"We believe books are here for the long term. Yes, people will read digitally but a lot of people are reading both. We are huge believers in books... that is at the core, at the very essence of our business."

Very sad news: Paul Kozlowski, much beloved bookman, birdman and jazzman, better known as P.K., died suddenly on Wednesday at Hoboken University Medical Center, Hoboken, N.J. He was 60.

At Booktopia last year, booksellers Rick Simonson and Chuck Robinson show how much the book world loved P.K. (right)

Paul had a 35-year career in the book industry, starting as a bookseller at Doubleday Bookshops and Barnes & Noble. He also worked at Penguin and then Random House, beginning in 1996, where he was most recently v-p, director, sales marketing. In 2010, he joined Other Press as director of marketing and sales, a position he left last month.

Paul was a dear friend to many of us at Shelf Awareness and a major supporter of independent booksellers. We always enjoyed talking with him, most recently at BEA, where he was his usual smart, drily amusing, self-deprecating self. We're as shocked as we're saddened by the news, and our hearts go out to his wife, Jill Tardiff.

Random House said: "We are shocked and sorrowful over Paul's death. He was a colleague of true distinction who cared as deeply about his accounts as he did the books he loved to sell them."

Mitchell Kaplan of Books & Books, Coral Gables, Fla., said: "I'm devastated by the news of Paul's passing. He was always there with a ready smile and an encouraging word. My deepest sympathy is for his family, although I know everyone who knew him will miss him dearly."

Carl Lennertz of World Book Night U.S. wrote: "I've known Paul Kozlowski since Fifth Avenue Doubleday Bookshop days, and loved him ever since. Erudite, down-to-earth, smart and real. A book person. Which is the highest compliment I know. P.K.: friend to all and a book person."

Anne-Lise Spitzer, v-p, creative marketing director, Knopf, Pantheon and Schocken Books, said, "He was among the smartest readers I have ever been privileged to know. I don't think anyone was better at articulating the merits of a great book. His passion for the good ones was unmatched. And it was infectious. We will all miss his enormous spirit and forever treasure his friendship."

Shelf Awareness publisher Jenn Risko recalled: "Sometimes, you can learn all you need to know about people the first time you meet them. Twenty years ago, I was a brand-new, very nervous rep calling on Barnes & Noble for the first time. In between appointments in the B&N waiting room, I listened and watched an exuberant silver-haired man go through about 10 phone calls in a half hour. With every one, I could imagine people scurrying about to get whatever he requested done. He did it in such a fun, smart and kind way that I suddenly found myself wanting to get something done for him. He got off the phone. I must have been staring at him. He noticed me, walked across the room and introduced himself, "I'm Paul Kozlowski with Penguin. You're new here." He glanced at my papers, and said, "You should be sure to include subject codes on the title information sheets. But you're gonna do great, kiddo. I can tell." Then, that huge P.K. smile. Over the years, and as the Shelf grew, I was lucky to receive his advice and guidance and honored to become a trusted friend. Brilliant in both mind and spirit, may we all have this singular man's voice in our heads, nudging us to his level of excellence."

Viewing will take place this Sunday, June 29, 2-6 p.m., with a brief prayer service at 5:30 p.m., at Failla Memorial Home, 533 Willow Avenue (corner of 6th Street; valet parking available) in Hoboken, N.J. Failla's phone is 201-659-0082.

In lieu of flowers, the Tardiff and Kozlowski families request that donations (or contributions) be made to WBGO Jazz 88.3 FM in the memory of Paul E. Kozlowski.

Net revenue for the U.S. book and journal publishing industry last year fell 0.4%, to $27.01 billion, representing 2.59 billion "units," according to BookStats Volume 4, the annual statistical survey of publishing sponsored by the Association of American Publishers and the Book Industry Study Group.

Trade net revenue in 2013 fell 2.3%, to $14.63 billion, while units dropped 1.7%, to 2.32 billion. Adult nonfiction was the fastest-growing trade category (revenue up 5.4% and units up 2.8%), surpassing children's/YA, which had been the fastest-growing trade category the previous two years.

