• Via Boing Boing comes this excellent collection of book jackets for fake novelizations of movies.  [EDIT!  Gillian has pointed out that she already sent me this link nearly 3 months ago.  Mea culpa, Gillian, mea culpa.

• Via Kottke.org, the Fight Club theory of Ferris Beuler’s Day Off:  “This is part of the reason why the “three” characters can see so much of Chicago in less than one day — Cameron is alone, just imagining it all.”

• This is a link for my friends in bookselling and publishing (although some of you ubernerds might find it interesting, too):  The excellent 3 Percent blog has a post about the perils and benefits of marketing books online.  It’s a must read for anybody thinking about pitching a book to a blogger or starting up a Goodreads page to sell books.  (Via Conversational Reading)

• And finally, you must read Cecil Castellucci’s recap of the LA Times Festival of Books:  “True to form, we got into trouble for putting pineapples on our heads.” Via (and Viva) Edan!

Okay, I’m a little loopy today, so I think it’s best I wrap this up right here.  Back tomorrow with something a bit more substantive.

photo by Carolyn Kellogg

After a gorgeous day off yesterday (What did I do?  I went to a bookstore.  The day after the Festival of Books.  On my day off from my bookstore job.  I’m a dork, I know), I’ve had some time to process the Festival of Books and I think these were the take-away lessons for this year:

• There are plenty of readers out there. While no official numbers have been released, it felt busier and bigger than last year’s festival.  Standing at the top of the staircase and seeing throngs (I love that word, throngs!) of people below was awesome.  So, too, was the enormous What Are You Reading wall, which asked festival-goers to scrawl the name of whatever book they happened to be reading at the time.  If there’s something wrong with the book business, it isn’t because there aren’t enough readers.  It really is incredible to see so many people turn out for a book event, and it really underscores what my colleague Emily Pullen, from Skylight Books, said on Saturday afternoon:  “It’s a misconception that L.A. is not a book town…It’s got an amazingly rich literary culture. New York is the home of the big publishing houses. But there are so many great, amazing and energizing authors who live in L.A.”
• The future of bookselling lies with independent bookstores. During my panel, I said that I was preparing for a future in which the vast majority of books would be digital, with hardcover becoming a boutique industry, aimed at collectors and aficionados much as vinyl is for today’s serious audiophiles.  I thought I’d expand on this point a bit, as it isn’t nearly as cut and dry as I tried to make it sound at the panel.  My esteemed fellow panelist Richard Nash eloquently said that the future of the book business would be less about controlling content and more about monetizing the conversation about that content.  This is the strength of independent bookstores.  We nurture and support local literary communities, we listen to the marketplace (or at least we ought to), and we provide a natural place for conversation about books to take place.  As I said at the panel on Saturday, for independent bookstores, it’s never been simply about selling the books.  Rather, we aim to add value beyond the book itself.  This is why we’re constantly trying to book new and innovative events (like our Book Buses), why we’re committed to meeting our customers online as well as in our stores, and why we continue to participate in events like the Festival of Books.  Tod Goldberg pointed out that Borders and Barnes & Noble were both conspicuously missing from this year’s festival.  For Borders, this is understandable.  You wouldn’t fault a dying man for not showing up to your birthday party, right?  But the absence of both chain stores simply reinforces my point.  Selling at the Festival of Books (and other events like it) is what we do to survive.  For Barnes & Noble, it appears it’s a PR move, something done to brand themselves as part of the LA literary community (and by the way, we made money this weekend).  Moving widgets has never been the strength of the indie store.  We’d be the first to admit that we don’t scale very well, but talking about books?  We can do that.  The trick is figuring out how to make money at it.
• The ebook tipping point is here. There were lots of conversations about ebooks this past weekend, prompted, perhaps, by a table in the green room reserved exclusively for representatives of Amazon’s Kindle ereader.  Not even Alyssa Milano had her own table.  While there was much skepticism amongst the hardcore bookish types, I was sensing a lot of excitement from festival-goers.  One person at our panel asked about the future of ebooks, noting that the electronic version of his book includes embedded audio and video.  Obviously, if “enhanced ebooks” become the norm, then not only publishing but also storytelling might get turned on its ear.  I think that moment is still a ways away, but it is approaching.  As a bookseller, I’m excited about the possibilities, and I’m hopeful that ebooks will attract new readers.  And of course, all of this makes Amazon’s purchase of Lexcycle (the makers of the popular ereader app Stanza) all the more troubling.  As indies, it’s imperative that we find a way to compete in this world (especially as Amazon has left us openings on issues like DRM, transparency and ebook affiliate programs).
• Here comes everybody…literally. All weekend long, people were coming to the Vroman’s booth and handing us copies of their books, their CDs, pamphlets about their books and CDs, fliers about the pamphlets about their books and CDs.  My informal, totally non-scientific poll says that approximately half the people at the Festival either have published a book or are hoping to publish one.  Adding to this were the many booths occupied by iUniverse and other companies that specialize in self-publishing or print-on-demand books.  As I said in the panel, the barriers to publication have never been lower, but in many ways, the barriers between an author and his or her readership are higher than ever.  The proliferation of the author is further proof that publishers need to be playing matchmaker, as Richard Nash called it, as there are a lot of readers and a lot of writers out there.  How the two will find each other is the fundamental question in publishing for the next ten years.
• Tod Goldberg is a funny dude. But you already knew that, right?
• The Festival is better when it’s not so hot. This year’s weather was lovely:  warm sun and a cool ocean breeze.  More of the same next year, please.
• Twitter was made for festivals, conferences and conventions. As with Winter Institute, I loved reading tweets from other folks at the festival.  It gave me at least some idea what was happening at the dozens of panels I didn’t make it to, and it made me feel like I was at the only event that mattered.

