduled April 25-28.

And fans of politics will still find the politically connected likes of Jenna Bush, Kristin Gore, Lynne Cheney and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison.

There's a reason festivalgoers are more likely to get the likes of Ms. Lakshmi, Salman Rushdie's soon-to-be ex-wife, instead of Mr. Rushdie himself, who appeared in 2005: Many top-tier and even some midlist authors are demanding speaking fees to appear at large events. The most prestigious publisher in the land, Alfred A. Knopf, has even opened its own speaker's bureau to arrange such appearances.

The Texas Book Festival (one of the three or four largest in the country) operates as a nonprofit charity and does not pay honorariums, which often limits selections to authors with a new book and those who are still on tour. Increasingly, competition for authors may become even more intense, since booksellers from across the state, many of whom rely on author events to bring in customers, have begun complaining to publishers that the festival is absorbing much of the pool of authors touring Texas.

"We don't make an apology for having a lot of great talent. I do think that in many cases the festival is the engine for spreading authors around the state who would not otherwise make the trip," literary director Smith says.

Cyndi Hughes, who ran the festival from 1995 to 2004 and is now producing the Kansas Book Festival in Wichita, is glad to see the festival evolving.

"The purpose of the festival is to raise money for Texas public libraries," she said. "So the more people who come, more books get sold and more money gets raised. It's a win-win-win for everybody."

Another fan is Dallas novelist Will Clarke, who will be making the drive to Austin, where he'll be introducing Joshua Piven, creator of the best-selling series of The Worst-Case Scenario handbooks and author of Bad vs. Worse: The Ultimate Guide to Making Lose-Lose Decisions. "My favorite thing about the festival is meeting writers whose work I admire and getting them to sign my books," said Mr. Clarke. "I'm a book nerd and I always come back to Dallas with a trunk full of books."

That, ultimately, is the point.

'The Braindead Megaphone': Humorist offers an antidote to quick-fire journalism

ESSAYS: Humorist's elegant essays are an antidote to quick-fire journalism

12:00 AM CDT on Sunday, September 23, 2007

By EDWARD NAWOTKA / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News

"Humor," George Saunders explains in his new essay collection, "is what happens when we're told the truth quicker and more directly than we're used to." Anyone who has read Mr. Saunders' hilarious short stories, subtle spoofs of modern consumer culture and workplace ennui, knows he's a keen observer of the human condition.

Over the course of five books, including the short story collections CivilWarLand in Bad Decline (1996), Pastoralia (2000), and In Persuasion Nation (2006), Mr. Saunders has established a reputation as one of the most unique writers working today. And though you'll rarely hear him acknowledge it, he is a Texan: Born in Amarillo in 1958, he was trained as a petroleum engineer and worked as a knuckle-puller in a West Texas slaughterhouse.

In 2005, Mr. Saunders published a novella-length anti-war fable titled The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil, in which he depicted members of the media as "squat little men with detachable megaphones growing out of their clavicles." That image reappears in the title essay of The Braindead Megaphone, an elegant dissection of the modern media.

Perhaps because he is originally a Texan, Mr. Saunders has a finely tuned B.S. detector. "Our venture in Iraq was a literary failure, by which I mean a failure of imagination," he writes. The media, "has become bottom-dwelling, shrill, incurious, and agenda-driven," with its authority predicated on its "volume and omnipresence" rather than intelligence or informed worldview.

The rest of the volume serves as a kind of corrective to the type of quick-fire journalism he derides. Among the most memorable pieces are a trio of thoughtful travelogues covering a junket to Dubai, a trip to the Buddhist temples of Nepal and a drive along the U.S.-Mexico border in the midst of the immigration debate. In Del Rio, he spends a fruitless night with a group of feckless "Minutemen" (some of whom turn out to be, paradoxically, Houston Renaissance Festival devotees) patrolling "a few hundred yards of border, on one small ranch, in the huge state of Texas." They are, he kids, "a tiny patch of Catcher in a thousand miles of Rye."

Mr. Saunders' literary appreciations, covering writers such as Kurt Vonnegut and Mark Twain, are also noteworthy. And his explication of Houstonian Donald Barthelme's short story "The School" is one of the rare pieces of literary criticism that actually explains how good writing works.

In addition to being a superb fiction writer, Mr. Saunders has proven to be a surprisingly empathetic and able essayist as well.

Edward Nawotka is a Houston freelance writer.