E-book revenue in 2013 fell 0.7%, to $3.06 billion, but more units were sold than in the previous year (up 10.1%, to 465.5 million). Downloaded audiobooks hit all-time highs in both revenue (up 19.2%, to $272.8 million) and units (up 14.2%, to $34.7 million).

Publishers' net revenue from sales online of both digital and print products ($7.54 billion) is now higher than revenue from products sold in bricks-and-mortar stores ($7.12 billion).

BookStats emphasized that 2012 was the best year for the industry, in part because of the Hunger Games and Fifty Shades of Grey blockbusters, and that 2013 results are ahead of 2011 results. Bookstats said that the "slight drop in revenue and units vs. 2012 while numbers continued to grow at the same pace vs. earlier years" demonstrates that "while specific, extraordinary titles may impact publishing from year to year, the industry's health is driven by the depth and range of titles and formats produced by publishers."

(Monthly sales figures provided by the AAP reflect only revenue and are based only on data supplied by participating publishers. By contrast, BookStats includes unit sales, sales channels information and projects sales for sales not directly reported to it. The full BookStats report is available for purchase. Earlier this week, BISG announced it is not continuing co-sponsorship of BookStats.)

Potterton Books is closing its store in the lobby of the D&D Building at 979 Third Avenue (between 58th and 59th St.) in New York City by July 31, but is negotiating a new lease in what it calls "an exciting new location" where it plans to reopen in the fall. To "lighten our moving load and raise necessary relocation funds," the store is discounting all inventory 25%-40%.

Potterton specializes in high-quality books on design and decorative arts and has a collection of more than 5,000 new and rare titles on interior design, architecture, furniture, gardens and associated decorative arts.

The company's headquarters is in North Yorkshire, England, and it also has a shop in Chelsea in London.

The French Senate has ratified a bill previously passed by the National Assembly nicknamed the "anti-Amazon law," which prohibits online retailers from offering free delivery of discounted books, Agence France-Presse (via rawstory.com) reported. The bill is expected to be signed into law by President François Hollande within two weeks.

Culture Minister Aurelie Filippetti, who in the past has criticized Amazon's free deliveries and tax arrangements, said the bill demonstrated "the nation's deep attachment to books."

She has also attacked Amazon's discounts, which by French law are held to 5%, saying, "Once they are in a dominant position and will have crushed our network of bookshops, they will bring prices back up."

As the American Library Association's annual conference and exhibition starts in Las Vegas, Nev., Simon & Schuster is expanding access to its catalogue of e-books to libraries across the country. S&S said that it was making the change, effective immediately, after a successful pilot program in more than 20 library systems.

Under the program, each title acquired by a library for lending is usable for one year from the date of purchase. The library can offer an unlimited number of checkouts during the one-year period, although each copy may be checked out by only one user at a time. All S&S frontlist and backlist titles available as e-books are eligible for the program. New titles will be made available simultaneous with their publication.

The program includes a purchase option (through a library's online portal) "to help support libraries, and for the convenience of patrons who might not want to wait until a popular new title is available " A portion of the proceeds from each sale will go to the library.

S&S president and CEO Carolyn Reidy commented: "Although the library market for e-books is still evolving, we are pleased to now offer e-books to libraries on a universal basis, providing their patrons the content they desire in increasingly popular digital formats, and helping libraries to continue serving their communities as they have so well for so many years."

Last summer, Susan Murphy thought she had found a place to open a bookstore in Detroit, Mich. When that location fell through, Murphy decided that she'd open her store, Pages on Livernois, anyway, as a roving pop-up shop. Her plan was to build support for and raise awareness of the bookstore as she looked for a suitable building.

"The main reason I opened a bookstore is that literature changed my life," Murphy said. Although she has never worked as a bookseller before, she has an extensive business background (in IT, finance, management and teaching; recently she founded a small market research company), as well as a library science degree. "I didn't grow up in a family that read. I realized in high school that there was great literature out there. Reading has opened so many cultural doors for me."