That’s what I got from this year’s festival.  As is always the case with these events, I didn’t get to meet everybody I had hoped to (I’m kicking myself for not dragging my exhausted, post-book bus self to Venice for the Granta party at Equator Books), but I had a lot of fun meeting so many people I knew only from the internet.  As a bookseller, the festival is exhausting, but also very rewarding.  I can’t count the number of times I overheard people saying “Oh, Vroman’s, they’re my favorite bookstore,” or something to that effect.  It was a tremendous weekend, and I extend a big “Thank You” to everybody who went to the Festival.  For those who were there, what were your favorite moments?

In the meantime, read the 35 or so posts that Jacket Copy wrote for a blow-by-blow of the panels and stages.  They did incredible work covering the festival.  It’s a real testament to how the LA Times, which no longer has a stand-alone book review, is adapting to the changing times; in short, their book blog is as good as it gets, and they out-did themselves this past weekend.  Lead blogger Carolyn Kellogg was joined by Book Fox’s John Fox, YA superstar Cecil Castellucci, local writer Chris Daley and many more.  I spent about an hour and a half with my morning coffee and cereal pouring over their entries.

• The publishing industry is safe for another year:  Dan Brown’s new book, The Lost Symbol, will be released in September.  According to “sources,” the book is about the end of the Mayan calendar.  I eagerly await Tod Goldberg’s reaction.
• Speaking of Tod Goldberg, click over to read his excellent and frequently hilarious annotated guide to the LA Times Festival of Books.  For example: “I’m seriously thinking of skipping my own panel to hear Mary Gaitskill. I have a thing for her. And by “thing” I mean I’d wear a suit made from her hair and skin. I hope that doesn’t creep her out.  Aimee, Gioconda and Dylan are great as well, I just wouldn’t wear their flesh as an outfit, which I think they appreciate.”
• J.G. Ballard and James D. Huston both passed away yesterday.  There are many excellent eulogies of both authors online today, including this excellent post from ballardian.com.
• Last week it was Amazon, but maybe we ought to be worried about Google books, too. “I like Google…But no one, not Google, not Santa Claus, should have this kind of leverage over the entire world of literature. It’s abominable. No one benefits when markets consolidate into a single monopoly gatekeeper — not even the gatekeeper, who is apt to lose its edge without competition to keep it sharp.”
• It is the 10 year anniversary of the Columbine killings.  I will use this opportunity to plug Dave Cullen’s book Columbine, which every bookseller I know raves about.  You can read some of Cullen’s work on Slate today, as well (excerpt).
• And finally, Indiebound has just launched an iPhone app.  I’ve used, and it looks and works very well.  Install it (it’s free), use it, love it.