Mixed Reviews for Revamped SIBA

By Edward Nawotka -- Publishers Weekly, 10/3/2007 6:51:00 AM

Wanda Jewell, executive director of the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance, gambled with the schedule of this year’s trade show, moving exhibition hours from daytime to 5 p.m.-10 p.m. Saturday evening, with an additional three hours on Sunday morning, from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. Thursday was taken up with bus tours to area bookstores; Friday featured bookseller education sessions; and Saturday morning and afternoon were consumed with rep picks and author panels.

Reaction to the revised show hours was mixed. Michael Persons, a bookseller at Alabama Booksmith in Birmingham, Ala., was especially pleased with the free beer and canapés that were proffered by tuxedoed staff. “Who knows, if the booksellers drink enough, it might just open up their pocketbooks,” quipped Persons. Booksellers like Tom Vail, owner of Corner Bookstore in Winder, Ga., said he was perfectly content to wander the aisles at night—that is until about 8 p.m., when the 12-hour day started catching up with Vail and nearly all the other booksellers, propelling them away from the exhibit hall and up to the restaurants or their rooms.

The majority of vendors surveyed by PW remained dubious about the hours change. Don Morrison, owner of the Morrison Sales Group, said that he was so doubtful aboutthe new arrangement that he reduced the number of his exhibition tables from 14 to three. Asked on Sunday whether he made the right decision, he said, “Yes, I believe I did.” Steven Wallace, director of sales for Unbridled Books, said that he admired SIBA’s effort to try new things, but added, “This particular experiment doesn’t need to be repeated. “ A few publishers were won over. One fan was Ginger Tucker, assistant marketing manager at University of Mississippi Press, who said she was “skeptical at first, but happy with the overall traffic.” Overall, SIBA reported nearly 1,300 people attended the show, including some 579 exhibitors, 532 booksellers, 105 authors.

On Friday, SIBA presented its annual book awards. Winners included Charles Frazier for his novel Thirteen Moons and Amy Sedaris for her party guide I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence. Starting next year, the awards will no longer be presented at the conference but at the Decatur Book Festival—held over Labor Day weekend in the Atlanta suburb.

Initially, administrators announced that the winners would henceforth be selected by a jury of book critics and journalists and not SIBA members. After protests from SIBA members, booksellers were also added to the panel picking winners. Daren Wang, executive director of the Decatur Book Festival, said yesterday that the exact composition of the jury was still to be determined. Finalists will continue to be nominated exclusively by SIBA booksellers.

Booksellers Look To Syndicate Radio Show

Publishers Weekly, 9/24/2007

Since May 2006, booksellers Pat Grant and Elisabeth Grant-Gibson, owners of Windows A Bookshop in Monroe, La., have sunk more than $60,000 into The Book Report, a weekly radio book show that has been broadcast on their local AM station, KMLB 1440. Guests have included numerous notables, such as T.C. Boyle, James Lee Burke and Nancy Pearl. But despite attracting an unquantifiable number of live listeners plus 2,000 people who download archived podcasts from the site each month, finding deep-pocketed national sponsors has proved more of a challenge.

The booksellers pay just $150 per week to produce and broadcast the hour-long show, but three major Web site upgrades, as well as marketing materials that include sample CDs and glossy brochures, have put the booksellers tens of thousands of dollars out of pocket. The pair continues to hope to earn back their investment by selling half of the 12 minutes of available advertising time to national publishers.

To make the show more attractive to publishers, Grant and Grant-Gibson are trying to syndicate the show and are offering it free to any bookseller willing to pay a local radio station to broadcast it. “There is a second six-minute slot in each hour of radio that is typically dedicated to local advertisers,” said Grant-Gibson, “and by using that slot for advertising events for their store, they are able to localize content. It is, essentially, a marketing expense.”

So far, only Mary Gay Shipley, owner of That Bookstore in Blytheville in Blytheville, Ark., has brought the show to her market. For the past year, Shipley has paid $150 a week to KLCN 910 AM in Blytheville to run The Book Report. “I like that there's a Southern flavor to it and that it's affordable,” said Shipley, who goes to KLCN's studio each week to record six minutes promoting the bookstore and local author events. Shipley also said she's often been able to sell advertising space on the show to other Blytheville retailers—such as a local hairdresser—thus often covering the costs of the broadcast. “I don't understand why [booksellers] haven't signed on,” said Shipley. “If you can resell those six minutes you can really make some money.”

Grant-Gibson is in discussions with three additional bookstores—CoffeeTree Books in Morehead, Ky.; Lorelei Books in Vicksburg, Miss.; and Page and Palette in Fairhope, Ala.—to sponsor a broadcast of the show. While none has committed, Grant-Gibson remains hopeful.

