Booksellers, Where Are You?

I didn't see a Banned Books display at Books-A-Million, nor did I see any sign of this week's emphasis on Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble's site either. So I wrote 'em all to ask why, and let you know what I hear back. (So far, two boilerplate emails from B&N. Nuttin from the other two.)

Blue Gal notes Amazon's silence, too, and point us to Alibris and Tattered Cover (great Denver Bookstore) both feature banned books this week. Good on 'em. Why not the others? I'd hate to think it's because they don't wanna be controversial. That'd be ironic.

Thanks to Boing Boing for supporting Banned Books Week, too.

Update 9/28: I heard back from Books-A-Million:

Thank you for bringing this to our attention. I see that we recognize Banned Books Week online at www.booksamillion.com and have passed your e-mail along to the director of operations over our retail stores to see if we do the same at all of our locations or if this was a mistake on the part of our staff at the Charlotte locations.

It's true that they do promote it on their homepage - with the 5th of 10 bullets in the Spotlight section of their homepage. The first bullet? In bold: "Booksamillion.com is a five-time winner of the BizRate Circle of Excellence Award." Something Marketing probably mandated, but their customers aren't going to care about. At least they mention Banned Books Week. Amazon and B&N don't mention it at all.

Why the concern? Remember: these are booksellers.