With fewer and fewer booksellers attending, major publishers boycotting and endless aisles of exercise books, New Age dreck and autobiographies by nonentities, the annual ABA convention is growing tiresome
By LAURA MILLER and DWIGHT GARNER
Chicago --
The organizers of this weekend's 1996 American Booksellers Association convention here -- the premiere annual gathering of the publishing industry -- have cleared away the disastrous organizational snafus that plagued last year's convention, only to reveal an event so lackluster that many stalwart regulars are seriously considering forgetting it in the future. The prevailing ennui, in depressing contrast with the excitement bubbling through the city over the Bulls championship-cinching game last night, reflects both the sluggishness of the book business in general and some serious industry rifts over chain bookstores.
Without last year's transportation shortage that led to taxi stand crowds so massive they triggered flashbacks to the 1979 Who concert in which 11 people were crushed to death, and without the hour-long waits for wretched food, convention-goers had only the event itself to gripe about -- and there was no shortage of irritants. Two major trade publishers boycotted the show; literary star power was sorely lacking; and booksellers -- the store owners for whom the event is ostensibly presented -- stayed away in droves.
The Random House Group (which includes Pantheon, Knopf, Crown, Vintage and Villard) and Viking Penguin, two publishers responsible for key portions of both literary and commercial book publishing, refused to exhibit this year. They are protesting a lawsuit levied against them by the convention's sponsoring organization, the American Booksellers Association, over the publishers' alleged special pricing arrangements for chain bookstores, a policy that the ABA maintains is jeopardizing the survival of independent booksellers. In any given season, these two houses produce some of the most exciting books (particularly for serious readers), and the lack of literary star wattage is in large part due to their absence.
What pallid enthusiasm there was centered around celebrities from other media -- supermodel Cindy Crawford, actor Ethan Hawke and TV talk show host Oprah Winfrey (who sponsored a massive morning muffin-fest in a tent near the Soldier Field sports arena, followed by a "power walk" to the convention center). The two women are touting new exercise books (the sort of title referred to as "nonbooks" in the trade), although Hawke has written a novel. He was spotted at a Little, Brown cocktail party, earnestly glad-handing a clutch of teenage girls and middled-aged matrons in an effort to promote his effort, "The Hottest State."
Although last year's "big book" may have been Nicholas Evan's execrable "The Horse Whisperer," at least the show was enlivened by some kind of buzz, with author breakfasts featuring the likes of Colin Powell and Hillary Clinton. This time around it was Mia Farrow and Art Buchwald.
On the floor, booksellers (who place the orders that make the show profitable for the exhibitors) proved sparse. "I'm not coming next year," said Michael Rosenthal of San Francisco's Modern Times Books. "It's too expensive and it's just about pressing the flesh anyway." The chain booksellers Barnes and Noble didn't bother to send a buyer at all. "The only ones making any money are the freight companies who ship all this stuff to and from Chicago," complained Mary Bisbee-Beck, a publicist for several small publishers.
What gossip there was centered around the closing of some flagship independent bookstores, including New York's Shakespeare & Co., which succumbed to competition from a Barnes & Noble superstore that opened nearby, as did Endicott Booksellers in the same neighborhood. The ABA announced figures showing that independents continue to lose market share to chains, dropping from 32.5 percent in 1991 to a mere 19.5 percent in 1995.
People were also talking about the ouster of Sonja Bolle from her position as editor of the Los Angeles Times Book Review, where her much-admired editorial policy reputedly clashed with management. Los Angeles will be looking for two new book editors soon, as David Ulin of the L.A. Reader is quitting to write a book about Jack Kerouac. New media, particularly the Wall Street Journal-touted Web bookstore Amazon Books, are snapping up out-of-work book journalists left and right as they prepare to expand their content.
The new media have inspired at least two new imprints -- Hard Wired, the new book division of Wired Ventures, was exhibiting its fall list of six titles, and HarperCollins is about to announce a new imprint of HarperSanFrancisco dedicated to the intersection of technology and everyday life, to be called HarperEdge and editorially based in San Francisco.
An association of small undergound presses sponsored the the first annual Firecracker Alternative Book Awards, handed out in a trendy Wicker Park nightspot and featuring such categories as "Sex," "Drugs," "Graphic Novel," and "Zine." Serpent's Tail/High Risk Books of New York was named Outstanding Independent Press of the year.
The award prompted Serpent's Tail owner Ira Silverberg to wax enthusiastic about the vitality of the small press scene. But those of us working the floor more often found the small press sections (reached after a laborious trek through miles of glitzy and unconvincing displays erected by the big publishers) to be a minefield of New Age claptrap, hideously designed how-to manuals and desperate authors flogging books that seem more the product of eccentricity and possible personality disorders than the muse. "Nuts and crazies" is how one journalist described the section. "It's like the New York subway," he explained. "You're trudging dutifully down the aisle, lugging 40 pounds of books and catalogs, and you're afraid to make eye contact with anyone because they'll latch onto you and talk to you for hours about their book on how to plan your high school reunion, the autobiography of someone who never did anything or a book called 'God, Guns and Good Whiskey.' It's the fucking Bataan Book March, and I don't know if I can survive another one."
He was not alone in that sentiment.