New David, Same Goliath
Ann Christophersen joined the board of the American Booksellers Association after her own store, Women & Children First, took a hit from the big chains in the 1990s. Early this month she was elected ABA board president, making her the first Chicagoan and the first owner of a feminist store to head up the 102-year-old trade group. Christophersen says the ABA has created a more level playing field for independent sellers in the last few years, but the long-term outlook is worrisome. As she cracks the spine of her new job, in which she represents more than 2,000 bookstores nationally, she’s facing the rumored arrival of yet another Borders, at Lawrence and Broadway, only a mile from her own shop.
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About that time the ABA decided to put its muscle behind the independents. In ’94 it filed suit against major publishers, seeking an end to unfair trade practices including discounts not based on volume. In ’98 it sued Borders and Barnes & Noble. The big companies bailed out of the trade group, and membership, also affected by closings, dropped about 50 percent from a high of 4,000. But the suits resulted in court orders that gave the small sellers a fighting chance. The ABA also developed a marketing program that allows independents to offer nationally redeemable gift certificates, their own best-seller and recommended-reading lists, and a Web site (Booksense.com) that hooks up buyers with independents in their area and an inventory of two million books.
Higher Voices Calling
James Palermo, who’s run the Grant Park Music Festival for seven years, will be leaving at the end of this season. That’s a year and a half before the festival’s anticipated move to its Frank Gehry-designed home in Millennium Park and a year after it was nudged under the wing of the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs. Palermo, the festival’s artistic and general director, has spent five years obsessing over the plans for the new band shell, and now he won’t be around to see it completed. Chalk it up to September 11, he says, or to a midlife crisis, but he’s off to Perugia to spend a year learning Italian and getting in touch with his roots. “This is all about being self-indulgent at age 42,” he says. “I looked at what happened on 9/11, took stock, said this is something I don’t want to put off.”
