Online spending in the U.S. increased 3% during the fourth quarter of 2009, to $39 billion, after four straight quarters of year-over-year decline. ComScore, which released the figures, "said spending growth during the quarter was driven by an increase in online buyers, while average spending per buyer saw modest declines," Reuters wrote. ComScore also noted that free shipping was a factor in more than 40% of e-commerce transactions during the holiday season.

December 15 was the busiest online spending day in history, with $913 million in sales. Amazon and Wal-Mart gained "market share of e-commerce sales versus small- and medium-sized retailers."

"As we head into 2010, there is reason for guarded optimism for online retail spending to continue to gain share of consumers' wallets," said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni, who also predicted "absolute growth to be stymied by continued high unemployment and consumers continuing to exercise their new-found propensity to save," Reuters reported.

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Independent bookstores in the United Kingdom are closing at a rate of nearly two per week. The Booksellers Association found that "102 independent stores closed in 2009, leaving just 1,289 left in the U.K.--a decline of 27% since 1999," the Guardian wrote, noting that 40 new indies opened last year.

"The current economic climate is undeniably tough and the book retail sector is suffering across the board," said Meryl Halls, head of membership services for the group. She added that indies "fighting so hard to survive continue to deliver an outstanding service--knowing the books they recommend and sell, knowing their customers, focusing on things that the deep price cutters can't offer and running fantastic and value-adding events. These booksellers are at the centre of their communities but, as with all retailers, they need to be supported in order to survive."

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A "last-minute rescue" from liquidation during the autumn and subsequent renovation have resulted in the reopening this week of Brentano's "American" bookshop in Paris. The Bookseller reported that the bookstore, "which stopped trading after 113 years in June, will bring in a 'new concept,' according to its website. The lease and brand of the American bookshop were taken over by Iranian-born Farokh Sharifi, who owns stationery, pictures and framing retailer Images de Demain in Montpellier.... About 35% to 40% of the display space will be devoted to English-language books, including many new titles and travel guides."

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Love is in the air and between the pages this week. Laura Delaney, owner of Rediscovered Bookshop, Boise, Idaho, shared her top 10 Valentine's Day books "to engage and entertain children" with readers of the Idaho Statesman.

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Cool idea of the day (Valentine edition): For anyone whose valentine fails to show this Sunday, the Bookworm, Omaha, Neb., is hosting a speed dating event with a literary twist on February 21. It's called "Looking for love in all the wrong places?"
 
"It's Speed Dating by the book," said bookseller Nancy Rips. "The formula is this: single men and women over the age of 30 each come to the store bringing the favorite book. It could be anything from the latest John Grisham to War and Peace to their favorite Dr. Seuss from childhood. It's just to start the conversation going." The fee is $10, with a portion of the proceeds going to the Haitian Earthquake Relief Fund.

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Portland State University Bookstore suffered major damage Monday when a malfunctioning water-storage tank overflowed, flooding the basement with about 120,000 gallons of water and damaging "hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of textbooks, apparel and art supplies," the Oregonian reported.

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Whether author readings stretch readers' minds may be debatable, but Neal Pollack hopes to stretch the body/mind connection with a reading Thursday from Stretch: The Unlikely Making of a Yoga Dude--scheduled for release next summer--at a yoga class in Los Feliz, Calif., Los Angeles Times Jacket Copy reported.

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Author and historian Kenneth C. Davis offered a Presidents' Day reading list of his favorite presidential biographies at the Huffington Post.

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App trailer of the day: Cathy's Book (Running Press).

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Effective tomorrow, Outreach books, curriculum and study guides will be sold by Thomas Nelson to independent Christian retailers and selected ministry and church accounts. Among Outreach's divisions are Outreach magazine, Outreach Films and the recently formed Outreach Publishing.

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Gail Kump has joined National Book Network as director of new business development. She will also help create traditional and viral marketing plans for NBN clients. She was most recently v-p at Midpoint Trade Books. Kump is working from NBN's New York City office and may be reached at gjkump@gmail.com.

"Books cure snow madness," Atomic Books in Baltimore, Md., posted on Monday, as it let the Twitterverse know the store was open for business. The storm that closed in on the Mid-Atlantic states on Friday led the store to close early that night and remain shuttered on Saturday.

Customers came out and braved the snow on Sunday afternoon and Monday after Atomic Books reopened for business. "It was definitely worth my time to open," said co-owner Benn Ray, who trekked to the store on foot. Purchases were "all over the map." They included McSweeney's Quarterly Concern Issue 33 (now sold out at the store), graphic novels, Philip K. Dick fiction, toys, CDs and film magazines.

An event at Atomic Books with Mark Andersen, the author of Dance of Days: Two Decades of Punk in the National Capital, was cancelled on Friday and has been rescheduled for later in the month. Andersen would have been traveling from Washington, D.C., which was also blanketed with snow.

Despite the severe weather, Kramerbooks & Afterwords Café in downtown D.C. has kept to its regular opening hours. In advance of the storm, staffers who travel long distances to get to work were asked to make arrangements to stay somewhere close. They also had the option of lodging at a hotel across the street in a block of rooms reserved (and paid for) by the store.