The Southern Independent Bookstore Alliance is also giving the show a push at the forthcoming SIBA trade show, where Grant and Grant-Gibson will be staffing a booth, and where previous guests of the show, including novelists Will Clarke and Deborah Wiles, will sign CDs of their interviews. SIBA is also listing the show in the more than one million holiday catalogues that will be distributed to member stores.

“Every week we take off the headphones, look at each other and say, 'That was a great show,' ” said Grant-Gibson. “The authors are always telling us it's one of the best interviews they've had and we ask questions no one else asks. Now we need their publishers to get on board as advertisers.”

Oklahoma Bookstores

Oklahoma

by Edward Nawotka -- Publishers Weekly, 9/10/2007

Oklahoma, formed as a state from Indian Territory on November 16, 1907, celebrates its centennial anniversary this year. The intervening 10 decades have taken the state from the dust bowl privation depicted in John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath to a present-day state of prosperity.

In 2007, the 3.5 million Oklahomans enjoy a booming economy, largely funded by oil and gas, which has given them the third fastest-growing per capita income anywhere in the U.S. The annual per capita income of $32,210 per person may be well below the American average (Oklahoma ranks just 37th among the states), but the cost of living is also proportionally low. This means that while the state ranked 47th among states in per-student expenditures in 2006, it still took first place for early childhood and pre-kindergarten education. Oklahoma also had the highest percentage of high school graduates among the Southern states—suggesting the state should be rife with readers.

That said, Oklahoma is hardly saturated with bookstores. Among the national chain booksellers, Borders is most pervasive, with eight Waldenbooks locations and two superstores in the state. Barnes & Noble has five stores, while Books-a-Million has just one.

Gianna LaMorte, sales rep for Random House, said that among the chains in Oklahoma, Hastings has the most potential to grow. With 12 locations, many of them in out-of-the-way locales, “they have become destination stores for many shoppers,” said LaMorte. She added, “The long driving distances in Oklahoma mean that audio books are especially popular, both at Hastings and independent stores, like Full Circle in Oklahoma City.”

Full Circle Bookstore became familiar to many in the publishing community in the weeks immediately following September 11, 2001, when booksellers there found themselves recommending books to cope with the trauma of a terrorist attack, knowledge they acquired helping locals deal with the aftermath of Timothy McVeigh's bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in 1995.

At 7,500 square feet, it is the largest independent store in the state and the best known. Owner Jim Talbert says that the last five years of economic boom in Oklahoma City have helped stabilize bookselling in the area, with few stores opening or closing. “The biggest impact on our business in recent years,” said Talbert, “was when Barnes & Noble and Borders opened up in nearby Norman,” the state's third-largest city and home to the University of Oklahoma. “That drained away business that would drive in to buy books from us.”

To help differentiate his product mix, Talbert started publishing local-interest titles under the Full Circle Books imprint. One title, OKC: The Second Time Around by Steve Lackmeyer and Jack Money, a narrative and photographic history of Oklahoma City, has sold more than 2,000 copies.

In the Oklahoma City suburb of Edmond, Julie Hovis, owner of Best of Books Inc., said the real competition is online. “People who don't have a bookstore near them don't want to have to get into a car to get what they want,” said Hovis.

Elsewhere in Oklahoma, independent bookstores are spread thinly—from the Bookseller in Ardmore, down near the Texas border, to Brace Books & More in Ponca City up next to Kansas. In Tulsa, Oklahoma's second-largest city, Steve's Sundry Books & Magazines is the lone independent booksellers alongside two Barnes & Noble stores, two Borders outlets and a Waldenbooks.

Penguin children's book sales rep Jill Bailey makes just three stops in the state on her sales rounds. “There are so many smart book people in the state,” she said. “In some towns you get the sense that they're just not brave enough to try. They should: the book buyers are out there.”

Overall, the American Booksellers Association counts just eight member stores, while the Christian Booksellers Association has some two dozen members—no surprise in a state where nearly a third of the population identify themselves as members of the Southern Baptist Alliance.

The Last Action Hero

Lone Survivor reviewed in the New Statesman
Marcus Luttrell and Patrick Robinson Little, Brown, 400pp, £17.99

Texan men take great pride in their bravery. The doomed defenders of the Alamo are immortalised as the first heroes of the Lone Star State. Audie Murphy, another Texan, came to symbolise heroism to the nation during the Second World War. After winning more than 30 medals, including the US's highest military Medal of Honor, Murphy went on, unsurprisingly, to have a Hollywood career. George H W Bush is another Texas war hero - having been shot down in the Pacific during the war, he went on to become president.

In the country's latest wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the most recent "hero" to emerge is also Texan. His name is Petty Officer Marcus Luttrell and he has more modest ambitions: trained as a medic by the US navy, he merely wants to study med icine at Yale.

