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Show Tht Suit Lake Tribunr, Videocassettes Grab for Share of By John Blades Chicago Tribune recentEntering a chain book-stor-e ly, the first thing a shopper sees is a display table stacked with classics "The Red Badge of Courage," "The Yearling, "lvanhoe, and a others, all impressively packaged in leatherette. Across the street, another bookseller has a conspicuous rack devoted to such favorites as "The Jungle Book" and "Gulliver's Travels." These are not classic books, however, but classic movies, and, along with Julia Child, Jane Fonda and the Velveteen Rabbit, they signal the arrival of the video revolution in the nation's bookstores. Videocassettes started showing up on bookstore shelves a year ago, and, according to most sources, they have yet to have any measurable impact. In itself, though, the appearance of videotapes in bookstores is anachronistic enough: By almost any measure, economic or cultural, video would appear to be a mortal enemy of books and reading, to say nothing of literacy in general. Not only do videocassettes compete for a customer's time and money, but also they command precious space in the stores, displacing books from crowded shelves. For the moment, though, none of the above seems to present any grave problem for booksellers. "Hypothetically, it does make sense that $20 spent on a videotape is $20 that wont be spent on a book," acknowledges Bill Edwards, vice president of new business development for B. Dalton, which has aggressively plugged into, the video market. "Also, the two hours that it takes to watch a movie could be spent reading a book. However logical it may sound, that theory hasn't worked out in practice, insists Edwards, who says that "popularly priced prerecorded tapes are very compatible with our book business. In fact, were having a much better year in book sales than last. Even so, with videocassettes still such a novelty item in bookstores, it may be premature to draw any cona case of too little, too clusions early. As yet, none of the major bookstore chains, whether B. Dalton, Crown half-doze- Books, Waldenbooks or Kroehs & Brentano s, has turned over any significant space to video products, though they are usually positioned so the customer can't miss them. "Any time you put merchandise in the store that's not part of the main line," says Edwards, "you have to put it up front, to let the consumer know it's there. You've got to make it clear that youre in the business." At Kroch s, which has entered the field much more circumspectly than many of its competitors, videocassettes have been assigned, on a test basis, to an "electronic boutique with audio products and computer software, says William McCarthy, executive vice president. "Primarily, we feel our business is book retailing, and were looking on these as sidelines. Were making room for them while trying not to take away from book space." With a further decrease in the price of videocassettes (as well as an inevitable increase in the price of books), it's seems safe to assume all things will soon be equal. In which case, at least one crucial question remains: Will people be as willing to buy tapes from bookstores as they have to rent them from video shops? Booksellers should have a preliminary idea of whether there's a buyer's as well as a renter's market by late this year, when the results begin to come in from Christmas receipts. At that time, booksellers also should have an early indication of the impact, good or bad, videotapes have on book sales. Will they steal directly from book revenues? Or will they, as If video follows the pattern of audio in Kroch stores, customer acceptance will come, but gradually. And not before the price of videotapes r comes down to the level of books. At $400, the five videotapes that make up The Jewel in the Crown hardly qualify as an impulse merchants pray, create more bookstore traffic and sell more books? For the present, booksellers can consider the deleterious effect video rentals may be having on paperback sales at the supermarkets, discount houses and drugstores serviced by the Charles Levy Circulating Co., the Midwests largest distributor of paperbacks, magazines and videotapes. "We have to be careful in creating a relationship, says Levy president David Moscow, "but we do know, because were the only company in the area that distributes both products, that paperback sales are going down and video sales and rentals are going up. Since prerecorded movies provide an inexpensive alternative to reading at home, it may follow that the sales drop in paperbacks is attributable in part to their availability. "Theres no consumer research to prove that this is in fact the case. But Moscow says. you figure it out, About $3 billion will be spent this year on video software. That money doesn't just get invented; its got to be coming from somewhere. I think some of it may be coming from the paperback market, though I dont have evidence to support the case. Like booksellers, many major publishers are moving into video, though hard-cove- purchase; nor can they compete with e the edition of the books on which the Masterpiece Theater se- ries was based, Paul Scott's Raj Quartet, priced at $25. And even the most luxurious gift books cost less than the double-cassetversion of Gone with the Wind" ($90) or "Ghost-buster- s cause-and-effe- te ($80). Nonetheless, these are becoming exceptions that disprove the rule; from all the evidence, videocassettes are getting more competitive all the time. Where the fixed price of video