While many bricks-and-mortar general retailers are cutting back on inventory and holiday staff, online retailers are emphasizing service and predicting sales increases this year, the Wall Street Journal wrote.

Among steps being taken: improving shipping times; making websites more customer friendly (in one case making the website more attractive for women); and creating easier access for customers with purchase problems.

The effort and optimism come after an unusually off period. Last year online holiday sales fell 3%, the first online holiday sales drop. Today online sales represent about 4% of U.S. retail sales, according to the Census Bureau, and online sales have fallen this year.

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As indicated earlier this year (Shelf Awareness, July 20, 2009), Barnes & Noble will sell the QUE proReader from Plastic Logic in its stores and on its website--after it is introduced at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nev., January 7, the retailer said yesterday.

The QUE is designed "to support the lifestyle of modern business professionals" and is the size of an 8.5 x 11 inch pad of paper and about 1/3 inch thick. The QUE offers access to a range of documents, including more than a million e-books available through the QUE store, powered by Barnes & Noble.

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More indie bookseller reaction to the book pricing wars:

Richard Goldman, owner of Mystery Lovers Bookshop, Oakmont, Pa., told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, "Our customers are not their customers. . . . For some people, price is important, and I respect that, totally. For some, ambiance is an important thing, supporting your local businesses."

At Aspinwall Book Store, owner John Towle said, "Bestsellers aren't something I even stock a lot of. The Sarah Palin book will do well here because this is a pretty conservative area. The Grisham will generate some automatic sales, same with Stephen King. But we're not really affected. Ever since grocery stores began selling bestsellers, it's been a very small percentage of our business."

In Madison, Wis., Sandi Torkildson, co-owner of A Room of One's Own bookstore, agreed with Goldman, telling WISC-TV that in spite of the pricing conflict, "I feel that we will get through it. We are kind of a break-even business. Every sale that I lose makes it a little bit more harder for me to survive."

She cited personal service and customer loyalty as her bookshop's best hopes for weathering the retail storm front. "I just couldn't meet the competition's price and still be in business so I just have to wait and see what happens," she said.

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Archipelago Books filmed translator Richard Sieburth reading from and discussing The Salt Smugglers by Gérard de Nerval during the book's launch party at Idlewild Books in Manhattan last month.

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David McKenzie of Federal Way, Wash., won the grand prize in the 2009 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest by penning what the judges considered the worst opening sentence for an imaginary novel. His dubious gem: "Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin' off Nantucket Sound from the nor' east and the dogs are howlin' for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the 'Ellie May,' a sturdy whaler Captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin' and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests."

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Host-a-Jewish-Book-Author.com, a website with information on authors of Jewish-themed books worldwide, has been acquired by the Center for Jewish Culture and Creativity. The site was launched in late 2007 by literary agent Anna Olswanger of Liza Dawson Associates and is designed to make it easy for bookstores, libraries and other organizations to arrange programs with authors, especially around the Jewish holidays.

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Book trailer of the day: I Still Do: Loving and Living with Alzheimer's by Judith Fox (powerHouse Books), just in time for Alzheimer's Awareness Month, held in November.

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Part of the ceiling in the parlor of the Homestead, Emily Dickinson's home in Amherst, Mass., collapsed on Sunday and has led to the temporary closing of the Emily Dickinson Museum, according to the New York Times. The ceiling apparently was installed in the 1960s, when the house was privately owned.

Ingram Publisher Services has added three publishers:

• Overdue Media, Seattle, Wash., our friends who publish the library comic Unshelved. Overdue has produced seven collections of Unshelved and sells apparel and merchandise. On the agenda: collections of the new comic strip Not Invented Here, set in the software industry.
• Triple Crown Publications, founded in 2001 by Vickie Stringer, which focuses on urban and hip-hop literature.
• Ooligan Press, Portland, Ore., the not-for-profit general trade press operated by students pursuing master's degrees in English at Portland State University. Ooligan publishes books honoring cultural and natural diversity and usually with a Pacific Northwest perspective.

Our new favorite bookstore name ever! This picture of a Hong Kong bookstore has circulated lately on the Internet with a range of comments, including:

Looking for the right book store? This ain't it.

If you can't find the book you want, you're probably shopping at the . . . (LISNews: Librarian and Information Science News)

THE BOOKS IN THERE MUST BE FOOKHING FABULOUS! (darklochnagar blog)

Today on Fresh Air: Greg Jaffe, Washington Post Pentagon correspondent and co-author of The Fourth Star: Four Generals and the Epic Struggle for the Future of the United States Army (Crown, $28, 9780307409065/0307409066).

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Today on the Diane Rehm Show: Anne Heller, author of Ayn Rand and the World She Made (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, $35, 9780385513999/0385513992).

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Tomorrow morning on the Today Show: Graydon Carter, author of Vanity Fair's Proust Questionnaire (Rodale Books, $23.99, 9781605295954/1605295957).