Luttrell has been propelled into the public gaze by his lengthily titled memoir Lone Survivor: the Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of Seal Team 10. It recounts how, on 28 June 2005, he and three other Navy Seals were dropped on a mountainside in the rural Hindu Kush in eastern Afghanistan to carry out a reconnaissance mission and, if possible, assassinate the Tali ban warlord Ben Sharmak.

Shortly after landing, the men were surprised by a trio of unarmed Afghan goatherders. The team had to choose: kill them and face possible war crimes charges or free them and risk their telling the Taliban about the soldiers' position. The Seals took a vote and Luttrell, a native of Huntsville, Texas - home to the state's infamous Death Row - voted to offer the Afghans a stay of execution.

He now calls that "the stupidest, most southern-fried, lamebrained decision I ever made in my life". Perhaps, in a way, it was: before he was rescued nearly a week later, two of Luttrell's team members died in his arms, his best friend died as he called his name for help, and a further 16 Special Forces soldiers perished when their helicopter was shot down by an RPG while attempting a rescue. It became known as the most tragic day in the history of the US Special Forces.

Luttrell's story shot to the top of US bestseller lists. It's easy to see why - at a time when confidence in the "war on terror" is at an all-time low, Luttrell offers a feel-good, swashbuckling testament to the bravery of the men on the frontlines. He describes in detail how he, along with his teammates Matthew Axelson, Danny Dietz and Michael Murphy, killed perhaps half of the 100 to 150 Taliban who attacked the team before they themselves were shot apart piece by piece. Luttrell, his leg shredded by an RPG, with three cracked vertebrae in his back and a broken nose, is only saved by chance when he's found by an Afghan doctor who takes him in and, along with his fellow villagers, vows under the 2,000-year-old Pashtun tradition of tribal hospitality to protect him with their lives.

Lone Survivor is every bit as thrilling as Mark Bowden's 1999 bestseller Black Hawk Down - but it is also provides a disturbing insight into the physiology, psychology and politics of elite soldiers. Luttrell's world-view has been formed by peering through a sniper scope: he sees only friends and enemies. Texans - especially President George Bush - Christianity, bravery, loyalty and self-sacrifice are good; the Taliban, al-Qaeda and the Geneva Convention are bad.

His political views are equally polarised. At the same time as Luttrell extols the virtues of his fellow Seals, he derogates those on the left, especially lawyers and the media, whom he blames for the death of his fellow soldiers. Describing his decision not to execute the Afghans, he writes: "I'd turned into a fucking liberal, a half-assed, no-logic nitwit, all heart, no brain, and the judgement of a jackrabbit." Luttrell's convictions may have endeared him to US conservatives, but they have made him few friends in the liberal media.

Edward Nawotka is a reporter for Bloomberg News

'The War I Always Wanted': A vet writes about Afghanistan and Iraq

Reality replaces myth for a gung-ho soldier in this battle-worn memoir

12:00 AM CDT on Sunday, September 9, 2007

By EDWARD NAWOTKA / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News

When the moment came for 24-year-old Brandon Friedman to lead his unit of the "Screaming Eagles" of the 101st Airborne Division into combat in Afghanistan in 2002, he was hungry for the experience.

"Massive bombing. Snipers. Mortars. And most of all, payback for September 11. It sounded great. It was everything I ever wanted as a kid," the Dallas resident writes in his new memoir, The War I Always Wanted.

Over the next two years in Iraq and Afghanistan, reality replaced myth for Mr. Friedman. War, it turned out, was a lot more like making movies than watching them, with long stretches of mind-numbing boredom punctuated by a few moments of action.

Then there were the two freak instances that should have killed him. First, a U.S. F-16 mistakenly dropped a 2,000-pound bomb on his platoon in Afghanistan; it didn't explode, a 1-in-50 occurrence. Later, out on patrol weeks before he was due to leave Iraq, an insurgent aimed a rocket-propelled grenade at Mr. Friedman's Humvee. It would have killed everyone inside had it launched, but, as his team discovered after gunning down the attacker, the rocket failed to ignite.

Later, while backpacking through Europe, he muses on how deeply the war affected him: "I always thought it would have been easier. The soul-crushing phenomenon of fear before combat had been unexpected. It had left me more afraid of dying than ever." It also left him with a seething, post-traumatic anger that prompts him to contemplate killing a Greek barmaid who tries to overcharge him for drinks.

Throughout this terse and emotionally honest memoir, Mr. Friedman, who now works as an editor-blogger for VoteVets.org, is equally introspective as he is descriptive. This allows readers to experience things alongside him, rather than merely gasp in awe at his heroics or sit clucking in judgment.