Her decision to open a bookstore, then, came from her love of books and her desire to do something for Detroit. "The city has no new, general booksellers," she explained. Although she doesn't live in the city itself, she works in midtown Detroit and has always lived in the greater Detroit area. "They need one."

Around the beginning of this year, Murphy found a permanent location in a neighborhood in northwest Detroit called Sherwood Forest. The building, which is currently undergoing renovations, is on Livernois Avenue between 7th Mile Road and 8th Mile Road; historically, that stretch of Livernois was called the Avenue of Fashion. "Years ago it was all high-end retailers," Murphy said. "The retail district got run down, but the neighborhoods around there are very stable."

Renovations should be finished in early fall, and Murphy plans to move in shortly afterwards. Though the exact floor plan is still unclear, she'll have between 1,000 and 1,200 square feet in which to expand her current inventory. At the moment, she carries primarily classic and contemporary literature at her book stall, along with some biographies, children's books, a smattering of hardcover books and Detroit-related books. Murphy is also considering creating a small used section once she moves, but at present her inventory is all new.

In her efforts to build awareness for the bookstore, Murphy has set up her pop-up shop in locations all around the city. Before last year's holidays, it was installed in downtown Detroit; she has two appearances scheduled for July in Detroit's midtown/cultural district, and her current base of operations is at the Rust Belt Market in Ferndale, just outside Detroit. On June 20, in fact, she held her first author event ever, for an art book called Canvas Detroit that was written by Julie Pincus and Nichole Christian and published by Wayne State University Press this spring. Good Cakes and Bakes, a local bakery, agreed to host the discussion. Murphy has another author event scheduled for August 1 in a different part of the city, and is working on organizing two more.

So far, the response has been enthusiastic and encouraging. Detroit's population of artists and writers, Murphy related, are particularly excited. "The general reaction I get is that Detroit is starved for books," she said. In addition to artists and authors, community organizations are similarly excited. "They're happy to have a bookstore in the neighborhood." --Alex Mutter

To help celebrate the 21st anniversary of Dog Ears Books, Northport, Mich., 13 poets whose work is included in Poetry in Michigan, Michigan in Poetry read their poems from the anthology as well as one by a poet not present. The Leelanau Enterprise noted that "the audience packed both Dog Ears Books and the David Grath Gallery, where readings took place. There was standing room only."

Among the guest poets was William Olsen, co-editor of Poetry in Michigan, Michigan in Poetry, which contains the work of 90 poets and 23 artists. "Bookseller, poets and partners went out for dinner and drinks after the reading, but punch and birthday cake were served to all who attended the event," Grath noted, adding: " 'Life is short,' all the poets agreed. 'Have dessert first!" To which the bookseller heartily concurred."

Loganberry Books

Local independent bookstores "encapsulate the ideals of the buy local movement: Getting a one-of-a-kind product or experience while staying inside the local economy," the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported, noting that there is "a bottom line as to why these local bookstores are surviving--they fill needs that book consumers still have, such as browsing in-person."

"The independent bookselling world is actually stronger now than it was 10 years ago," said Harriett Logan, owner of Loganberry Books in Shaker Heights. "Part of that is in response to the buy-local movement, (with) people wanting to invest in their communities, people wanting to keep their main streets alive."

MindFair Books in Oberlin has added Kobo e-books and reading devices to its retail mix. Staff member Richard Riley said, "It's not a huge profit-center. But we didn't invest a lot of time and money in it.... Most of our customers are satisfied."

Suzanne DeGaetano, co-owner of Mac's Backs--Books on Coventry in Cleveland Heights, observed: "When you go into a bookstore it's like a cultural experience. Every store has their own imprint and personality."

Tom Cox has been appointed v-p, adult mass merchandise and distributor sales, at Penguin Random House, heading the company's new cross-company mass merchandise adult sales division.

At the end of the year, Ken Kaye, v-p, director of distributor sales, Penguin, will retire after 45 years in the industry.

All Those Vanished Engines (Tor), Paul Park's return to science fiction after his Princess of Roumania fantasy series.

Sunday on NPR's Weekend Edition: Laurel Braitman, author of Animal Madness: How Anxious Dogs, Compulsive Parrots, and Elephants in Recovery Help Us Understand Ourselves (Simon & Schuster, $28, 9781451627008).

