The first ISBNs with the prefix 979 have been assigned to the French ISBN agency, meaning that there are now two ISBN-13 prefixes, 978 and 979, in use. As a result, duplicate 10-digit ISBNs will begin to occur, which will create problems for companies in the book supply chain that continue to rely on 10-digit ISBNs to identify books.

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A Digital Strategy and Planning Group has been formed by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt within the Trade and Reference Division. Cheryl Cramer Toto, senior v-p of digital strategy and planning, will lead the group, which includes David Jost, v-p of digital content development; Sanj Kharbanda, v-p of digital market strategy; and David Langevin, v-p of digital business development.

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Is there a battle between the Park Slope and Prospect Heights neighborhoods in Brooklyn for "literary supremacy?" In what it dubbed the "Battle of Book-lyn," the Brooklyn Paper reported that "Adam Tobin has moved his book store from Park Slope to Vanderbilt Avenue in Prospect Heights--a possible indication that the Slope has lost its literary cachet. . . . Members of the growing Prospect Heights writing scene claim that their neighborhood has already surpassed the bookish barrio of Park Slope as the borough's foremost literary community."

"If you were to do a survey of what people do for a living block by block, you would find more writers, editors and literary professionals living in Prospect Heights than Park Slope," said Tobin, owner of Unnameable Books. He cited rent as a deciding factor. "As rents have continued to go up in Park Slope, a lot more writers are moving to Prospect Heights. Writers can't afford Park Slope rents unless they are very successful--and neither can bookstores."

Not everyone sees the bookstore's relocation as an omen, however. "I don't think it's a bad sign for the community--I just think it's sad," said Scott Adkins, co-founder of the Brooklyn Writer's Space. "There are plenty of writers who have put their roots down here. I don't think the community is going to shrink."

Catherine Bohne, owner of the Community Bookstore, suggested that Tobin's move "is due to changes in shopping habits--not a migration of writers across Flatbush Avenue," according to the Brooklyn Paper.

"We are the first, and now we are the last," Bohne said of independent bookshops. "It means that everybody is shopping online--and they should stop."

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Alex Green, owner of Back Pages Books, Waltham, Mass., wrote a guest column for Boston.com about a proposed sales tax hike in the state. Green noted that he's heard people joking "about my ability to calculate 6.25% in my head instead of 5%, and all of the familiar phrases about death and taxes or taxation without representation came up at some point. In truth it may be that sales tax issues are the greatest silent cause of governmental financial crisis in America today, especially in the Commonwealth. What's wildly interesting is that the whole problem revolves around the sale of books."

In his analysis of tax breaks for online retailers, Green concluded, "We live in an age of deconstructing bogus economic theories, so let me take my shot. The so-called brilliant economic model embraced by Amazon and other online retailers comes right out of your wallet. Their discounts are great because they have an extra 5% to play with that your local retailer does not."

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"If ever we’ve needed a healthy dose of escapism, this summer is it," the Wall Street Journal suggested in unveiling its interactive "Summer Book List" and speaking with booksellers.

"The days of moving best sellers by the case are gone," said Shilough Hopwood, buyer for the Doylestown Bookshop, Doylestown, Pa., who expressed optimism despite the challenges. "The casual reader has dried up. We’re back to our bread and butter, which is the devoted reader. Mother’s Day was good, and we’re optimistic about this summer."

Kathryn Fabiani, general manager of RJ Julia, Madison, Conn., added that "customers are feeling a little more secure, and there’s a good crop of books this summer."

The WSJ polled publishers, booksellers, agents and readers to learn "what they were looking forward to taking on vacation (or selling to vacationers). After reading the books they recommended, we chose 10 novels and five nonfiction books we liked for the lazy days ahead. And as Don Hailman, manager of Anderson’s Bookshop in Downers Grove, Ill., says, 'Books are a pretty good escape for your dollar.'"

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Rockin' good times for a good cause. PGW's annual BEA bash featured a new dimension this year. Elise Cannon, field sales v-p, noted that the good book people attending the PGW Antibalas Party donated more than $800 for the Food Bank For New York City. "Not a bad night’s work and we’re still accepting donations to get the figure up to a nice round $1000," Elise added. "It was the first time we’d ever featured a charity at the bash. Thanks to everyone who came, saw, and danced!"
 
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Bookworm & Silverfish, Wytheville, Va., was profiled by the Enterprise, which called owner James Presgraves's shop "a musty bookstore filled with treasures, some of which have been around for years, passing from hand to hand. But there's a thoroughly modern touch to it all."