This intimacy differentiates his book from other fine, if partisan, war memoirs that have come before it this summer: the wry and cynical Blood Makes the Grass Grow Green by the pseudonymous Jonny Rico, and Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell's flag-waving Lone Survivor.

No, Mr. Friedman's wartime experience wasn't worthy of winning him a Medal of Honor (he did earn two Bronze Stars) or even an option for a Hollywood screenplay, but it did endow him with a wisdom beyond his years. Surviving a war, it seems, takes a bit of luck; coping with the memory and aftermath of one takes maturity.

Edward Nawotka is a Houston freelance writer.

Julia Alvarez's 'Once Upon a Quinceañera' and Adrianna Lopez's 'Fifteen Candles'

La Quinceañera, American style: Two new books examine the shifting fortunes of a Latino tradition

By Edward Nawotka
SPECIAL TO THE AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Sunday, August 05, 2007

A heavy velvet curtain parts and a 15-year-old Latina, festooned in a voluminous pink taffeta dress, is revealed. She sits on a throne and is holding a doll dressed much like herself. Her hair is piled high, topped by a glittering tiara. She smiles broadly as Julio Iglesias croons "De Nina a Mujer" over the sound system, while another 28 teens, 14 damas (girls) and 14 chambeláns (boys), artfully arrange at her side. Soon thereafter, the girl's father comes up, takes his daughter's feet in his hands and replaces her flat slippers with high-heeled shoes. 50 Cent's "In Da Club" starts thumping through the room: "It's your birthday/We gon' party like it's yo birthday ... "

No, you're not witnessing an over-the-top bat mitzvah, or a Sweet 16 run amok. This is a typical quinceañera.

A coming-of-age celebration for young Latinas that dates back to the Aztecs, "it's really a quasi beauty pageant crossed with a mini-wedding," writes Julia Alvarez in "Once Upon a Quinceañera," a meditation on the meaning of the popular ritual in America today.

"At first, I was a real doubting-Thomas gringa about the quinceañera," Alvarez says from her home in Vermont, where she teaches at Middlebury College. "Then I saw it was not merely about Latinos assimilating American consumer culture, but it was also a symptom of Latino culture itself coming of age in America."

Born in 1950 in the Dominican Republic, Alvarez immigrated to New York City at age 10. A prolific writer, she is best known for her lighthearted first novel, 1991's "How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents," about wealthy Dominicans integrating into American society in the 1950s.

Here, Alvarez frames her examination of the "Quince" culture by documenting the preparations for a quinceañera party for the pseudonymous Monica, a Dominican girl who lives near Alvarez's childhood home in Queens. She tracks Monica through the day of her $5,000 Disney-themed quince, from the rushing around to collect various guests to the final moments when she cuts her cake and passes around the party favor of small Cinderella dolls.

A dutiful journalist, Alvarez also travels the country to interview the party planners, hairdressers, magazine editors and others who have helped make the quinceañera a multimillion-dollar business. "I wondered how these girls and their families, many of them poor, could spend so much money on a party," she says. "I always tried to slip in the suggestion that the money might better have been saved to spend on their education."

In San Antonio, she attends a "Quinceañera Expo" and observes "the femaleness of the next generation of Latinas is being manufactured, displayed and sold." She listens to stories of outrageous extravagance, such as the Miami father who threw a "Phantom of the Opera"-themed party for his daughter that cost $125,000. She also looks at the other side, such as Houstonian Gwen Zepeda's "Poor Girl's Quinceañera Project," an effort to host a party for girls who are too poor to have their own.

Despite its anthropological trappings, at its heart "Once Upon a Quinceañera" is a personal story about Alvarez's struggle to come to terms with the conflict between her Latina identity and her feminism, as well as the "entitlement" she fears will corrupt this generation of Latina girls.

When Alvarez was 15, she was a sophomore at the posh Abbott Academy and discovered her education "put me in conflict with my parents and mi cultura," she writes. "What models were there of Hispanic women doing this?" she wonders. Instead of celebrating her culture via a quinceañera, she struggled to find role models beyond the Chiquita Banana and Ricky Ricardo — the only Hispanics (and both, to her mind, embarrassments) she saw on television.

Today, Alvarez acknowledges, things are different for Latinos. "When a family comes to this country, the first generation is struggling," she says. "They want to be accepted and successful, so they assimilate. Now that the girls are second generation, they are totally Americanized, and yet yearn for something this country cannot give them: roots."

The trend has been dubbed "retroculturalization." Alvarez points out that 90 percent of the mothers she spoke to for the book didn't have their own "quince," while the trend now is so pervasive it's "even spreading to non-Latino girls."