Each year in April, Los Angeles shows off its literary stuff at the LA Times Festival of Books.  The Festival features panels on subjects like “Mysteries in Black and White” and “Sports:  The Athlete as Role Model.”  There are stages featuring readings and talks by dozens of fabulous authors and celebrities, literary and non.  This year, the LA Times is running a new collaborative serial as a lead up to the festival.  And best of all, the local independent bookstores set up shop, hosting booth signings and selling all sorts of interesting books and gifts.

Vroman’s will be taking part in the festival in a number of ways this year.  First of all, we are once again running our popular Book Buses to the Festival of Books on Saturday, April 25.  What are book buses?  Each year for the past eight years, Vroman’s has run buses to and from the festival on Saturday.  Everybody who signs up for the bus gets a light breakfast of bagels and juice, then rides the bus to the festival, skipping the lousy traffic and even better, avoiding the huge hassle of parking in Westwood.  Each bus is hosted by an author who discusses his or her books and takes questions from the audience.  At the end of the day, everybody piles back onto the buses and rides home, tired but happy.  At the end of the day, each bus rider gets a bag loaded with free books and a coupon good for 20% off at Vroman’s for the next few days.

The authors on this year’s buses are pretty terrific.  Charlie Huston hosts the Mystery Bus, where he’ll regale passengers with tales of crime scene cleanup crews and much more from his book The Mystic Arts of Removing All Signs of Death.  Gustavo Arellano, author of Ask a Mexican and Orange County:  A Personal History, hosts our second bus.  Jerrilyn Farmer, author of Murder at the Academy Awards, will host the third bus, while bestselling thriller writer Gregg Hurwitz, whose latest book is The Crime Writer, hosts the fourth bus.  To sign up for one of the buses, just give us a call at 626-449-5320.

Vroman’s will also have a booth at the Festival of Books (Booth 367!), where we’ll be hosting an incredible group of authors, including Joseph Wambaugh, David Horvath, Pico Iyer, Jann Robbins, Andrew Sean Greer and many more.  We’ll have a selection of some new and noteworthy books as well as popular recommended titles from our massive inventory.  Stop by and meet the Vroman’s booksellers (including me!).  For a complete schedule of our booth signings, click here.

Finally, I will be participating in a panel called Publishing 3.0 with industry luminaries like Sara Nelson, former Editor-in-Chief of Publishers Weekly, Otis Chandler, founder of Goodreads.com, and Richard Nash, the former head of Soft Skull Press.  The panel will be moderated by LA Times book editor David Ulin.  We will be discussing nothing less than the future of the printed word and what place that future holds for publishers, journalists and booksellers.  The panel is on Saturday at 1:30 in Humanities A51.  Stop by for some interesting conversation.  And if you’re at the Festival and using Twitter, remember to mark your tweets with the LA Times Festival of Books hashtag #LATfob.

Because we are so excited about this year’s festival, we are running a very special drawing.  We will give away a pair of tickets to ride on our famous book bus to the festival to some lucky reader. To enter the contest, please email us at email at vromansbookstore dot com with the subject line LATFOB. The contest will run until the end of the day Sunday, April 12, with the winner being picked at random next Monday morning.  Vroman’s employees and their relatives are ineligible to win.  Emailing us is the ONLY way to enter the drawing.

This is a $110 value we’re giving away here, folks, but the experience is really priceless.  I rode on one of the buses last year with the very entertaining Christopher Rice, and I had a blast.  On the way home, we did trivia and cookies.  It was way, way better than driving myself.