"The question is how to expose the books to the public," he said. "The Internet accounts for a big part of my business. . . . The tragedy of the Internet is any person can put any price on any book even though they don't have the skills to price it accurately."

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Lights! Cameras! Bookshelves! Burlingham Books, Perry, N.Y., served as one of the locations for the indie film Delicious Ambiguity, which premieres tonight at the Little Theatre in Rochester, the Daily News reported.

Anne Burlingham, the bookshop's owner, is a longtime friend of director Beth Bailey. "I was thrilled to have her use the bookstore," said Burlingham. "At one time, most of my staff knew the lines by heart ourselves. . . .  I'm looking forward to seeing the store shots."

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Lawyers for J.D. Salinger filed a lawsuit in Manhattan federal court Monday "seeking to force a recall of what [they say] is a copycat book titled 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye, by someone writing under the name John David California. It also seeks unspecified damages," the Associated Press reported.

In addition to the author, "identified in the court papers as 'John Doe,' the lawsuit also cites Windupbird Publishing, an obscure company allegedly based in London; a Swedish publisher, Nicotext; and SCB Distributors, based in Gardena, Calif.," according to the AP.

"To me, this is a story about an old man. It's a love story, a story about an author and his character," said a man living outside Gothenburg, Sweden, who admitted that John David California was his pen name. He told the AP that he had not intended to cause Salinger any trouble.

"Am I reaching out enough to the people who walk by my store, and do I want to?" This question, posed to booksellers by bestselling author James Patterson, became the framing question of the opening keynote panel on Thursday morning and reverberated throughout the BEA Day of Education programming.

Roxanne Coady, owner of R.J. Julia Booksellers in Madison, Conn., moderated the discussion as a kind of bookend to the panel of publishers she hosted at the Winter Institute (Shelf Awareness, February 2, 2009). When Netscape founder Mark Andreessen appeared on the Charlie Rose Show, he said something that resonated with Coady: "There is always destruction in the path of innovation." Coady said she wanted to encourage "a frank conversation about what [indies] do well, and what we need to change."

Distribution Channels

Coady laid out the facts:

• 30% of all bookstore sales are through bookstore chains
• 15% are sold online
• 10% are sold in independents
• 45% are sold in big box/specialty stores

"What do you see as the role for each of those distribution channels?" she asked the author-panelists.
 
Lisa Scottoline, author of more than 12 legal suspense novels (most recently Look Again, St. Martin's), said, "Everything is long tail now. For the 16 years I've been writing, I've watched it morph." Scottoline urged authors to do more, likening their role to that of "the guy who spun plates" on the Ed Sullivan Show. She recently showed her support of independent bookstores by committing to indies for 14 of her 24 bookstore appearances.
 
Sherman Alexie, winner of this year's inaugural Indies Choice Book Award for Most Engaging Author and National Book Award winner for The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (Little, Brown), said that his career was made by independents. In Costco, he said, "I feel like an eight-and-a-half pound jar of peanut butter." When he pays with a credit card in a chain bookstore, he said, maybe 10% of the employees notice his name, but in an independent bookstore, they see his card and begin whispering, "Is that him?" or "He's taller than I thought."

James Patterson said that the larger issue was that "people need to feel welcome," whether they wish to buy John Grisham or Gabriel García Márquez. At the organizational level, he believes that ABA needs to "draw more attention." He contrasted the lack of publicity outside of the trade for ABA with the national press attention paid to Comic-Con (which is open to the public). "We need to open the doors wider," he said. " 'The tie that binds' is that everyone in this room loves reading. We need to focus on what we have in common rather than what drives us apart."
 
Getting the Sale
 
Coady observed that in 2007, one out of every 15 hardcovers sold (or 6.67% of all hardcovers sold) was written by Patterson. If R.J. Julia had sold an equivalent percentage in her store, she would have seen an 8.5% increase in sales. "What does our store need to do to get that sale? A deep discount? Are we not putting it in the hands of our customers?"
 
"If I owned the store, I'd discount the bestsellers," Patterson answered. He pointed out that even chains discount only the bestsellers. Remembering that corner stores used to sell milk at twice the cost, he noted that now people buy their milk in supermarkets. "People are buying books in box stores. You want them to change their habits, but it doesn't happen overnight," he suggested.
 
Coady said that what independents offer is value added: for the price, you get ambiance, and "I save you from buying a book that's no good." Patterson responded: "Is your opinion something they're willing to pay for?"
 
Scottoline made the point that the Indiebound bestseller list is weighted toward books that sell in the greatest number of independent stores, rather than the books that sell in the greatest quantity. "In every independent store where I bought books, they tried to sell me Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie because it was on the Indiebound list." She said, "I don't know who you have to sleep with [to get on the Indiebound list], but I'm there." Scottoline's books have sold well in indies, but her sales are not reflected on the Indie list because they apparently aren't selling in most indie stores nationwide.
 