Ultimately, Alvarez remains divided between the intellectual feminist who rejects the quinceañera as merely another indulgence of a patriarchal, materialistic society, and the romantic seduced by the idea that the ritual reconnects these vulnerable girls with their culture and reinforces their commitment to their families.

Another party perspective

Adriana Lopez's anthology "Fifteen Candles" is less cerebral and far more entertaining. Instead of musing over the meaning of the quince, this collection dwells on offbeat reminiscences of teenage years, such as Felicia Luna Lemus's essay about being a Goth who fantasized about wearing Dracula fangs to her quince, but declined a party to go see a Cure concert at Dodger Stadium – with her mom.

These stories are mostly set in the 1970s and 1980s (the title riffs on the 1984 film "Sixteen Candles"), when Latino culture was still viewed as alien by mainstream America. It offers a kind of bridge between Alvarez's youth in the '60s and Monica's today.

Two stories by Texans are standouts. The first, set in Uvalde, describes Nanette Guadiano-Campos' humiliation when her septuagenarian aunt arrived at her quinceañera in a skintight leopard print bodysuit. Then, in the story that closes the book, Erasmo Guerra pays homage to his older sister, murdered in the Rio Grande Valley at age 18, whose quinceañera provided lasting memories for his family.

Ultimately, while both books might be skeptical of the tradition, they manage to convey the good intentions of the quinceañera.

"Life is tough enough," says Alvarez at the end of our interview. "These 15-year-old girls face all kinds of problems, from the environment to economic struggle. So to see a whole room stand up and cheer for a tender, young girl, it's got to raise their self-esteem. I do love it. And I always cry."

Quinceañera books invite us to the party

By EDWARD NAWOTKA / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News

Julia Alvarez never had a Quinceañera, the traditional coming of age ceremony for Latina girls. She never donned a voluminous pink dress, held court over 14 damas (girls) and 14 chambeláns (boys), or experienced the moment of transformation when a father takes his daughter's feet in his hands and replaces a pair of flat slippers with high heeled shoes while Julio Iglesias croons "De Nina a Mujer" in the background.

Her new book, Once Upon a Quinceañera: Coming of Age in the USA , tries to explain what she missed and offers a penetrating look at the significance of the ceremony to present-day teens.

Initially, Ms. Alvarez is critical: "The incredible expense; a girl encouraged in the dubious fantasy of being a princess as if the news of feminism had never reached her mami; the marketing of a young lady as attractive, marriageable goods. Why not save the money for education?"

But as she spends more time with girls celebrating their Quince, in particular a 15-year-old Dominican from the same Queens, N.Y., neighborhood where she was reared, it prompts Ms. Alvarez to meditate on her own cultural and intellectual evolution.

A professor at Middlebury College in Vermont, she is the author of 17 books, including the acclaimed 1991 novel How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, about Dominican immigrants in the 1950s. As the daughter of 1950s Dominican immigrants herself, Ms. Alvarez explains how her evolution into an American intellectual through au upscale education and participation in the women's moment of the '60s and '70s threatened to separate her from her native culture.

In comparison, today's Latinas, many second- and third-generation immigrants, are born "entitled" to the American dream. Where 90 percent of their mothers never had a Quince, they want one to reconnect with their roots.

By the end, Ms. Alvarez is won over by the tradition of the Quinceañera, and she chooses to view it as an exercise in boosting young girl's self-esteem at a vulnerable age.

Sadly, though Ms. Alvarez attends numerous Quinceañera parties in the course of her book, including one in San Antonio besieged by folks fleeing Hurricane Rita, and has skills as a storyteller, this book is primarily anthropological. She leaves the curious reader who may have never been to a Quinceañera party craving more detail.

To satisfy that urge, a reader should turn to Adrianna Lopez's recent anthology Fifteen Candles: 15 Tales of Taffeta, Hairspray, Drunk Uncles and other Quinceañera Stories. Many of these vastly entertaining essays are set in the '70s and '80s, and are modest affairs that contrast with the costly "super-sized" parties, often costing tens of thousands of dollars, that are currently in vogue.

Two of the tales are from Texas: Nanette Guadiano-Campos' "Uprooted" describes how her 71-year-old aunt, decked out in a leopard print bodysuit, stole the show at her Ulvalde Quince, while in the essay that closes the volume, Erasmo Guerra offers a moving homage to his older sister murdered in the Rio Grande Valley at age 18 and whose Quince celebration remains a touchstone for his whole family.

Edward Nawotka is a Houston freelance writer.

