Fall books include Dan Brown novel

NEW YORK — Just in time for an especially crowded fall, business seems to be picking up for books.

Or at least declining less.

"I feel most people are cautiously optimistic, now that we seemed to have turned a corner," says Simon & Schuster Inc. chief executive officer Carolyn Reidy, who says the past two months have improved noticeably over a rough first half of 2009. "It's not that we're back to the extremely strong sales of more than a year ago, but we're trending upward. After taking our expectations down for so long, we're finally taking them up."

"Cautious optimism, that's the right phrase," says Jonathan Burnham, publisher of the Harper imprint of HarperCollins, which had an especially poor second quarter of 2009. "One never knows when we're completely out of the woods, but there's a sense of gradual upward progress."

The Association of American Publishers, which had been reporting declines for much of the year, finally had some good news last week, announcing a 21.5 percent sales increase for June. Barnes & Noble Inc., which has been hurt by online competition and discount stores, reported a 5 percent revenue drop for the three months ending Aug. 1 but expects a smaller decline in the fall.

After months when Stephenie Meyer appeared to be the only author anyone wanted to read, publishers and booksellers have noted new hits such as Thomas Pynchon's "Inherent Vice," Richard Russo's "That Old Cape Magic" and Pat Conroy's "South of Broad."

"We were down 20 percent this summer, which I used to think of as horrible. But we were down 35 percent in the spring," Barry Leibman, co-owner of Left Bank Books in St. Louis, says. "It's a bumpy road, but I am having a little more sense of confidence."

"It's still quite a difficult marketplace … but there's clearly a little bit more enthusiasm," John Sargent, CEO of Macmillan, says. "In the first six months, you basically had just the Stephenie Meyer books and a few others working. Now what you're seeing is a broader spectrum working better."

If the fall is a bust, Sargent says, blame it on the economy. It would be hard to blame the industry for failing to offer anything to buy.

Dan Brown's "The Lost Symbol," his first novel since "The Da Vinci Code," is just the start. New fiction is due from Richard Powers, Alice Munro, E.L. Doctorow, Diane Gabaldon, Stephen King, John Grisham, Audrey Niffenegger, Jonathan Lethem and Lorrie Moore.