With the widespread use of e-books, the book business is in a state of tremendous change. Authors, professionals in the publishing industry, book sellers, independent bookstore owners, CEOs of the big bookstore chains, and readers have all been left with an abundance of questions as we go through this exciting paradigm shift.

Borders has consistently been in the headlines since the New Year due to the fact that they cannot pay their bills to the publishers. And now the publishers must decide how they will handle the situation, which is no small feat since every other bookstore will expect any grace that Border receives.

The brick and mortar bookstore is being challenged like never before. What will bookstores that sell e-readers do with all the square footage? The marketing emphasis is on the e-book, no longer the physical book. It seems a major overhaul is overdue for the big box bookstores.

How do authors react to the e-book? Seth Godin, a Lemuria favorite, says his next book will only exist in e-format. Do all authors only want to read and publish books this way? We don’t think so. Authors also feel the financial pinch of the e-book. While many unknown writers may have a better chance to get published, established authors are seeing a fraction of the advances they typically received. One has to ask how does this influences the quality and respect for literature. Will authors rally to preserve bookstores?

This leaves independent bookstores in particular with many more questions: Will publishers give bookstores the information and tools to help preserve the hard back read? Will publisher sales reps go to bat to preserve their stores and keep reading vital? Will marketing become more credible and more important to the independent book seller? Will the publishers recognize a need for real book selling, word of mouth in our stores and on our web presence?

Will all these changes make readership grow? As the demand of maximizing our reading time increases, will these changes add more value to our lives?

This time is very exciting for our industry. Change is now. Lemuria has the opportunity to redefine itself to you, our customer. As the spring unfolds, we will be blogging our take on all things concerning book selling.

We want you, our readers, to stay informed and have the ability to voice your concerns and questions. We also invite authors, publishers and their reps, editors, anyone who has a stake as changes unfold to follow-up with any comments.

The Bookstore Key Series on Changes in the Book Industry

Finding “Deep Time” in a Bookstore (March 8th) Reading The New Rules of Retail by Lewis & Dart (March 3) The Future Price of the Physical Book (Feb 18) Borders Declares Bankruptcy (Feb 16) How Great Things Happen at Lemuria (Feb 8th) The Jackson Area Book Market (Jan 25) What’s in Store for Local Bookselling Markets? (Jan 18) Selling Books Is a People Business (Jan 14) A Shift in Southern Bookselling? (Jan 13) The Changing Book Industry (Jan 11)

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Today, many people are using an e-reader, or debating about getting one. This is what was happening in the early 1840s: “Americans were buying books as decorative objects for their homes as well as works of literature. This was not the same as buying sets of books by the yard to decorate the shelves of a home library. The beautiful covers of individual books were meant to be seen, not hidden on shelves with only their spines exposed” (Richard Minsky).

Maybe you read Mark’s blog a couple of days ago about Richard Minsky’s The Art of American Book Covers 1875-1930 (George Braziller, 2010).  Even though I am a sucker for beautiful, clever art work on books, it took a while to sink in. I kept admiring the many beautiful examples of book covers from the Golden Age that Richard Minsky has cared for and brought to our attention. Then it donned on me: the two charming books I bought many years ago from an antique bookstore are from this era.

This sent me back to Minsky’s book scouring for any information that might give me more clues about my books. The first book is entitled My Heart and Stephanie by R. W. Kauffman. Published in 1910 by L. C. Page & Company, the cover featuring artwork by A. G. Learned. Tooling around on the Internet gleaned little information about Learned. Obviously, the content of the book was simply the fiction of the day. (Sadly, someone appears to have used Stephanie as a coaster at some point.)

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No doubt, the books I innocently picked up were not in the gorgeous condition featured in Minsky’s studies. But studying Minsky’s collection, I began to imagine the what vibrancy The Man on the Box must have had. Published in 1904 by the Bobbs-Merrill Company, the cover art does not yield any information or initials for the artist. Nonetheless, it is still charming in its rather worn state.

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Sharing the books with my coworkers eventually led me to Lemuria’s copy of The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad published in 1907 by Harper & Brothers. As Minsky points out in American Book Covers, many publishing houses felt that the book cover artist was just as important as the contents of the book. Harper & Brothers seems to have been a prolific supporter of the arts as Minsky has numerous examples from this publishing house.

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Still snooping around Lemuria for beautiful books, I found that the Franklin Library books of the 1960s and 70s reminded me of these Golden Age books. Even Raymond Carver’s collection of short stories entitled Where I’m Calling From signed by Carver and bound in 1988 by Franklin is a beautiful tribute.