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Tomorrow on NPR's Weekend All Things Considered: Celeste Ng, author of Everything I Never Told You: A Novel (Penguin Press, $26.95, 9781594205712).

All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld has won the $60,000 Miles Franklin Literary Award, Australia's most prestigious book prize, honoring a novel "of the highest literary merit and which must present Australian life in any of its phases." The book, the author's second novel, was published in the U.S. by Pantheon in April.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Wyld, who was born in England to an Australian mother and has spent much time in Australia, said, ''My first book was set in Australia, it's the place I go to when I daydream. I would dream constantly of Australia and I lived for the trips out here, it's something to do with it being so different from London. The light is the first thing that strikes me, in northern New South Wales especially and the smell of sugarcane in the sun.''

All the Birds, Singing is about a woman with a dark secret living on a rugged island off the coast of England whose sheep are slowly being killed.

The Morning Herald wrote: "One of the judges, NSW State Library Mitchell Librarian Richard Neville, described the novel as a road movie in reverse, in which the 'flight from violence and abuse' runs through the core of the novel and yet never defeats its central character. 'All the Birds, Singing, an unusual but compelling novel, explores its themes with an unnervingly consistent clarity and confidence.' "

It's been a rewarding week for Wyld: in the last few days, she also won the Encore Award for the best second work of fiction and was one of eight winners of the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered prize.

Following many years of reporting for and editing magazines, including serving as editor-in-chief of McCall's, Sally Koslow has written four novels and one nonfiction book, Slouching Toward Adulthood. Her work has been published in a dozen languages and her novel The Late, Lamented Molly Marx was a Target Book Club Pick. Koslow's essays have been published in the anthologies Dirt: The Quirks, Habits, and Passions of Keeping House and Wedding Cake for Breakfast, as well as in Real Simple, More, O Magazine, the New York Times and elsewhere. Her newest novel is The Widow Waltz (Plume, June 13, 2014). Koslow teaches creative writing at the Writing Institute of Sarah Lawrence College and elsewhere in the New York City area, where she is an independent writing coach.

On your nightstand now:

At the moment I'm reading for two book clubs. One chooses works that have stood the test of time: currently, Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively. The second, newly formed, is all Manhattan writers committed to discussing recently published books, starting with The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner. I like to read beyond book club choices, though. The Other Typist by Suzanne Rindell is gathering momentum. Next up are A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki, The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert, Almost English by Charlotte Mendelson and Astonish Me by Maggie Shipstead.I also have manuscripts to read in order to write blurbs for other authors. My nightstand may topple.

Favorite book when you were a child:

I loved many of the books my grade-school teachers in Fargo, N.Dak., read aloud. Most memorable were Bartholomew and the Oobleck and If I Ran the Zoo by Dr. Seuss, Caddie Woodlawn by Carol Ryrie Brink and the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle series by Betty MacDonald. I read The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett again and again, paving the way for Jane Austen. And like every other female writer who identifies with Jo: Louisa May Alcott's Little Women.

Your top five authors:

Edward St Aubyn, Edith Wharton, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Oscar Wilde and, not least, Mary Cantwell, author of the memoirs American Girl, Manhattan, When I Was Young and Speaking with Strangers. I started my post-college work life at Mademoiselle magazine where--lucky me--Mary top-edited my bumbling efforts. I can imagine her marginal criticism of my current work and try to respond to it.

Book you've faked reading:

Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie. Could. Not. Finish.

Books you're an evangelist for:

I am a pro bono publicist for Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson and The Art of Civility by Amor Towles, novelists of whom I am deeply envious.

Book you've bought for the cover:

Recently I stopped dead in a bookstore in front of Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi. The cover features a design of roses and a snake intertwined with elegant black upper-case serif type set against a shade of circa-1940 green. I know from my years in magazines that green is tricky for covers, but I fell in love with this book on sight. The downside of today's reading habits is, to borrow a magazine term, a lowered pass-along factor, because the cover of what someone is enjoying on an e-reader doesn't draw in secondary readers. Boo.