Speaking more as editor of Newsweek than as the author of American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House (Random House), Jon Meacham shifted the discussion slightly. "People who support reading don't necessarily support books," he said. "At Newsweek, we've found that we have to hunt where the ducks are, and the ducks are moving. Not all of them, but certainly the younger ones. We have to treat the reader--whether they are reading on a Kindle, online, etc.--seriously." Meacham continued, "Our 44th president made a bet that people are fundamentally more sophisticated than the filters between the people and the candidates."

Indiebound List as "the Electoral College"

In answer to Scottoline, Coady said that the ABA is reconsidering how the Indiebound bestsellers are determined. She noted that in the past, Alexie has called the Indiebound list "'the electoral college,' giving weight to the variety and eccentricity of [indie] stores."

"I'm all for elitist bastards," said Alexie, "if you're an elitist bastard bookseller." The uniqueness of each store is based on who works there, he continued. "One of the good things we're doing [as a nation] is going back to local." He cited the film Smoke Signals [Alexie wrote the screenplay, based on his short story "The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven"], for which Alexie insisted that the film's publicist organize an event in Albuquerque, N.M. The publicist didn't understand why. "Because 100,000 Indians live there," he responded.

For his part, Meacham said, "The case for eccentricity is a pretty compelling one. Everyone is his own curator. Newsweek is 76 years old. We've made a bet that our personality is interesting enough to attract a smaller [but dedicated audience] and that can keep us going. Their interest is everything, but only when we can add something."

"For a magazine with geographic reach, you have confidence that that niche market is enough to take care of Newsweek," Coady countered. "But for the store at the corner of Main Street, is there a way to hold onto credibility and be open-minded about the range of readership that can take place?"

Indies in the E-Book World

Coady noted that a year ago there were 38 million e-book titles; today there are 70 million. "If I impose 100% growth on e-books, by 2013, there will be $1 billion to $1.5 billion sales in books online, and e-books will represent 5% of the market," she said. "How can booksellers get involved in the e-book world?"

"This is the beginning of something as enormous as the shift from letter writing to e-mails," Meacham argued. "We have to create things people want to consume, no matter what the means become." He predicted a growing tension between publishers selling directly to that e-device and both Amazon and booksellers. "Could there be independent online curators?" he asked.

"I'm the last author whose fiction is not available digitally, a lonely man on an island--I don't know how many of us there are," said Alexie. He called the e-book "the opposite of the Gutenberg press," adding, "Mass printing was egalitarian. Machines are elitism. Maybe because I come out of a poor place. Poor places have very little access [to technology]--still." Alexie also argued that a movement toward e-books could result in a few entities monopolizing and homogenizing books. "There's less chance for eccentric writers. Publishers will consider [in the acquisition process] the question, 'How will a book do electronically?' The Kindle homogenizes books, and e-books homogenize them even more."--Jennifer M. Brown

E-books, Kindles, piracy and the breakdown of the retail distribution model: is the book industry fated to go the way of the music industry, suffering nascent growing pains and a cataclysmic contraction of profits as the old meets the new and atoms are translated into bytes? Moderated by Andrew Albanese of Publishers Weekly, a panel of three digital thinkers at BEA answered in turns yes, perhaps and "screw them."

Correlating the music and book industries' "broken industrial distribution model," Wired Magazine editor-in-chief Chris Anderson praised piracy of books and other written word materials as "a useful tool in China," where it "represents a celebrity mechanization channel," and suggested writers everywhere benefit from the potentially limitless audience e-books can reach when pirated, aka reproduced without paying royalties to their creators. Since most books don't make a profit anyway, Anderson posited, writers are motivated by other than money and therefore should and can embrace the unlicensed distribution of their books, which allows the message and content to reach the audience without the corporate middleman.

"Screw them," Anderson said of record labels and by extension, given the scope of the talk, publishing houses too--although perhaps not necessarily Hyperion, which distributed signed hardcovers of Anderson's upcoming book, FREE: The Past and Future of a Radical Price (legal edition cover price $24.95), at BEA.

"Authors need to take a more vocal role and try to push their publishers out of their comfort zone," Anderson said.

Jared Friedman, co-founder and chief technology officer of Scribd took an optimistic, less revolutionary albeit no less technological view, of the industry's future. Scribd's vision may be to liberate the written word but Friedman said he believes digital formats will monetize better than paper books in coming years and urged publishers to stay on track by developing and embracing "a really good distribution model," such as the Kindle; adopting "more than one distribution mechanism" to avoid a monopoly; and exploring new distribution channels for e-books.

