You just can't keep a good woman down. Especially if you are talking about a woman who possesses both high-tech expertise and a love for books, like Carol Seajay, cofounder of Old Wives' Tales, a now-defunct women's bookstore in San Francisco, and publisher of Feminist Bookstore News (FBN), a bimonthly trade publication that folded in 2000.
For the past six months, Seajay has been publishing the electronic newsletter Books to Watch Out For [www.btwof.com], which takes up where FBN left off almost four years ago. BTWOF is a compilation of book reviews, news and industry gossip for readers of feminist, gay and lesbian literature. There are actually two versions of the newsletter: BTWOF: The Lesbian Edition, edited by Seajay, and BTWOF: The Gay Men's Edition, edited by Richard LaBonte, a founder and formerly the general manager of the three A Different Light bookstores in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York City. LaBonte wrote a column about gay men's literature for FBN for 10 years.
As of February, seven issues of BTWOF have been published—four issues of the lesbian edition, and three issues for gay men. BTWOF is published about every six weeks.
Annual subscription rates to either edition vary, according to whether one wants to be e-mailed an electronic version ($30) or snail-mailed the print version ($40). Subscribing to both editions costs $48 a year. While Seajay wouldn't disclose the number of subscribers, she was confident that she will attain her goal of 70,000 global subscribers by 2010. "Between the gay, lesbian and feminist sides, this is a modest goal," Seajay told PW. "Hey, I have new readers in Antarctica. If I can get readers in Antarctica, I can get readers anywhere!"
Seajay believes BTWOF will attract a broader audience than FBN. "The difference between them is that FBN was for booksellers and BTWOF is not just for the trade: it's aimed at both readers and booksellers. Readers who bought books at the many women's bookstores that have closed in the past five years will want to read BTWOF, as will general booksellers who want vibrant feminist/gay/lesbian sections in their stores. It's probably more useful to these booksellers than it is to those niche booksellers specializing in feminist, gay and lesbian books—they already know what's good and what's not," she said.
"But the feminist, gay, lesbian booksellers will want to read it too, not just to keep up with the latest trends, but to read the networking sections," Seajay added. "There'll be updates on what's going on in the gay/lesbian and feminist bookselling and publishing community. We want to know where each other is, what each other is doing. That information is what holds the gay/lesbian and feminist bookselling and publishing community together."
Excluding a recent three-year hiatus, Seajay has been involved with women's bookstores and feminist publishing in one form or another for almost 30 years. Seajay began working in 1975 at what she called, "arguably the first women's bookstore in the country," A Woman's Place in Oakland, Calif. A year later, she and Paula Wallace co-founded Old Wives' Tales, which Seajay co-owned until 1982. At the same time that Old Wives' Tales first opened, Seajay published the first issue of Feminist Bookstore News. Between 1994 and 1999, Seajay also published the annual FBN book catalog for consumers of women's books. When Seajay stopped publishing FBN in July 2000, the magazine had approximately 900 paying subscribers and at least five times as many actual readers.
After FBN folded, primarily due to a decline in advertising revenue that came about with the conglomeration of the publishing industry, Seajay temporarily changed direction and worked as a computer programmer and technical writer in the San Francisco Bay Area. "I was going crazy," she recalled. "I was going home to read books. But I could not find out what was coming out. I had time to read, but could not find what I wanted to read."
Seajay's friends, especially women who previously had owned or worked at feminist bookstores, voiced the same frustrations about no longer being in the loop concerning new releases from feminist and gay/lesbian presses or midlist titles from the larger houses. "People were talking about movies, not books," she said. "A new edition of the feminist anthology, This Bridge We Call Home, [Routledge] was published and no one was talking about it! I was speechless. I had to do something."
Seajay hopes that BTWOF will inspire people to read more books. "Readers will read more books if they know about more books," she said. "I want to go to a dinner party and discuss with others the issues raised in The Way the Crow Flies [HarperCollins], instead of talking about Sex and the City. I want people to read good books and to start talking about books again."
Barb Wieser, general manager of Amazon Bookstore Cooperative, a feminist bookstore in Minneapolis, thinks Seajay may actually accomplish her ambitious goals. "People have been coming into the store, looking for books they read about on Books to Watch Out For," she told PW. "I think this is going to fly. There's nothing else like it out there. And Seajay is so knowledgeable. She's a voice you can really trust, as is Richard. It's a great combination, what these two people are doing."
Philip Rafshoon, owner of Outwrite Books, a gay bookstore in Atlanta, thinks the newsletters have a lot of potential to draw new patrons into bookstores in search of gay, lesbian and feminist books. "It's really exciting, with Carol and Richard doing this. This is a wonderful opportunity to increase our book sales. It's great to put more information about books into people's hands."
Seajay fully appreciates the irony of using 21st-century technology as a tool to bring readers back into brick-and-mortar bookstores in search of books. "What I am doing now is very rooted in what is needed now and what works now," she said. "I feel as if I'm bringing the best of the past with me in this endeavor, without being stuck in it. And that's the vibrancy that informs Books to Watch Out For."