Book that changed your life:

At 11, I read The Diary of Anne Frank. This led me to look at my parents' copy of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer. Since then, compelling books about the Holocaust always cry out to me: Mila 18 by Leon Uris, The Book Thief by Markus Zuzak, Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada, Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum, City of Women by David R. Gillham and many more.

Favorite line from a book:

Kill me now, but as I was sitting at a funeral I thought, "When I imagined my funeral, this wasn't what I had I mind." A whole story fell in place around this line: The Late, Lamented Molly Marx, my second novel.

Book you most want to read again for the first time:

The week of my bat mitzvah, I started Gone with the Wind, got sucked into Margaret Mitchell's fictional world, stopped practicing my Torah portion and felt less guilty about that than I should, because I learned how absorbing a novel could be.

Book you'd read to a child:

The Pout-Pout Fish by Deborah Diesen. Mature vocabulary, catchy rhyme and a message not to "spread the dreary-wearies all over the place." I can think of many adults who could benefit from this book.

One might think that a marriage between two self-aware urban artists and academics unencumbered by children would be, if not always happy, at least fun and enriching. But no marriage, no matter how enlightened, traverses decades without plenty of zigzags, bumps and ruts.

Augusta "Gus" Edelman, the 47-year-old narrator of Robin Black's quietly thoughtful first novel, is a modestly successful artist and teacher. Her husband, Owen, has published a few well-received but sparsely read small-press books. They are mostly content in their shared life, until Gus has a brief but intense affair with the father of one of her students. Life Drawing is Gus's story, not only of her marriage and regrettable infidelity, but also of the untimely death of her young mother when Gus was a toddler, the loss to cancer of her oldest sister and closest confidante, and the increasing dementia of her father as he slips along a path of escalating nursing-home care. The creative impulse of her art sustains her, even when "what seemed unimaginably exhilarating gets bogged down... and then it is work. Then it is hard."

After he learns of Gus's affair, Owen is willing to hang on ("There's always hope... even if unwarranted"). They use a small inheritance to leave the city and purchase a farmhouse with separate space for their work and enough isolation from friends and former distractions to attempt to repair their marriage. As Owen wrestles with his writing and carefully managed anger, Gus excitedly tackles a new multicanvas art project. When an attractive divorced 50-year-old woman rents the farm next door, her unexpected intrusion disrupts their solitary rural retreat with social dinners and conversational walks. Visits by the divorcée's beautiful aspiring-writer daughter and physically abusive ex-husband tragically shake the fragile balance of Gus and Owen's marriage.

Black (author of the story collection If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This) probes the vicissitudes of a mature marriage with an understanding of the effort it takes to make one work. She knows what Gus found boringly routine, "the sex that's like the decent enough music you listen to because the drive is so long and it's the only radio station you can pick up." She grasps cuckolded Owen's frustration when he calmly tells Gus, "I just can't imagine life without you. Not at this point. But I am so f**king angry at you. Do you get it that I'm too angry even to sound angry?" Finally, as Owen takes leave of Gus to work in his barn office while she paints in her studio, Black captures what might be the uneasy heart of a long marriage: "It isn't joyless. You aren't joyless... we aren't. But we are a life's work, aren't we? We are a universe. You and me. Our own f**ked up, beautiful, inexplicable universe." That may not be much, but in a world of irrevocably broken marriages, it may just be enough. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

Shelf Talker: Robin Black's first novel deftly explores the nuances of a mature marriage with all the tension, patience, anger and love its longevity requires.

Outside perspective can be intriguing, if only to spark further conversation. In his 1888 novel Looking Backward, this is what Edward Bellamy imagined retail stores would look like in the year 2000: "All our stores are sample stores, except as to a few classes of articles. The goods, with these exceptions, are all at the great central warehouse of the city, to which they are shipped directly from the producers. We order from the sample and the printed statement of texture, make, and qualities. The orders are sent to the warehouse, and the goods distributed from there."