"People want content in a digital format; the faster we do it, the better we'll be," Friedman said, noting that even as the music industry fought internet piracy in the courts, "Apple's iTunes was the best way to stop piracy."

While Friedman urged the democratization of the written word and Anderson advocated piracy as a way to expand audience, Nick Bilton, design integration editor and user interface specialist for the New York Times, took a practical view of what he called the "new business of storytelling," in which CNN hires writers, the Times starts a video group, and ultimately, "we're going to get to this point when we're all creating everything." The distinction between newspapers, magazines, television and books will be gone, "and we're all going to be on the same devices" for all our media content. The paperless future is here and now for his peers, Bilton said. "If I can't get a book on the Kindle, chances are I won't buy it, just because of the immediacy of it."

Praised by an audience member for not discussing "fear," Anderson admitted the only reason he's not afraid right now is because he has a "day job," while Friedman said he fears "that we'll create a ton of exposure on the Internet, but it's not really going to be converted into sales. Part of the challenge is creating an immediate link" between Internet and sales, he noted, while Anderson stressed "the Renaissance of the DIY arena. . . . Book marketing sucks. You've got to do it yourself." As the distribution model for content is revolutionized, Anderson suggested publishers may be forced to find other way to monetize authors' celebrity, such as acting as writers' speaking agents and booking appearances. "The enemy of most authors is obscurity," he added.--Laurie Lico Albanese, co-author of The Miracles of Prato.

"Have you ever published a book with no deadline?" asked Rick Joyce of the Perseus Books Group rhetorically, as he held a freshly minted copy of Book: The Sequel Saturday afternoon during a champagne launch party at the publisher's BEA booth. "This is like training in Denver for a race we're going to run at sea level."

What made this particular deadline-driven book notable, of course--and the reason Joyce was smiling as he said those words--was that it was essentially published in 48 hours, in a very public manner, at the Javits Center in New York last weekend during BEA. You can see highlights of the process as it happened on the BTS YouTube channel.

Book: The Sequel's editor, Clive Priddle of PublicAffairs, noted that the goal of the project was to acknowledge the history of books as well as offer some perspective on the already eternal question, "What comes next?" To that end, potential contributors were asked to choose a book, imagine its sequel, then write the first sentence and title.
   
Nearly 800 submissions were received between April 28 and May 28 from across the U.S. as well as England, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines and Japan. Contributors included authors, booksellers, editors, librarians, marketers, teachers and various other sequelistas.

Example: "Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from anxious dreams to find himself transformed into his father."--from A More Common Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka.

A proposed schedule had detailed the challenge set for the publishing team:

Friday, May 29

9 a.m.--Editorial meeting
10 a.m.--Jacket discussion/interior book design
11 a.m.--First pass pages arrive
1 p.m.--Marketing/publicity strategy meeting
3:30 p.m.--Foreign rights/sales discussion
5 p.m.--E-galleys available

Saturday, May 30

9 a.m.--Book website creation
9:30 a.m.--Reading group guide creation
1 p.m.--First print run meeting
3:30 p.m.--Q&A with participants
4 p.m.--Book launch party in booth

Not only was a final version of the paperback edition delivered on that timeline, arriving dramatically in the Perseus booth at 4 p.m., but thanks to the creativity and participation of numerous partners (including BEA attendees), multiple formats of Book: The Sequel were created at hyper-speed as well. These included a digital audio version; editions in large print, Braille and on several e-book platforms; and complementary marketing tools like a website and reading group guide.

"You can't do it alone," said Melissa Serdinsky of Perseus. "There are 19 or 20 partners who, when we went to them with this crazy idea said, 'Yes, we're in.'"

Those partners included Audible.com, the Book Report Network, the Caravan Project, Barnes & Noble.com, Corbis, DailyLit, the eBook Store, Edwards Brothers, eMusic, Expanded Books, Espresso Book Machine, Lightning Source, NetGalley, North Plains Systems, OverDrive, ReadHowYouWant, Rick's Image Works, SharedBook, Sony, University Press Audiobooks and Verso Reader Channels.

Book: The Sequel will be available in stores by June 15, with royalties going to the National Book Foundation for community outreach programs.

The book concludes, fittingly enough, with a future sequel to Book: The Sequel. Titled The Book Strikes Back, it begins, "Rumors of my death had been greatly exaggerated."

"Part of the reason we did this was to make BEA fun," said Susan Weinberg of PublicAffairs.

