Ronald and Bryan Williams, the owners of music company Cash Money Records, whose artists include rapper Lil Wayne, are launching a book imprint called Cash Money Content that will sell books at concerts and hold red-carpet launch parties and be sold and marketed by Atria, according to the
Wall Street Journal.
The Williamses plan to put out five or six books a year, with a focus on education, politics, food and life style. None of its initial titles are music-related. The first list includes its debut title,
Raw Law: An Urban Guide to Criminal Justice by Muhammad Ibn Bashir, a lawyer, which appears in February;
Justify My Thug by Wahida Clark, a paperback original novel that comes out in March; and
Pimp, a memoir by the late Iceberg Slim.
"You're going to see TV commercials, billboards, and plenty of YouTube videos featuring artists and writers talking about books," Vernon Brown, the Williamses' attorney and business manager. "Our books will also be sold at our concerts. When you're out in front of 18,000 people, some will buy books, some not. But right now many of those fans aren't being told what books are great. We'll do that."
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Student Life, the student newspaper of Washington University, celebrates the 10th anniversary of
Subterranean Books, St. Louis, Mo., which began selling new and used titles but now stocks only new books. The store also has an extensive events program and exhibits work by local artists and photographers. Subterranean Books also has two of our favorite tag lines: "From High Culture to Subculture" and "Independent Since the Turn of the Century."
The store's five staff members aim to provide excellent customer service and know the books they sell. "One of the requirements of working here is you have to be curious about things you don’t know about," owner Kelly von Plonski told the paper. "If you're interested in poetry, you also have to want to learn about something like crime books."
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"After
Philip Levy kept his family waiting for six hours outside the famous
Blackwell's Books in Oxford, England, he decided to open his own
bookstore back home in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington D.C.,"
according to the
Munch (a newspaper published by the University of Maryland's Smith Undergraduate Student Association), which profiled
Bridge Street Books.
"Either
we're snobby or creative, or both. We're certainly not a book store for
everybody," said Levy, who opened Bridge Street in 1980, modeling it
after some of his favorite independent bookstores, including St. Mark's
Bookshop in New York City and Blackwell's. "We get the kind of customers
who don't fit their stereotype."
"You
can be stimulated just by walking into this bookstore in a very positive
way," said customer Katy Bohinc. "Just by looking at the titles, you're
going to see stuff that is interesting, challenging, inspiring and
heartening. There's a strong intellectual rigor... it's easy to engage
with what's going on in here."
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"Franklin as a Bookseller." Negotiating the price of a book, circa 1854 (from
Arthur's Home Magazine, via
Futility Closet).
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The New England Children's Booksellers Advisory Council has posted its fall galley review online: see
the
Interactive Fall Top Ten+ List and the
Full
Fall Review as well as the
Indiebound NECBA Fall Top Ten widget.
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PC World offered the "top 10 Amazon Kindle irritations": its setup allowing just a single user; no apps; a dictionary for single words only; lack of book cover art; TMI, as in the progress display bar that can't be turned off; only two fonts; "free 3G that isn't free"; font choices are global, not per title; a couple of oddly placed keys; and inconveniently placed page-turn buttons.
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Book trailer of the day: Kasey to the Rescue: The Remarkable Story of a Monkey and a Miracle by Ellen Rogers (Hyperion).
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Only now, five months after the iPad launched in Australia, the iBookstore has opened, offering titles from six publishers. Other publishers are complaining about Apple's slowness in negotiating and with logistical issues, according to the Australian.
Australian iPad owners have been able to use the iBookstore only for out-of-copyright titles.
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Oddest news of the day: India's environment minister has blamed the popularity of Harry Potter in part for a decrease in the population of owls in the country, the BBC reported.
"Following Harry Potter, there seems to be a strange fascination even among the urban middle classes for presenting their children with owls," Jayram Ramesh said.
A report on endangered owls also attributed some of the problem to religious sacrifices.
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Luke Magerko has joined Diamond Book Distributors as executive director of new business development and will head a new division focused on increasing sales of comic and non-comic products to sales channels outside the traditional book and hobby markets Diamond currently serves. His early focus will be on large non-bookstore retail chains, which include Home Depot, Lowes, Office Max and Joann Fabrics, among others.
Magerko has 17 years of magazine and book publishing industry and distribution experience and worked for many years at Meredith Publishing.
"Print books and magazines--black print on white paper--create a uniquely effective reading platform that integrates both storage and a player in a convenient package. Reading material is consumed differently than music and movies. Books generally take longer to read and aren't continually or frequently re-read, making the low storage density of books less of an issue than with music and movies. E-books and e-book readers are still maturing and may not be 'good enough' yet to effectively replace the print book experience."
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Cathy Green, who with her husband, John, opened children's bookstore 
(Putnam/Penguin, November
2010). Pecan Pie Baby navigates the complicated feelings of young
Gia as she anticipates a new brother or sister, and her loving mother's ability
to reassure Gia that she will always be loved. 
In this captivating first novel, Adam Gidwitz reimagines a half-dozen Grimm tales with Hansel and Gretel in the starring role. This clever through-line allows him to examine the relationship between children and adults in classic fairy tales. I know, I know. You're saying, "Must I really open yet another book published this year inspired by the Brothers Grimm?" Yes, you must!