Also on Today: Kamala Harris, San Francisco's district attorney and author of Smart on Crime (Chronicle, $24.95, 9780811865289/0811865282).

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Tomorrow on the Bonnie Hunt Show: Susie Essman, author of What Would Susie Say?: Bullsh*t Wisdom About Love, Life and Comedy (Simon & Schuster, $25, 9781439150177/1439150176).

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Tomorrow on the Diane Rehm Show: Margaret Atwood, author of The Year of the Flood (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, $26.95, 9780385528771/0385528779).

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Tomorrow on Oprah: Duff Goldman and Willie Goldman, authors of Ace of Cakes: Inside the World of Charm City Cakes (Morrow, $35, 9780061703010/006170301X)

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Tomorrow on KCRW's Bookworm: Nick Laird, author of Glover's Mistake (Viking, $25.95, 9780670020973/0670020974). As the show put it: "In this novel of love, manipulation and deception, Nick Laird attempts one of the trickiest strategies in the novelist's tool kit. He structures a book so that readers come to understand things the characters remain blind to. The result is that the vices that are consequences of immaturity, heartlessness or sophistication are painfully exposed."

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Tomorrow night on the Colbert Report: Bill Simmons, author of The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to the Sports Guy (ESPN, $30, 9780345511768/034551176X).

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Tomorrow night on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon: Carrie Fisher, author of Wishful Drinking (Simon & Schuster, $13.99, 9781439153710/143915371X).

Film crews for The Social Network, adapted from Ben Mezrich's The Accidental Billionaires, "were out on the Charles River over the weekend filming more of the movie about the Harvard kids who created Facebook," the Boston Globe reported. The movie, "which is being directed by David Fincher of Fight Club fame, stars Jesse Eisenberg and Andrew Garfield as the Harvard students who developed the site, and Justin Timberlake as Napster creator Shawn Fanning," .

Author Mezrich told the Globe he hasn't been offered a cameo in the film but said, "I would do one if they asked me to."

Finalists have been named for this year's £5,000 (US$8,169) John Llewellyn Rhys for best work of literature, including fiction, poetry, drama and nonfiction, by a U.K. or Commonwealth writer aged 35 or under, the Guardian reported.

"Four different genres are represented by writers living across the globe [from] Nigeria, India, Canada, the UK and Australia," said the chair of judges Louise Doughty. "This list is a fascinating display of the range and strength of contemporary writing by young writers. It will be very hard to choose just one book from it and the prize is wide open."

The shortlist:

• Between the Assassinations by Aravind Adiga
• The Striped World by Emma Jones
• Six Months in Sudan by James Maskalyk
• The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• Waste by Tristram Stuart
• After the Fire, a Still Small Voice by Evie Wyld

Iain Lawrence won over this reader with his first novel, The Wreckers (Delacorte, 1998), a salty adventure of plundering ships that drove other ships to their destruction and made off with their cargo. That grew into a trilogy, and since then the author has explored everything from the circus life (Ghost Boy) to teens heading to World War II (B Is for Buster). Here he touches on an idea he explored in his World War I novel Lord of the Nutcracker Men: the idea that imagined situations could affect real-world events. Eleven-year-old Laurie has a vivid imagination born of hours spent alone. Her mother died in childbirth, and her father is off "waging a war against polio" on behalf of the Foundation for Infantile Paralysis. Then on March 1, 1955, Dickie Espinosa moves into the neighborhood and becomes Laurie's eager partner in a fantasy world they create together--until tragedy strikes. While playing in the creek, Dickie contracts polio. The majority of the novel takes place on the polio ward, where Laurie sneaks away for weekly visits and entertains Dickie with her greatest story yet.
 
There on the polio ward, Laurie begins to spin a tale not only for Dickie but also for the beautiful but bitter teenaged Carolyn Jewels and Chip, who gets "heaps of mail" but whose memories are always changing--each of them confined by an iron lung. Laurie invents an innkeeper named Fingal, a giant called Collosso and a Great North Road where alleged thieves and trolls dispense with travelers who never return. Questions and guesses from her listeners prompt Laurie to alter her plot (Carolyn's prediction that Fingal will slay Collosso prompts Laurie to give Fingal a son, Jimmy, who is destined to be the giant-slayer). Laurie introduces other enchanted creatures, such as gnomes, the Swamp Witch and a mysterious unicorn hunter named Khan. As Lawrence alternates between the present on the ward and the story Laurie weaves, the children begin to see themselves in the fictional characters and to draw parallels between unfolding events. Lawrence develops each character fully, and pulls no punches when it comes to describing how the stricken children were bathed and exercised or how others on the ward got around despite their failing strength; he also exposes the fear of contagion that kept many family members away. The author creates a masterful tale-within-a-tale while also shining a light on a rarely discussed era that affected tens of thousands of North American children. Most of all, he reminds us that stories have the power to carry the spirit through even the darkest days.--Jennifer M. Brown

In our item yesterday about Wal-Mart Canada not engaging in heavy discounting, we mistakenly wrote that Wal-Mart Canada doesn't sell books. It does, but doesn't sell them online, which is where the price wars are taking place.

