Books-A-Million plans to buy the leases of 14 Borders Group stores for a total of $934,209, according to Bloomberg. Some of the stores--including ones in Portland, Maine, Canton, Ohio, Concord, N.H., and Mays Landing, N.J.--are far outside BAM's traditional Southern territory. The agreement is dependent on bankruptcy court approval by next Monday.
BAM had tried to buy 30 locations when Borders announced it was closing, but that deal ended. Since then, BAM has taken over a handful of Borders locations. Borders lawyers said that the deal for the 14 stores will gain Borders more money than if the leases were sold individually at auction.
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Sad times in Greenwich, Conn., where Just Books will close by the end of the month, according to Greenwich Time. Owner Marion Boucher Holmes said that sales had dropped significantly in the past 10 months and had an unusual explanation: the increasing popularity of iPads. She told the paper: "We were always dealing with the Kindle and Amazon, but the iPad has really accelerated. Old Greenwich is a small community, and if you start losing 25 to 30 percent of your readers to the electronic medium, the business is just not sustainable."
Just Books was founded in 1949 and owned for many years by Warren Cassell, who died in February at age 80. In 2002, Cassell sold the store, located in downtown Greenwich, to Jenny Lawton. Lawton opened Just Books Too in Old Greenwich, then closed the original downtown location in 2005, and renamed Just Books Too Just Books. Boucher Holmes bought the store in 2008.
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Delicious news from Seattle: the Book Larder, a bookstore devoted to "all things culinary," will open in October, according to Seattle Met. The owner is Lara Hamilton, who used to work for the late Kim Ricketts, founder of Kim Ricketts Book Events. The store is taking shape at 4252 Fremont St. N. See photos on Seattle Met.
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Nebraska Book Company's "packaged" bankruptcy is moving along. On Tuesday, the judge overseeing the case approved a vote by creditors on the company's plan to let bondholders take over the Nebraska Book Company, according to Bloomberg.
The company operates 290 college stores, has 2,500 bookstore customers for its textbook division and has 1,600 technology platforms and e-commerce sites used by various bookstores. It filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization in June, citing in part declining sales at off-campus stores.
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The Midwest Booksellers Association is changing its name to the Midwest Independent Booksellers Association. The change becomes official at the organization's trade show September 22 and 23 in Minneapolis, Minn.
The association said that "adding 'independent' to our name will underscore our value within the bookselling industry and serve as a constant reminder to everyone we work with that our mission is to support independent bookstores." The future MIBA will develop a new logo and website to reflect the change.
MIBA now joins seven of the eight other regional booksellers associations that have added "independent" to their names over the past decade. The lone holdout is the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association.
This is the second name change for the association, which was founded in 1981 as the Upper Midwest Booksellers Association, a name it bore for nearly a quarter of a century.
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Buon'idea del giorno (o della settimana): in honor of the 150th anniversary of the unification of Italy, Hobart Book Village is celebrating Italian Week this week in the bookstores along Main Street in Hobart, N.Y. Most events take place in the Hobart International Bookport, owned by Elda Stifani, who was born and raised in Milan and is a former European Union ambassador to the U.N.
Bookstores are displaying and offering for sale books about Italian history, art, music, poetry, as well as mysteries. Events include lectures accompanied by food and music (one example: a lecture on the Jews of Italy accompanied by a sampling of Jewish Italian food and background music); a reading from Giorgio Bassani's The Garden of the Finzi Continis and a showing of the movie based on it; and showings of a variety of other Italian films.
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Pooh saves the day! Last week's news about the impending closure of the Harbour Bookshop, Dartmouth (Shelf Awareness, August 19, 2011), which was opened 60 years ago by Christopher Robin Milne, may have been premature. The Bookseller reported that news of the shop's troubles "has received widespread press coverage in regional and national media" and owner Rowland Abram "has had interest from more than one buyer and has had a discussion with the heritage group Dartmouth and Kingswear Society, which wants to preserve the bookshop." A Save the Harbour Bookshop Facebook page has also been set up.
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Flavorwire was also in an A.A. Milne mood, offering a literary mixtape for Tigger and noting that "someone who bounces all day long would have to listen to the most spastic, bounding modern indie rock and pop songs he can get his paws on. After all, all that bouncing is hard work, and even a Tigger needs a little musical boost once in a while. Or, if we know him, all the time. Tigger is certainly not one for moderation. His iPod is filled with nothing but fun-fun-fun! Here’s what we think he would boast, bounce, and eat extract of malt to."
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Since no buyers have thus far made an offer for London's doomed Travel Bookshop--which gained notoriety as Hugh Grant's workplace in the 1999 film Notting Hill (Shelf Awareness, June 16, 2011)--"a group of writers and poets are volunteering to work for free, one day a week, if an investor can come forward and buy the shop," the Kensington & Chelsea Chronicle reported. Time is running out, however, since the bookstore launched its closing sale on Monday.
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The Arizona Daily Sun profiles Matt Christiansen, supervisor of the book department at Bookmans Entertainment Exchange, Flagstaff, Ariz. Our favorite part: the lengths to which he went to land a job at Bookmans nearly 20 years ago. Christiansen confessed to not working at a library, as he had indicated on his resume. "Really I had just spent a lot of time at the library," he told the paper. Moreover, he read the manager's book recommendations and then dropped the names of those titles during his interview. "She said, 'Oh, I love those books too!' "
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The St. Louis Independent Bookstore Alliance is holding its second "indie bookstore cruise," a day-long tour of four bookstores. The cruise, via bus, sets sail on October 22.
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Are fiction readers better people? A research team at the University of Toronto "established that fiction isn't just enjoyable; it enhances your ability to empathize with others and understand life," the Yorkshire Post reported.
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NPR's Heller McAlpin recommended "5 smart, playful summer books" for readers "who like to fire up not just the barbecue but also their brains."
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Malaprop's Bookstore, Asheville, N.C., offered some late summer reading suggestions at Our State magazine.
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Book trailer of the day: The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh (Ballantine), which blossomed officially on Tuesday.
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Barbara Drummond Mead, president of 
Author and radio station owner 
Widely praised as one of the best novels written about the Vietnam War, Karl Marlantes's 2010 debut, Matterhorn, was packed with heartrending scenes inspired by his experiences as a young Marine. In What It Is Like to Go to War, Marlantes reveals the intimate details of the real-life moments he fictionalized for Matterhorn and skillfully deploys them to support his call for a paradigm shift in how we prepare soldiers for combat.