movies was about $80 a few years ago, the going rate now is in the neighborhood of $30. The MGM classics, which include "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and "Treasure Island, are $25 each. And at $20, Crown Publishings "Movie Classics" among them, Meet John Doe, Made for Each Other, and "His Girl are only a little more (and Friday in the case of James Micheners latest book, "Texas, a little less) than an average hard cover. Discounted by Crown Books (no relation) to $15, they become highly competitive. with extreme caution; this is based, at least in part, on their experience with the software book "explosion," which managed to burn many publishers before it fizzled out. Among the publishers getting into video, the more aggressive may be Simon & Schuster possibly because it lost millions in royalties by failing to hang onto the videotape rights to the Jane Fonda workouts. To head its division, audio-vide- o recruited Valeri Cade from Clairol, where she was director of marketing. "I've spent the last year and a half studying what other people have done," says Cade, "and I havent seen much I thought was terrific, that used the medium in a way that would make the consumer want to buy the product." S&S As the companys first video original, Cade has produced "The Ameri- can Cancer Societys Freshstart:' 21 p Days to Stop Smoking, a instructional tape, which Cade calls "a product that is uniquely video publishing. It is not television. Most people are putting out videos that are more like television than anything eise. You can get television for free, so why buy it?" Nonetheless, S&S is not ignoring TV. The company has acquired video rights to The Jewel in the Crown and assorted other British TV imports, such as "Staying On," also based on a Paul Scott novel; "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes; and, most appropriately perhaps, The Road to 1984, a dramatization of George Orwells life. Because its such an publisher, Simon & Schuster seems right at home in the video field. But more exclusively literary publishers are getting into the game as well: Random House with an animated version of The Velveteen Rabbit, narrated by Meryl Streep; and its corporate cousin, the prestigious house of Knopf, with Julia Child's The Way to Cook, a home video course that is, according step-by-ste- six-ho- These are sentiments widely or disOne of the "doom sayers" is Neil Postman, a New believers York University communications professor whose new book, "Amusing Ourselves to Death, considers the harmful effects of TV. He maintains that the video infiltration of bookstores represents "a very substantial assault on literate culture. People who say it won't have an effect on reading are wrong. But I don't know that videocassettes are the point. Television is the point, and videocassettes merely make television more dominant than it otherwise might be. If new technologies extend that influ- ence, it will continue to move typography to the edges of our culture, and keep visual images at the center. ech- oed both in bookstores and publishing houses. "It's not a burning issue in the book business, says Harvey Plot-nicpresident of Contemporary Books, one of Chicago's largest publishers and a distributor of videocassettes to sporting goods stores and specialty shops. "I've never heard people talk of video being a threat. They talk more about the opportuni- ties." For Plotmck. it is not just a question of peaceful coexistence; the relationship between books and videocassettes may be mutually beneficial. He cites trade studies that indicate "active people, including people who watch TV more than average, tend to read more books . . . Right now, if you spend four hours in front of your TV, statistically youll spend more time reading than the guy who watches for only two hours. You ask, My God, when are these people sleeping?' People who are interested and enthusiastic about things find the time to do it. If you get interested in something, whether its through video or some other way, you tend to have a thirst to learn more, and so you'll buy more books. its difficult to regard the The case against videocassettes is as well as television in general even more strenuously argued by Jonathan Kozol, author of "Illiterate America," who says: I'm convinced that they will lower the incentive of people to do the difficult work of reading, and it will also deny them the far greater pleasure you get from books. With 50 million people in the United States already unable to read a book, and millions more unwilling, this looks like the last nail in the coffin of American literacy. - the floor of Henry and Anne Saunders parlor, the years scrubbed it away long ago. The elaborately paneled room' must have been a symbol of the Saunders' growing affluence when they moved in during 1797. What happened between that day and the black moment in 1808 when he murdered her? Was he bowed under the mortgages he'd taken to build his fine house in Isle of Wight County, Va.? Was he a man who beat his slaves and abused his wife? Only echoes of their lives can be heard from the lattice balustrade of the staircase. The Saunders' parlor forms part of a newly installed permanent hall, After the Revolution: Everyday Life in America, opening Monday at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. If the National Gallery of Arts "Treasure Houses of Britain is "the greatest gallery show ever," the "After the Revolution exhibit aims to be the best museum show, says museum Director Roger Kennedy. "We spent lots more on the research than on the installation. The ideas arranged the objects. hall gives a The 10, glimpse of the lives of three families who lived in the houses partially recreated here, and a freed slave is represented by the pews from the church he founded. The hall takes a briefer glance at the Seneca Indian Nation of the Iroquois Confederacy; the culture of the Chesapeake Bay area, and Philadelphia. In the 1790s log house from New Castle County. Del., the visitor can almost see Elizabeth Springer rocking baby Annes cradle with her foot while she poured tea for guests sitting in her wonderful set of six Windsor chairs. 