Kramerbooks benefited by being the only business in the area open on Friday night and most of Saturday, particularly after a reported 2,000 revelers showed up in nearby Dupont Circle for a social media-inspired snowball fight. "Comparatively we didn't do the same kind of numbers we usually do on a weekend," said bookseller Lynn Schwartz. "It was mostly people stocking up because they knew they were probably going to be indoors for a couple of days."

In a more suburban area of Washington, Politics and Prose remained closed over the weekend. The store reopened on Monday morning to a steady stream of customers in the bookstore and its lower-level café. "We're quite busy," said bookseller and communications editor Andrew Getman. "People are looking for somewhere to be." Several events were cancelled on Saturday and Sunday, as well as some for this week.

Among the store's clientele were federal government workers who had been given the day off. What books were customers most eager to read? The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot and Shadow Tag, Louise Erdrich's latest novel.

Several Politics and Prose employees who attended the ABA's Winter Institute in San Jose, Calif., were unable to get flights home after the conference ended Friday evening. Getman also attended, but since he flew into Dulles Airport on Sunday night, as planned, after spending the weekend in San Francisco, he avoided the cancelled-flight chaos. The D.C. area's other major airport, Reagan National, finally reopened on Monday morning.

Unplowed roads and high snow drifts made parking impossible in the streets around breathe books, Baltimore, preventing owner Susan Weis from opening on Monday. (General manager Jenn Northington is another bookseller who was stranded in San Jose and made it home only last night, three days later than scheduled.) The store was closed Saturday and Sunday, and all classes and events were cancelled. "It's a devastating blow to business because everything counts, especially in this economy," said Weis. "I actually had tears in my eyes when I wasn't able to make it to the shop today."

Weis has been keeping in touch with customers through Facebook, e-mail and the store’s website. “It’s a wonderful way to communicate," she said. "I can 'chat' with more than 1,000 people on Facebook, more than I would if I was in the shop. Also, we’ve sold a few books this way.”

The weekend blizzard and this week's storm come on top of the 20 inches of snow Baltimore received right before before Christmas. Perhaps, as Weis noted, there is a bright side to all of this winter weather. "It's a call to continue to look for new business models," she said. Already she's considering using Skype to teach seminars and classes from the cozy confines of home.--Shannon McKenna Schmidt

This morning's "sign of the day" (if not necessarily the times) comes from the New Yorker's Book Bench blog:

"Don’t move 'em, or else. Taken by Daniele Rossi, at Wayfarer Books, in Kingston, Ontario."

Tomorrow morning on Fox & Friends: Jonathan Krohn, author of Defining Conservatism: The Principles That Will Bring Our Country Back (Vanguard Press, $19.95, 9781593156015/1593156014).

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Tomorrow on KCRW's Bookworm: Rita Dove, author of Sonata Mulattica (Norton, $24.95, 9780393070088/0393070085). As the show put it: "Beethoven once dedicated a sonata to a half-African musician--then revoked the dedication. Why? In her book-length poem, Rita Dove attempts an imaginative historical reconstruction of what happened. We hypothesize about the what-ifs of music history as we explore the poetic forms and devices used by Dove to create the past."

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Tomorrow on the Book Studio: Thomas Mallon, author of Yours Ever: People and Their Letters (Pantheon, $26.95, 9780679444268/0679444262).

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Tomorrow on Tavis Smiley: Daniel Pink, author of Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (Riverhead, $26.95, 9781594488849/1594488843).

During the past five years, screenwriter Shane Salerno has been completing a documentary about the late J.D. Salinger and "was able to keep the film, which features over 150 interviews with people like Philip Seymour Hoffman, Edward Norton, and Gore Vidal, a secret," Entertainment Weekly reported, noting that "crew members had to sign 'CIA-worthy' non-disclosure agreements, and the filmmakers made sure never to give any post-production facility more than 20% of the film to prevent any leaks." The filmmakers hope to premiere the documentary at the Cannes Film Festival in May.

Neil Gaiman has been asked to write an episode of one of his favorite TV programs, Dr. Who. In his acceptance speech for winning best comic at the SFX awards last weekend, Gaiman said he had been a fan of the series since he was three years old, the Guardian reported.

"And while I know it's cruel to make you wait for things, in about 14 months from now, which is to say, not in the upcoming season but early in the one after that, it's quite possible that I might have written an episode," Gaiman said. "And if I had, it would originally have been called The House of Nothing. But it definitely isn't called that anymore." 

Winners of the third annual Black Quill Awards--honoring the best work in dark horror, suspense and thrillers--were named by Dark Scribe magazine. Editors' choice and readers' choice prizes were given in each category.

For novel of the year, Dark Places by Gillian Flynn was the editors' choice and Drood by Dan Simmons the readers' choice. The "Best Small Press Chill" awards went to Kelland by Paul G. Bens Jr. (editors' choice) and As Fate Would Have It by Michael Louis Calvillo (readers' choice). A complete list of Black Quill award winners can be found here. 