It worked.--Robert Gray

Today on Hardball with Chris Matthews: Neil MacFarquhar, author of The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy Birthday: Unexpected Encounters in the Changing Middle East (PublicAffairs, $26.95, 9781586486358/1586486357).

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Tomorrow on Oprah, in a repeat: Nic Sheff, author of Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines (Atheneum, $9.99, 9781416972198/1416972196).

Also on Oprah, Nic's father, David Sheff, author of Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction (Mariner Books, $14.95, 9780547203881/0547203888).

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Tomorrow on the View: Paula Froelich, author of Mercury in Retrograde (Atria, $24, 9781416598930/1416598936).

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Tomorrow on the Diane Rehm Show: Claire Shipman and Katty Kay, authors of Womenomics: Write Your Own Rules for Success (HarperBusiness, $27.99, 9780061697180/0061697184).

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Tomorrow night on the Colbert Report: Dag Soderberg will talk about publishing Bible Illuminated: The Book: New Testament (Illuminated World, $35, 9789197669443/919766944X).

Universal Studios and Illumination Entertainment have "acquired screen rights to turn the 'Where's Waldo?' book series into a live-action family pic," Variety reported, noting the Waldo books "have sold more than 50 million copies worldwide. . . . U and Illumination will seek to create a movie with strong global appeal."

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Duncan Jones will direct the film adaptation of Escape from the Deep by Alex Kershaw, who will write the screenplay for his book, according to Variety.

"Having been fascinated by submarine films like Das Boot and Crimson Tide, it's a really unique opportunity to tell an amazing story like this that is actually true," said Jones of the project that will begin production sometime next year.

Kazuo Ishiguro, author of the Booker Prize-winning novel The Remains of the Day, "has given his blessing to a plan to set it to music," the Telegraph reported.

"It struck me as an intriguing idea," said the author. "I am a big believer in musicals and I see no reason why my novel shouldn't make a good one. Steven Sondheim's A Little Night Music shows you can set an unlikely story to music."

Ishiguro has given "free rein" to producer Simon James Collier, writer/director Chris Loveless and composer Alex Loveless. "This is a small scale thing and I might feel more cautious about it if the film version hadn't been such serious, faithful adaptation," said Ishiguro. "That allows for this version to be a bit more left field. There is comedy in the book and a musical could bring that out more."

The Earth Hums in B Flat by Mari Strachan (Canongate, $14, trade paper, 9781847671929/184767192, June 19, 2009)

Opening lines of books we want to read:

I fly in my sleep every night. When I was little I could fly without being asleep; now I can't even though I practise and practise. And after what I saw last night I want more than ever to fly wide-awake. Mam always says: I want never gets. Is that true?

Last night began like every other night. I went to bed and changed under the bedclothes so Buddy Holly couldn't see me, and I laid my pink polka-dot hair ribbon down the middle of the mattress to show which side was whose, and Bethan said, like she always does: I don't want to sleep on your old side, anyway. Then, as soon as she was snoring she flung her arm across my face, and when I pinched her she flung her leg across my stomach.

So, it was hard to fall asleep. But when I did I left Bethan to spread herself across the whole bed and I soared into a sky that wrapped me in air as light and warm as an eiderdown. I listened to the town below breathe its shallow night-time breaths, in an out, in and out, and all around me the Earth sang.

For a while I hovered above the town's higgledy-piggledy houses. They cling to their streets as if they might roll all the way down to the sea and fall in if they let go. But last night, as usual, none of them let go and I didn't have to save anybody.

--Selected by Marilyn Dahl

A mention of two amusing titles yesterday in our BEA show floor report misidentified their publisher. Andrews McMeel is publisher of Why Dogs Are Better than Cats by Bradley Trevor Greive and photographer Rachel Hale, which appears in October, and of Cake Wrecks: When Professional Cakes Go Hilariously Wrong by Jen Yates (September), which is based on the author's website, CakeWrecks.com.

Our apologies!

The 10 bestselling books on AbeBooks.com during May:

1. The Soloist by Steve Lopez
2. Angels and Demons by Dan Brown
3. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
4. The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
5. The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman
6. Michael Recycle by Bethel Ellie
7. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
8. The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larsen
9. The Civil War by Geoffrey Ward
10. Jesus Calling by Sarah Young
 
The 10 bestselling signed books on AbeBooks.com during May:

1. The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larsen
2. The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
3. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley
4. The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie
5. Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower
6. The World's Wife by Carol Ann Duffy
7. Brooklyn by Colm Toibin
8. The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt
9. Walking the Perfect Square by Reed Farrel Coleman
10. Drood by Dan Simmons

[Many thanks to AbeBooks.com!]