At a New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association panel earlier this month about "creating community," Harvey Finkel, Clinton Book Shop, Clinton, N.J.; Susan Weis, breathe books, Baltimore, Md.; and Mark LaFramboise, Politics & Prose, Washington, D.C., discussed how, with their diverse stores and communities, they each do outreach.
 
One way is via book groups. Sixteen book groups currently meet in the Politics & Prose Remainder Room; in return for the space, those groups must be open to the public. The longest-running group is "Evening Fiction," which P&P co-owner Carla Cohen started 25 years ago.

For many book group members, "picking the right book is a social dilemma," Mark LaFramboise said. "We want to be the place to come to for advice." The store's "Book Groups Shelf" houses all books for "public" group discussion, on which there is a 20% discount. Offsite book groups may also register with P&P to receive a 20% discount on book group titles; between 100-200 groups register their books each month. LaFramboise also circulates a selected list of "recent and upcoming paperback releases recommended for book groups." P&P hosts a Book Group Night semi-annually for people already in a book group and for those interested in starting one. This fall 100 people showed up for the event. During those nights, LaFramboise does what he described as a "Phil Donahue walk-around-the-crowd," asking people what they are reading and offering tips for a successful book group.
 
Another way of doing outreach is through events.

"I look at the world as my community," Susan Weis said. "I seek out people who resonate with me."

breathe books, which celebrated its fifth anniversary last weekend (congratulations!), holds 50-60 events per month. The Victorian house in which it's nestled also has two event spaces: healers, psychics and yoga teachers use entrances separate from the bookstore and hold classes and appointments outside of regular bookstore hours. Session leaders have a 60/40 split of revenues with Weis for use of the space. Those sessions lead to other sales: sometimes people come for an event, then buy $400 worth of books, Weis said.
 
The breathe books e-newsletter goes out Wednesday mornings to 5,000 people. All customers are asked if they'd like to receive it and are told that after $250 in purchases, they will receive a $10 gift card. Weis regularly advertises events, keeps her website current and also sends out event alerts to Facebook friends and via Twitter. On Facebook, she has a personal page, group page and a fan page. "I list events, and the breathe book fans talk to each other," Weis said.
 
For stores that don't have the kind of event space she has, she advised partnering "with a local café. Suggest they offer 10% off the drinks and you offer a discount on books." She also emphasized: "If you take events off site, be sure to toot your own horn. When you sell books at an event, take your banner, your events calendar and your business card."
 
Another way of creating community is by making stores visible and branding their name. Banners are not enough, Harvey Finkel seemed to say. "I came from the corporate world, and we branded our name," Finkel said. "Clinton Bookshop is on my clothes, my truck."
 
The Clinton Bookshop sponsors 2-10 events per month. Some people who come learn about the events on Facebook, which Finkel regularly updates. The store also sponsors a monthly event at the local hospital, where 5-40 people show up. Finkel collects attendees' e-mails when they walk through the door. The hospital also often sends information about the event to its e-mail contacts. "The Clinton Bookshop often shows up on the hospital calendar," Finkel said.
 
Finkel partners also with schools, the local theater and a Hispanic poetry group that meets in the store. A local restaurant offers 10% off to anyone who attends a Clinton Bookshop event. One recent hit was "Lots of LEGOs with Sean Kenny," author of Cool Cars and Trucks, which 350 people attended, so they held three separate hour-long sessions. "How did you know how to plan for that number?" asked an audience member. Finkel sold tickets in advance, which included the price of the book.

Other ideas for creating community:

• LaFramboise: Politics & Prose sells a book-and-dinner package with an author through a local restaurant that includes the cost of the book for $80.
• Watchung Booksellers, Montclair, N.J.: the store held a bookmark contest on the theme "Where do books take you?" for kids in three different age groups, and hundreds of entries came in from up to 30 miles away. People lined up outside the store to hear the winners, whose artwork became the store's official bookmarks.
• Carol Fitzgerald of Bookreporter.com: Sometimes it's the quality of the experience versus the quantity of people. She has been at meaningful events of 5-12 people.
• Weis: There are 10-20 people at most breathe book events.
• LaFramboise: How much is too much? Politics & Prose had 400 people for Peter Yarrow. "You couldn't shop in the store."
• LaFramboise: It's important to relate success stories on your store's website.
• Finkel: Mention events on the store's Facebook page and on Twitter and take photos of it.
• Weis: Set up an e-mail address just for receiving newsletters from other stores, to get ideas.

The panel and pursuant discussion felt like the best kind of community, sharing ideas and urging peers to try new things.--Jennifer M. Brown