Once Upon a Quinceañera

Coming of Age in the USA

Julia Alvarez

(Viking, $23.95)

Fifteen Candles

15 Tales of Taffeta, Hairspray, Drunk Uncles and other Quinceañera Stories

Edited by Adrianna Lopez

(Rayo, $14.95)

Justin Cronin Sinks Teeth into New Genre and $3.75 Million

by Edward Nawotka -- Publishers Weekly, 7/13/2007 7:43:00 AM

Ballantine is taking a big bet on Justin Cronin—a writer best known for a pair of intense literary novels, including his PEN Hemingway Award-winning debut Mary and O’Neil (Dial, 2000). The publisher has just paid $3.75 million for Cronin’s new trilogy about a viral pandemic that turns humans into vampires. The first book, The Passage, will be published in the summer of 2009.

Mark Tavani, who has worked with such thriller writers as Steve Barry and Alex Berenson, will edit. He told PW the book combines the best of Steven King’s The Stand with Michael Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain. "On top of fully introduced characters, great writing and a concept that could last for three books," said Tavani, "there was a real feeling of urgency there. You can tell Justin was burning to write this book."

The book portrays vampirism as the consequence of a viral pandemic that sends the immune system into hyperdrive, endowing victims with hardened skin, stronger vision and longer life. Of course, the virus is carried by a rare species of bat. The plot of the series revolves around the U.S. military’s attempts to harness these powers and a coterie of concerned citizens’ attempts to stop them.

Novels starring vampires, such as those by Anne Rice and more recently Elizabeth Kostova and Stephanie Meyer, have proven popular with readers. With Rice writing less frequently about the blood suckers and more about Jesus, there’s likely to be some pent-up demand in the market. From the sound of it, this one combines some of the best elements of gothic horror, medical thriller and paranoid polemic—a perfect recipe for these trying, uncertain times.

Cronin’s agent, Ellen Levine at Trident Media Group, initially submitted the book under a pen name, Jordan Ainsley. While early online reporting said the book would be published under the pseudonym, Random House spokesperson Carol Schneider said that the book would appear under Cronin’s own name when it is published.

New Bookstore for the Cayman Islands

Books & Books, Mitchell Kaplan’s Miami bookstore minichain, is opening a fourth location, this one in the Cayman Islands. The new 5,000-sq.-ft. store is part of Camana Bay, an upscale, one million-sq.-ft. retail and housing development on Grand Cayman, and a joint venture with the local developer, Dart Realty. The store is scheduled to open in the first weekend of November, just a few weeks after Books & Books celebrates its 25th anniversary.

Kaplan said he was initially approached by Dart Realty executive v-p Jackie Doak, who was been a regular customer of Books & Books in Miami. "She invited me down, I visited the site, and committed," said Kaplan.

The year-round population of the islands (which comprise Grand Cayman, Cayman Brac and Little Cayman) is estimated to be approximately 45,000 people, though that number can easily double in the tourist season, while an equal number of visitors from cruise ships stop at the islands each year.

At present, Kaplan is still hiring staff and expects he and various managers will be making the one-hour flight from Miami to oversee construction and prepare for the opening. "The architecture is inspired by the Caribbean," said Kaplan. Café del Sol, a local coffeehouse, will adjoin the bookstore. The store will offer the same type of selection found in the Miami stores--literary fiction, art and architecture books, poetry, classics, bestsellers, children's books and cookbooks and travel guides.

In a press release, Doak said, "We are particularly excited to be included on their literary event circuit, which we hope will bring authors from all around the world to Cayman." So far, said Kaplan, publishers and writers, "have been very receptive" to the idea of extending their book tours to the Caribbean.

For his part, Kaplan said that the store wasn’t merely an experiment but "a long-term commitment."

"Our aim," he said, "is to bring a similar sense of community to Gran Cayman that we have in Miami," adding, "Eventually, I hope we will be able to organize mini book festivals, conferences and all kinds of cultural events."

Virginia Inn and SIBA to Build Ultimate Southern Library

by Edward Nawotka -- Publishers Weekly, 7/10/2007 7:40:00 AM

Ian Lloyd, the owner of the Martha Washington Inn in Abingdon, Va., has committed $20,000 to build "The Ultimate Southern Library" and invited Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance member stores to submit proposals for suitable titles. In return, he will purchase the titles from appropriate SIBA stores and the books will be showcased in the inn's recently renovated library. The deadline for proposals is this Friday, July 13. Click here for guidelines.

