Northwest Presence Noted At Booksellers Convention

The “City of the Big Shoulders” turned into the City of the Big Wait.

Or at least that’s how it often seemed to the 42,000 people who gathered here last weekend for the annual convention of the American Booksellers Association (ABA).

This convention - a dizzying combination of trade show, annual reunion and bacchanal for the book biz - saw long lines for shuttle buses and taxis, long lines for meals and, yes, lattes.

And once inside the McCormick Place Complex, bleary-eyed conventioneers faced the largest display ever, a formidable 360,000 square feet occupied by 1,800 exhibitors ranging from giant publishers like Random House to the small Copper Canyon Press of Port Townsend, Wash., to the tiny Islamic Publisher’s Association of Seattle.

This year more than any other, it seemed as though books were in some danger of being lost amid the rising ABA tide of CD-ROMs, computer games, videotapes, audiotapes and a huge array of “sideline” bookstore products. The latter included cards, posters, puppets, maps, mouse pads and “photo opportunities” with Barney or Spiderman or Abe Lincoln.

As usual, the prominence of the Northwest presence at ABA was way out of proportion to the region’s population, further cementing the region’s reputation as a clean, literary place where many fine books are written, published and loved. Northwest people often were stars of this ABA show.

There was Seattle author Rebecca Brown, whose picture was on the Saturday front page of the convention’s daily newspaper put out by Publisher’s Weekly. Her novel about an AIDS caregiver, “The Gifts of the Body,” had been honored with a Lambda Literary Award for best work of fiction by a lesbian.

Brown was “totally thrilled” by the award and stunned by her first ABA. “It’s 10 times as big as I expected,” she said, “and I’m high as a kite.”

R.L. Stine, an author-illustrator from Bainbridge Island, seemed to be everywhere at ABA, appearing on a panel, doing an autograph session and being saluted on the cover of a four-page convention special by USA Today. Stine was listed there as America’s best-selling author for the first four months of this year, besting such better-known salesmeisters as John Grisham, Tom Clancy, John Gray, Anne Rice and Robert James Waller.

Of Stine, whose young adult titles include “It Came From Beneath the Sink!”, USA Today wrote: “In sheer number of volumes sold, no one comes close to R.L. Stine. He has 26 titles on our Top 150.”

This year’s ABA also represented a big-league baptism for two of the most-honored young writers from the Northwest - David Guterson of Bainbridge Island and Sherman Alexie of Seattle. Both were attending their first ABA and did so in its intense spotlight.

Guterson - whose remarkable first novel, “Snow Falling on Cedars,” won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction - saw the book honored again at ABA, voted one of the five that the nation’s booksellers most liked to sell in the past year.

The other books were: “Chicken Soup for the Soul” by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen (overall winner), “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” by John Berendt, “Politically Correct Bedtime Stories” by James Finn Garner and “The Shipping News” by E. Annie Proulx.

Guterson was suddenly treated as an equal among writers, editors and publishers he had long admired. His reading of the opening pages of “Snow Falling on Cedars” on Sunday evening was part of a program that also included readings by Richard Ford, the noted literary writer, and Rita Dove, outgoing poet laureate of the United States.

“Snow Falling on Cedars” is to be published in paperback by Vintage Books in October.

“I keep thinking,” Guterson remarked to someone from Seattle, “how the hell did I get here? I’ll never get used to this. My happiness has always come from the work and doing things like this has been a real adjustment for me. I’m not attuned to socializing, but I keep encountering people who seem genuinely moved by my book.”

Alexie was in Chicago as part of a mind-numbing and waist-expanding national tour on behalf of his first novel, “Reservation Blues,” a two-month odyssey from coast-to-coast and border-to-border. Alexie, a Spokane/Coeur d’Alene Indian, gave a reading sponsored by Booksellers for Social Responsibility and signed so many books at an ABA autographing that he got a blister on his finger.

Alexie also spent some time on the convention floor and was honored by his publisher, Atlantic Monthly Press, with a small private dinner at Catch 35, a tony seafood restaurant. Alexie seemed relieved to have his wife, Diane, seated across from him and to be surrounded by only a handful of people, many from the Northwest.

“This is great, being in a small group,” he said. “But the convention itself was a zoo and I felt like I was on display. Book publishing is always about commerce and art, but sometimes it seems more like commerce. And at ABA, I’ve felt like more of a commodity than I thought I would.”