Last December, in a piece headlined "Are You Ready for the Store of the Future?" Mark Startup of the Retail Council of Canada's MyStore division told Profit magazine: "It's taking large retailers a long time to figure out all this technology. Independents can change the store environment almost on a dime."

Have you ever wondered how someone completely outside the book trade might envision the shape of bookstores to come? The recent media blitz regarding Foyles' shiny new flagship "Bookshop of the Future" in London inspired Intelligent Life, the Economist's culture magazine, to challenge four leading architecture and design practices to "Reinvent the Bookshop."

Gensler, 20.20, Burdifilek and Coffey Architects were each given the same brief: working with a £100,000 (US$169,836) budget, design "a general-interest bookshop, selling fiction, nonfiction and e-books, in store and online, on a typical European high-street site, with two floors of 1,000 square feet each." Check out the full article for complete details, but here's just a sampling from their designs:

tl;dr (short for "too long; didn't read"): At Gensler's bookshop, "you don't have to enter the store to shop from it: the glass facade is a touchscreen that can be tapped on to download e-books from QR codes," Intelligent Life reported. A vending wall swings onto the pavement, offering a changing selection of paperbacks. To save floorspace, there is no checkout counter; payments can be taken instantly by booksellers with a card reader. Gensler's Owain Roberts said they did not focus on fixtures and fittings, which he called "incidental to the activities taking place," because the retail model is changing so fast that "the days when a fit-out would last five years are long gone."

The Art of Storytelling: Jon Lee, 20.20's creative director, agreed: "People won't go into a shop because the ceiling's beautiful. They'll go in because the experience is relevant to their lifestyle. It's what you do in a space that's really important." This "reinvented bookshop" has a café "with a twist: a Yo! Sushi-style conveyor belt delivering short reads and reviews to consume with your coffee" to act as a draw to the back of the shop, Intelligent Life wrote. Mobile "mid-floor units" carry screens to advertise events, as well as books that fit a frequently changed theme. A staircase and tree lure patrons upstairs. All books are displayed face-out, with just one title on the front of a drawer and the rest of the author's work inside.  

ILB (Intelligent Life Books): "If you just concentrate on books, you're rolling the dice," said Burdifilek's creative director Diego Burdi. ILB "is more of a gallery, showcasing particular books alongside related merchandise.... It's like a concierge service: everything in one place. My frustration [at the moment] is that I buy the book, then I have to go to another store to buy the product. It's a luxury to see and touch the product. That's what the Internet doesn't give you." ILB incorporates a glass roof to highlight the selling space upstairs as well as entice customers to the downstairs. A digital kinetic screen on the back wall spans both levels, lighting up at night like a movie screen.

Craftword: "Can you save the bookshop? Is there any point?" asked Phil Coffey of Coffey Architects "cheerfully" (as Intelligent Life described his tone). Believing that digitization will make print books redundant, Coffey said that what can be saved is the cult of the book as a beautiful object. Intelligent Life noted that Craftword "celebrates the arcane arts of printing and bookbinding" and is the "antithesis of an e-book emporium: niche, retro, social, inky, bibulous, but with only a few books to buy off the shelf. The idea is that you make your own, with the help of floating robots--choosing the paper, ink, font, leather, even gold leaf--on antique presses and binders."

"Design on its own will not save the bookshop," Gensler's Owain Roberts observed. "If you leave the model as it is and redecorate, nothing's going to change. The solution needs to be much more fundamental: informed, strategic and daring."

Agree? Disagree? How would you "reinvent the bookshop"? Maybe you already are. --Robert Gray

The bestselling self-published books last week as compiled by IndieReader.com:

1. Slade (Walk of Shame #1) by Victoria Ashley
2. Kiss Me Like This by Bella Andre
3. Ghost-in-Law Boxed Set by Jana DeLeon
4. Silk by Various
5. Cooper by Harper Sloan
6. Burned by Tara Sivec
7. Pulse (Part Three) by Deborah Bladon
8. The Kinshield Saga: The Complete Series by K.C. May
9. Voodoo or Die by Stephanie Bond
10. My Skylar by Penelope Ward

[Many thanks to IndieReader.com!]