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Back to our present book industry jolt with the e-book: Where are our beautiful books? No doubt there are many, but I chuckled when I realized the much-loved and popular-selling stamped linen classics series published by Penguin seem to be the closest and most affordable treasures similar to the books of the Golden Age. I have to wonder as the e-book becomes more prolific if book lovers will not hunger even more passionately for the tactile, sensual experience of books.

Practically Radical: Not So Crazy Ways to Transform Your Company, Shake up Your Industry, and Challenge Yourself

by William C. Taylor

(Morrow, 2011)

In the mornings during this Christmas season, while working very hard, I read Practically Radical. I knew a wave was coming in my industry with the emerging e-reading devices. Book buying and book publishing appear to be going through a radical transformation.

While reflecting on Lemuria’s past, Radical has helped me build a distinctive point of view on how to begin building a plan for our future. With the present state of reading and e-reading, we want to emphasize that we are a book store.

Lemuria loves the physical book store, nothing against all the reading devices and gizmos (They have a place for some readers, some of the time.) However, Lemuria is a bookstore for physical book readers. With real bookselling, our roots, we want our readers to focus on the measure of our reading suggestions and performance.

Not every reader will want to continue as an independent book store patron. As reader’s go through change, we as booksellers must use our head and our heart to readdress the mindset of our readers, examine our standards as we try to fulfill more than ever your expectations.

From our bookselling staff, we want more bookselling originality to emerge. Using our past, we must emerge with a creative, progressive attitude, not forgetting the value–our heart–that we add to the system of bookselling. The change is here. Being independent is our difference. We are not about replication but individually expressing our sense of place in our community of Jackson and virtually through our blog.

For us, Lemuria is our state of mind. We know Lemuria is not for everyone, but for those who choose, we want to be part of your lives. As our competition is being redefined, we also want to redefine our work for the reader. While sustaining our performance, we want to engage our readers with passion and emotion about the books we read and support.

Reading Radical helped me to focus on crossing this new industry frontier. For anyone, in a small business needing a wake-up call, Practically Radical might be your alarm clock.

Well, you can read the introductions, I guess. But no reading is necessary to enjoy these two books.

The Art of American Book Covers: 1875-1930 by Richard Minksy (George Braziller, 2010)

Richard Minsky has collected the best of the American book covers and compiled them here in a book that, fittingly, has a lovely cover of its own. In the past few years, we’ve seen more and more new books published with “retro” covers, but when you look at the variety and creativity of these early 20th century book covers, most of the new covers are just a pale imitation. As the author explains, the stamped cloth book cover was nearly extinct by the beginning of WWI, had a brief resurgence after the war, and was all but finished by the Great Depression as publishers shifted to the cheaper printed paper covers. Fortunately, some of the best examples have been preserved here.

One Hundred Portraits by Barry Moser (David R. Godine, 2010)

Susie has mentioned Barry Moser’s artwork before, but I thought it was worth revisiting the subject to mention this new collection of portraits. There are so many great books that feature Barry’s illustrations on the cover or interspersed throughout, but not many that allow you to enjoy his artwork uninterrupted, page after page. I took this book home on Thursday evening to have nearby while I wrote this post. I walked into the kitchen where my wife was preparing our dinner, with the intention of showing her one portrait I found particularly compelling. We stood there and flipped slowly backward through the entire book, pausing to comment on the expression on the face of Flannery O’Connor or note the dramatic stare from Edgar Allen Poe.

It’s that time again.  Time for New Year’s resolutions.  I always look forward to this time. I think it’s the whole idea of having a clean slate that I love so much–I feel free to push any unfinished business from the past year out of my mind and get excited about setting new goals for myself.  So, what does that have to do with Lemuria and books and this blog, you ask?

Well, let me tell you.

They say that publicly announcing your resolutions (on say, perhaps, a blog?) helps you stick to them. So, here’s my public announcement: One of my New Year’s resolutions for 2011 is to read fifty books this year–that roughly equals one book every six days. I made this resolution because, quite frankly, it’s  torture to be surrounded by so many wonderful books every day at work and then find myself with hardly any time to read everything I’d like to.  Now I’m forcing myself to make time for reading.  Happy New Year to me.

First up is Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. I’m already about 200 pages in, and so far I’m having a hard time putting it down.  It’s a 600 page novel about a young man named Toru Okada who suddenly finds himself with a missing cat and then with a missing wife.  Okada’s search for his wife (and cat) finds him encountering some rather strange characters including a cheerfully cynical 16 year old girl, an old war veteran who is still haunted by the horrid things that he saw in Manchuria, two mysterious psychic sisters, and a monstrous politician.  In my opinion The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is reminiscent of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland (if it was set in contemporary Japan and written for only an adult audience), and I am quite happy that it’s the first book on my quest to read, read, read this year.

Happy New Year to everyone! I wish you all the best with your own resolutions.  -Kaycie