Originally built in 1832 as a home for Gen. Francis Preston, the stately building in the southwest corner of the state served as a Civil War hospital and a private college for women, before being turned into an inn in 1935. Wanda Jewell, executive director of SIBA, says she was initially approached by Lloyd, who wanted to build a book collection that would reflect the inn's Southern milieu and culture. Knowing that such stalwarts as William Faulkner and Tennessee Williams would make the cut, Jewell suggested her member stores would be the best judge of the contemporary Southern classics. SIBA is maintaining a running list of titles on its Web site. The first 100 suggestions are posted and include titles by such contemporary authors as Ernest J. Gaines, Clyde Edgerton, John Berendt and Pat Conroy.

The list is sure to generate debate among aficionados, if not a bit of controversy. One anonymous bookseller has already suggested, The Education of Little Tree by Forrest Carter-the popular, fraudulent Native American "autobiography" written by a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

Cape Town Book Fair Looks to Conquer Africa

by Edward Nawotka -- Publishers Weekly, 7/9/2007

Nearly 50,000 people attended the second Cape Town Book Fair, held June 15–19, double the attendance in the inaugural year. This year's event attracted some 350 exhibitors, including local publishers, booksellers and cultural organizations.

Launched in 2005 in partnership with the Frankfurt Book Fair, the Cape Town Book Fair aims to “become the central meeting place for publishers on the African continent,” according to book fair managing director Vanessa Badroodien, taking over the role formerly filled by the Zimbabwe Book Fair; many international publishers had departed in protest over the policies of Zimbabwe strongman Robert Mugabe. Badroodien added, “The majority of exhibitors in Zimbabwe were subsidized by organizations like the World Bank. The only way for this to work is for us to be self-supporting. Combining a trade show and a public book fair makes this financially feasible.”

So far, Cape Town has struggled to attract significant numbers of African exhibitors—just eight were on the roster this year—though the Association of African Publishers held its general meeting at the fair. Next year, Badroodien plans to add an incentive for international publishers by making the first day of the fair exclusive to trade visitors. Among this year's international exhibitors were a dozen from the U.K.; numerous group exhibits from continental Europe; and just two American companies: World Bank Publications and Krishnamurti Publications.

South African publishing has traditionally been aligned with the British subsidiaries of the global publishing conglomerates. The country imports nearly 75% of its books from the U.K. Nevertheless, “there are opportunities for American publishers to enter the South African market through education publishing,” said Musa Shezi, managing director of Via Africa, South Africa's largest trade publishing conglomerate. “The key is for American publishers to partner here with black-owned publishers,” said Shezi, who praised the government for giving special subsidies to black-owned publishers under its Black Economic Empowerment program. “It is a big opportunity, but one which needs a local interpreter so it is not misunderstood.”

Shezi was not speaking allegorically. The greatest challenge to be met by South African publishers, who typically work in Afrikaans and English, is how to cater to a country of 45 million people with 11 official languages—all sanctioned for use in education.

Even local companies struggle to meet the needs of the linguistically diverse populace. Batya Green-Bricker, marketing manager for Exclusive Books, the country's largest bookstore chain with more than 40 stores, admitted the company has struggled to find an audience for books in languages other than English or Afrikaans. “It's a matter of distribution,” she said. “Many of our stores are in malls in urban areas, not out in the rural areas where the tribal languages are spoken. We're just now starting to open in the townships,” citing a new store opening in Soweto this fall, “and that should be an important step for us toward expanding our customer base.” Green-Bricker said imported books outsell local titles at the chain by a two-to-one margin, but that Exclusive's goal is to give more attention to South African writing. The chain sponsors an annual “Homebru” program, promoting 25 books in Afrikaans and English, and also sponsors a children's book award. “Local publishing has become more comfortable in its skin,” Green-Bricker said. “We are celebrating the varied experiences of living in South Africa without the angst of earlier years.”

A new report by the South African Book Development Council found that while the literacy rate in the country exceeds 90%, fewer than half the homes own books for leisure reading. “The South African market may look daunting,” said Dudley Schroeder, the executive director of the Publishers Association of South Africa, “but it is a market that is growing, especially as a large number of people move into the middle class.”

In 2006, total retail sales for trade books rose 12%, to 938 million rand ($135 million), as estimated by Nielsen BookScan. According to the Publishers Association of South Africa, book sales in 2005 totaled 2.2 billion rand ($302.5 million) in 2005, when 8,177 titles were published. With typical print runs of 1,000 to 3,000 copies, a book selling 5,000 copies is considered a bestseller. Last year, Penguin South Africa had a remarkable success, selling 80,000 copies of John van de Ruit's comic novel Spud, which became the fastest selling book in South Africa's history. “That makes him South Africa's J.K. Rowling,” gushed Penguin sales director Janine O'Connor. Spud will be published in the U.S. by Penguin's Razorbill imprint this October.