1780-180- 1,225-obje- The whitewashed chinked logs formed a single room, so the bedroom, the china cupboard, the chest, all the family's best possessions are gathered here, to be warmed by the big fireplace. Elizabeth lived only a decade in her pleasant house, dying with the old century. When her husband Thomas died four years later, his second wife cow. was left the white-face- d for sure if Samuel No one knows : ' CAREERS Looking for o change in l$? Coll the Bryman School today and i hod out about the opportunities m ' the lulluwing : ; ; Colton ot Longmeadow. Mass., actu- ally built the fine Palladian room with pilasters, pediments and even a real landscape painting over the fire"in great place. He and his family fear and terrr" may have stayed in this room, drinking rum, barring the door, staying clear of the windows the night his neighbors took the law into their own hands and broke into on the house. his store, a lean-tColton had been called Tory" because he wouldnt accept Continental Congress paper money and said his neighbors were "liberty mad. He had raised the prices on his West Indian imports of rum, sugar and molasses, and refused to lower them when the local revolutionary committee told him to. So one night, a crowd of Longmeadow citizens broke into his store, took the West Indian goods to the town clerk to be sold at "reasonable prices" and gave the proceeds back to Colton. Coltons two wives lived much like their neighbors. Flavia was 18 years old and eight months pregnant when they were married in 1756. Historian Barbara Clark Smith says that in s some New England towns, of the brides were pregnant. Flavia lived only three more years. Colton must have loved her because he named one of his daughters by his second wife after her. That wife, Lucy, became a widow at 42 and took over the store. Goods much like she once sold china, belt buckles from are disEngland and woven goods o played in packing boxes. widows, Smith said, were almost the only women to have much in the way of rights. Richard Allen, a freed slave, was born as a chattel of the Benjamin Chew family in Philadelphia, who built Cliveden, a fine house that still stands today. But Chew lost his money, partly from his Tory sympathies, and sold Allen and his family down the river to Stokeley Sturgis in Little Creek Hundred, near Dover, Del. Eventually, Allen became a Methodist and himself a preacher at revival meetings. Among his converts was Sturgis, who told Allen and his brother they could buy their freedom and even gave them time to work for other people to earn their purchase price. Allen became an itinerant preacher. living off converts as he went o - two-third- Well-to-d- opin- ions of publishers and booksellers without some skepticism, since they or the ones who have added video would seem to to their inventories have the least to lose. What about those who have the most to lose? Besides hard-cor- e readers, they would seem to be the authors of books; but if video has inspired any widespread fear and trembling among them, they have yet to be recorded. Ray Bradbury, for one, whose visionary writings might make him more wary than most authors, thinks we have little cause for alarm. "Ev i The Bryman School THE m Kaysville Native Makes List of Whos Who lost Medicines in antique bottles and surgeons instruments mark Philadelphias yellow fever epidemic of 1793. Blacks were the principal nurses during the plague, when many whites fled the town. Most blacks didn't have money to leave and were mistakenly believed to be immune to the fever. "The Hands on History" room has reproduction printing presses to work and objects such as cloth to touch. Two study galleries of clothing and British ceramics will have changing exhibits. A great Conestoga wagon, ready to head west, winds up the show. As the visitor begins the show, a case holds artifacts marking the great events of life, pointing out both how life has changed in these 200 years and how it has remained the same. A yellow brocaded wedding dress was made from fabric bought in London for a beloved daughter. A cradle, from Maryland or Pennsylvania, is left empty in memorial to all those babies who hardly lived long enough to be rocked. A christening dress, carefully embroidered in 1797 for a longed-fo- r baby named Nathan Special to The Tribune KAYSVILLE Scott Arthur Liston, son of Paul Liston of Kaysville, has been named to the 1986 edition of Whos Who Among Students in Amer- "I WAS VERY SATISFIED WITH THE RESULTS AND EVEN RECEIVED LONG DISTANCE CALLS." D NEEDED CASH 4 GOT CLASSIFIED 237-200- WANT-AD- IT S 0 YOUR AD IN THIS SPECIAL ZONE EDITION WILL REACH EVERY OCCUPIED HOUSING UNIT The cost of space the size of this complete ad (3 col. x 7 in.) is only $1 51 .20 or tmc .r Mark.) moans the newspaper will deliver $2.60 per thousand households. to all their ican Universities and Colleges. Mr. Liston, a senior at Grace College, Winona Lake, Ind., has been active at the school since