The Skim Trade

"It's all about social capital," she says.

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"Sometimes you're planting seeds that you don't even know," Allison Hill is saying. "A few months later, you remember you met someone at breakfast and they're going to have the information you need."

Akre, as it happens, is sharing a Thursday morning breakfast table with Hill, who manages a bookstore in Pasadena, Calif. They're building social capital by chatting about a problem all people in the book business have: So many books. So little time.

Despite the fact that she's coming to a convention where free reading material will be thrust at her constantly, Hill packed no less than 12 volumes from her to-read list. Akre was a little more restrained. She brought four.

Hill shares a trick she uses for deciding what to read: She looks at a book's very last word, and if that feels right, she'll give the book a shot. She's a sucker for "home" and "love."

"I have staging piles," Akre says. No way will she get to everything in even the most ruthlessly winnowed pile. She'll farm many out to Olsson's colleagues. Others, fortunately, she can order blind.

"I don't need to worry about the next James Patterson," she says.

Thursday is the day before the main conference opens, but the American Booksellers Association has put together a day of educational sessions at a Brooklyn hotel. It boasts such topics as "What to Do When the Competition Comes to Town" ("That's old news," Akre says) and "Participation in the Digital Revolution," which is the first one she opts to attend.

It's a quick run through what the speaker, ABA Education Director Len Vlahos, calls the "key concepts driving change." Among them Vlahos lists print-on-demand technology, which is "changing the distribution system for books," and the rapid digitization of "everything that can be digitized."

There's not much in the way of social capital to acquire here. And while the presentation is forceful and well received, Vlahos doesn't say much that Akre didn't already know. She's young enough, at 33, to be at ease with technology in a way that some of her older peers are not.

A Barnard English major who grew up in Alexandria, Akre worked a variety of jobs in New York before landing back in the Washington area. In late 2001, still unsure what she wanted to do, she got herself hired as a clerk at Olsson's, thinking it would tide her over temporarily.