Executive Shelf for 02/21/2025
A weekly review of events in bookselling from the editors at Shelf Awareness, led by editor-in-chief John Mutter
ABA: Winter Institute 2025 begins this weekend; Kathy Burnette resigns from the board.
The American Booksellers Association's 20th annual Winter Institute begins this weekend in Denver, Colo. It's the biggest, most exciting bookseller event in the country, and we're looking forward to seeing a thousand booksellers and others! For an overview of and a little history about Winter Institute, see our first edition of Shelf Awareness Extra!, a monthly special issue that focuses on important topics and events in the business.
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In other ABA news, Kathy Burnette, owner of Brain Lair Books, South Bend, Ind., has resigned from the board. Her store has had some difficulties, most notably last October when Burnette announced that the store needed to sell 5,682 books that month to avoid closing. She said she believed that goal was impossible, but the community responded, and the store sold 5,744 books.
End of a long-ago bookselling era: last Womrath store closing.
The imminent closing of Womrath Bookshop in Bronxville, N.Y., is a reminder of a long-ago time in bookselling. A chain of some 50 stores in the New York metropolitan area in the 1930s, Womrath specialized in book rentals, especially to avid readers, at a time when most books appeared only in relatively expensive hardcover editions. But with the paperback revolution, book rentals dried up, and the stores were sold to franchisees and either closed or changed focus. The Bronxville Womrath was the last of its name. RIP.
Book bannings: here, there, and everywhere.
As the world seems to tip ever more to right-wing extremism, book bannings have sadly become a more common occurrence around the globe. Last week, police in Indian-controlled Kashmir raided bookstores and seized nearly 700 books that they said were "promoting the ideology of a banned organization," i.e., an Islamic organization, according to the AP.
And in East Jerusalem, Palestinian booksellers Mahmoud Muna and his nephew Ahmad Muna, owners of the Educational Bookshop, remain under house arrest. A GoFundMe campaign launched by publisher Saqi Books has raised more than £33,000 (about $42,000).
The Stable Group: indie publishers unite.
Publisher consolidation isn't happening just to large publishers.
A group of independent publishers has formed "a forward-thinking collective" called the Stable Book Group, whose core mission, it says, is "to expand its publishers' reach and foster new opportunities for curated frontlist content, co-publishing collaborations, and marketing strategies." The Stable Group consists of Ulysses Press, VeloPress, Trafalgar Square Books, and She Writes Press (including SparkPress titles), as well as partnerships with Galpón Press, the new imprint founded and led by former Abrams CEO Michael Jacobs and Sheridan Hay, and Mountain Gazette Books, a new book division launched by Mountain Gazette publisher Mike Rogge.
Besides publishing, the Group will provide hybrid, design, and custom production services through its Stable Studios division. Simon & Schuster is distributing the Stable Book Group.
Major book club picks: Jenna, GMA, Oprah.
Today co-host Jenna Bush Hager has chosen This Is a Love Story by Jessica Soffer (‎Dutton) as her February Read with Jenna book club pick.
Junie by Erin Crosby Eckstine (‎Ballantine) is the Good Morning America Book Club pick for February.
The Oprah book club's latest pick is Dream State by Eric Puchner (Doubleday).
Big books, big Lonesome Dove film deal.
Next week, look for even more about President Trump:
On Tuesday, Crown is publishing Michael Wolff's new book, All or Nothing: How Trump Recaptured America, billed as "a breathtaking insider account of the 2024 Trump campaign." The publisher hopes to recapture the excitement and sales that came seven years ago when Wolff's Fire and Fury appeared--and led a Trump lawyer to send a cease-and-desist letter and threaten to sue for libel.
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On the horizon: Simon & Schuster is publishing a posthumous work by David McCullough, author of such important historical and biographical works as The Johnstown Flood, The Path Between the Seas, Mornings on Horseback, John Adams, Truman, and The Wright Brothers. With a pub date of September 16, History Matters is a collection of essays, many never published, with a foreword by historian and presidential biographer Jon Meacham.
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Teton Ridge Entertainment has acquired all rights except publishing to the late Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove tetralogy. The company aims to begin with the first book in the series, Lonesome Dove, which in 1989 was made into a miniseries starring Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones.The books could inspire a series of films or TV shows or both.
Awards: Southern Book, Porchlight Business, Ezra Jack Keats winners.
Winners were announced for the following book prizes:
The Southern Book Prize, sponsored by the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance, in three categories.
The Porchlight Business Book Awards, in eight categories.
The Ezra Jack Keats author and illustrator awards.
Shelf Awareness reviews.
The Tomb of Dragons by Katherine Addison (Tor Books), Candle Island by Lauren Wolk (Dutton Books for Young Readers), The Antidote by Karen Russell (Knopf), and Stop Me if You've Heard This One by Kristen Arnett (Riverhead Books).
In Memoriam.
British author Simon Mawer, British author and photographer Geoff Nicholson.
Books, more important than ever in the age of disinformation, misinformation--and 'gleeful' ignorance.
Yesterday Hannah Harlow and Sam Pfeifle, the brother-and-sister owners of the Book Shop of Beverly Farms, Beverly, Mass., sent a store e-mail to customers with a message we think brilliantly captures the power and necessity of books in this difficult time:
Hello everyone!
One consequence of the social media era has been the flattening of expertise. While for most of the 20th century people were forced to research questions via bookstores, libraries, magazines, and newspapers, places where information was largely created and curated by people whose job it was to research questions, people now get their updates on the latest war overseas or budding national pandemic from some anonymous poster named "PinkCowLicker" via some woman they went to high school with 23 years ago. And they repeat it as gospel, often arguing with people who've spent their lives researching the topic.
We understand the impulse, sometimes. It's true that information was often deliberately kept from the general public (and still is). That reporters hid the fact that FDR was in a wheelchair is one of those things that everyone knows now, but seems incredible in today's environment. The egalitarianism of the social media era was intoxicating for some. No more gatekeepers!
The pendulum, however, seems to have swung too far in the other direction. People with great power gleefully wear their ignorance like a badge of honor, assuming everyone who studied the question before them was just some dummy. Luckily, books still exist. Are non-fiction books as fact-checked as they ought to be? They're really not. Does the prospect of AI assistance mean that the sheer effort that used to be required to write a book (and therefore conferred some authority to the writer) is no longer the filter it once was? Absolutely.
The book as an information delivery system, though, provides depth and nuance and time for contemplation that's just not available via a digital device and screen. It offers fewer distractions, a durability, a physical reminder, a gift that you can hand to someone with so much more substance than a link.
Maybe you know someone who has become addle-brained by the internet. Who is not the person you once knew. Who seems to embrace casual cruelty and uses crazy internet terms like "the sin of empathy." If you know someone like that, hand them a book. And if you're wondering which book to hand them, swing on in and we'll talk you through it.
With open minds and open hearts...
Hannah Harlow and Sam Pfeifle, Book Shop of Beverly Farms