his freshman year. He has participated in intramural softball, has served with Rescue Mission Bible teaching at the school and served as junior class president. e He has served in the of is coordinator and program the Encouraging Missions Faithfulness Fellowship. He is a Sunday-schoprayer leader and a church committee member on Grace Ministries in Action. He also has been on the dean's list every semester and is a member of Alpha Chi, national honor society. Grace College is an accredited four-yeacoeducational Christian School of Arts and Sciences. r.i your advertising message subscribers in this zone every Wednesday in the morning Salt Lake Tribune and the evening Deseret News . . . PLUS . . . mail the zone edition with your ad to all Your ad will reach approximately 58,000 households or over 95,000 adult customers. student-exchang- r, U q! UtdD "ITT WEIGHT-GUAR- D 9 i t Sib Me. - T" ( sa For more information on how inexpensively you can reach these prospective customers, call ... , DIM CTm 23572 57G57 He will see 263-007- 9 3761 So. 700 E., Suite 200 t T Vug'jrVouV. l Gateway Weight Loss Center has a complete program CALL . r!: ip d . This k The Pldcu Monument that your ad appears in next week's edition . i I Fhyno Smith, celebrated a sturdier child. The exhibit hall aims at making viewers travel in time, live in their imagination in these two decades. can best enter The museum-goe- r these dramatic decades by seeing the show after reading the book "After the Revolution: The Smithsonian His- tory of Everyday Life in the Eighteenth Century, (Pantheon Books. 256 pp. $24.95) written by Barbara Clark Smith. Her genius is in breaking down historys glittering generalities into the specific lives of individuals. HEAVY-DUTDRILL AND CHAIN SAW. BOTH $600 CALL 000-000- 0 MR 0 , aWam , . ' ily. This is NOT mouth wiring. If you have 10 lbs. or more to lose and have can give trouble staying with weight loss programs, the Weight-Guaryou the help you need to lose Ibe. FAST, yet they will not be seen by Muilt'tilv li;ililt 18th-centu- Iroquois, shows a face of beauty and power. Philadelphia is remembered in the tools of its mechanics and other skilled workers. Benjamin Franklin in 1788 claimed that God was not only a mechanic but a Republican and a commoner: God Almighty is himself a Mechanic, the greatest in the Universe; and he is respected and admired more for the Variety, Ingenuity. and Utility of his Handiworks, than from the Antiquity of his fam- Constantly blocks tempting foods Slows down eating, stops binoes Can only b removed by the dentist Shores up self control and willpower Allows you to speak freely Can NOT be seen by others mi i.ii AkI Av.tiliihU1 it From the Seneca Indians came wampum belts, given by the Iroquois to mark important occasions, such as treaties, deaths or pronouncements, and silver gorgets, a kind of necklace and badge of position and friendship given important Indians by the Euro- - portrait ter among the most influential others. 0 445 South 3rd I sterner, less inclined to negotiation. In the exhibit, his church's moaner's bench is one of three pews lent by the Bethel church. Bits and pieces from three other communities are included In the show. Charles Willson Peale of Joseph Brant, with his sis- A 1797 ' Karl-Lorim- America DENTAL APPLIANCE TRAVEL MEDICAL SECRETARY A oii'ei in 30 weeks or less Hall day si Modules available 521-283- A Raphaelle Peale painting of Allens fellow preacher, Absalom Jones, shows him as a dignified older man. In a pastel drawing, Allen seems peans. ( and the . But perhaps the last most foreboding words on the sub- ject of video versus books should go Home to Stuart Karl of Video. In trying to ease their apprehensions. Karl told a gathering of booksellers: You shouldn't look at video as replacement of a book. It's more like a little brother or a big brother. Which seems to suggest that Big Brother won't be watching us, after all. We'll be watching him. IGogMgtgiiiflagw WORD PROCESSING MEDICAL ASSISTANT DENTAL ASSISTANT coil from town to village. Methodist churches then opposed slavery and applauded black religious leaders. In 1786, he came back to Philadelphia, where of the 1,630 blacks, all but 210 were free. Then blacks worshiped in the Anglican churches, but Allen thought they would be better treated in their own. He established the Free African Society and eventually the Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in a blacksmith shop with 100 members. j Good authors ask us to join them in a dialogue that transcends our ! mortality, Kozol says. With VCRs, . we cease to be an active intelligence in such a dialogue. Instead, we be- come passive receptacles of an adul- - , terated version of the real thing. Smithsonian Exhibit Gives Glimpse Into By Sarah Booth Conroy The Washington Post If blood stained WASHINGTON NV5 ery 15 or 20 years, there's some kind of revolution and everybody panics, saying it's the end of the book business. But that never turns out to be true. The doomsayers are always wrong. There's plenty of room for everybody." to vice president and associate publisher Jane B. Friedman, "truly revolutionary." Like so many others in publishing and book selling, Friedman doesn't think video fallout will have any ill effects on the market for books, or on the nation's reading habits. "I think books will last," she says. "These other areas, video and audio, are supplements to book publishing, and they will all flourish." Yet 1985 Market Classical-Boo- k lvanhoe, Gullivers Travels, Others Are Brought to Life Wrdnrsdjv, December lb, ) t . . |