The Night Fairy by Laura Amy Schlitz, illustrated by Angela Barrett (Candlewick, $16.99, 9780763636746/0763636746, 128p., ages 7-11, February 2010)

Laura Amy Schlitz, who took us deep into a medieval village in her Newbery Medal–winning Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!, here allows us to inhabit the fascinating miniature world where fairies dwell. Every squirrel, bird or bat can pose a threat to Flory, a night fairy, "born a little before midnight when the moon was full." In fact, it was a bat that mistook her for a luna moth and crumpled Flory's wings. Now she must operate as a day fairy, taking cover in a wren house in the garden of a "giantess" (who rather resembles Barbara Cooney, with "white braids that crisscrossed over her head"). The same traits that make Flory a spunky survivor also make her not so easy to befriend. There's no one to teach her manners ("A fairy godmother is an excellent thing, but a fairy mother is a disaster"). Still, she strikes up a sort of arrangement with a squirrel named Skuggle: she helps him develop a strategy for getting seeds, and he gives her a lift every now and again. What Flory really pines for, however, is a flight on the back of a hummingbird. And opportunity strikes when one gets trapped in the web of a black-and-yellow fanged and venomous spider. In the process of attempting a rescue, the hummingbird, spider and the bat who forced Flory into her daytime predicament all come together in surprising ways to teach Flory the meaning of regret and forgiveness. All along the way, Schlitz plants tantalizing facts about the natural world (for instance, hummingbirds go into "torpor... when they run out of strength, they slow their bodies down").

Angela Barrett endows Flory's world of cherry blossom gowns and flights on hummingbird wings with the same sumptuousness she lent to The Emperor's New Clothes. She creates glorious full-color watercolors that are reproduced in the actual size in which she rendered them for this intimate and elegantly designed 7.6" × 5.5" volume. Perhaps even more remarkable, the chapter openers, a mere ¾" × 1¾", were also created to scale in black watercolor, with a gray tone behind them that lends a dusky sheen. Text and watercolors work in tandem as a constant reminder of the tiny world we travel with Flory as our guide. Just right for those children ready to move beyond beginning readers, this adventure tale also makes an ideal read-aloud. No surprise, given the master storyteller at the helm. --Jennifer M. Brown

The in-store author appearance often feels more tedious than listening to someone describe the plot of a movie you haven't seen. Or, worse, one that you have.

For me, the point was driven home a few years ago at a reading by a well-known author--a Pulitzer Prize recipient--in Portland, Ore. After doling out the perfunctory crowd-pleasing tributes to Rose City literacy, the esteemed academic totem buried his nose in his book and, beginning with page one, did not come up for air for a full 45 minutes. By the end, it was difficult to know whether the stupefied crowd was in silent shock or thinking about the load of laundry they'd left in the washer at home or simply relieved when the author of one of my favorite books of all-time left the stage without bothering to do a Q&A or meet and greet.

When I began doing bookstore appearances in 2002 (promoting The 25 Best World War II Sites: Pacific Theater), I vowed never to inflict this type of eye-glazing torment on any audience, adopting at least something of the spirit of the great James Ellroy who, when signing books after a reading, once asked a friend of mine: "So, how'd you like the show?"

Even when it's just five or 10 bodies, when people make an effort to come see you it seems self-evident that you're obliged to give them, if not a full-blown show, something more entertaining than the somnambulant rumbling that characterizes so many author readings.

The same obligation extends to the bookstore itself. Bookstores enjoy hosting authors, but as a writer it's good to keep in mind that doing so means that employees have to take on extra work and sometimes extra hours to make it happen. It's deflating for them to prep for an event and put themselves out drumming up interest among the regulars, only to have a writer show up and exhibit all the gusto of a drugged rhino.

For a long time, my guiding principle at readings was: "Don't read. Ever. At all."

After fielding a number of polite complaints over the years from people who told me they'd been disappointed that I hadn't read anything at my appearances--the lit-minded public is either more masochistic or more conditioned by routine than I'd once believed--I've since amended my "no reading at readings" rule to allow for a few limited bursts of genuine reading. Nevertheless, the only slightly revised rule still sits firmly at the top of my list of:

Six Rules for a Good Author Reading

1. Don't Read for More Than Five Minutes at a Time. Ever!

For the book I'm promoting now, To Hellholes and Back, I usually spend 10 minutes giving a little behind-the-scenes background on the book, then read two segments from different chapters. The first segment takes three minutes to read. The second takes four or five, depending on the audience member dragooned into service for Rule 2.

2. Get the Crowd Involved

Q&As are nice, but events are much more lively when you find creative ways of engaging the audience.

For Hellholes I've been doing a couple different bits. Often I recruit someone from the audience (there's always an itchy extrovert at these things) to read a piece of dialogue with me from a section about haggling with street vendors in India. I have my ad hoc confederate take the part of wily merchant and read from a script with their lines in bold-face. I make sure they get the best lines--jokes often come off funnier when someone from the audience reads them for the first time.

I also occasionally ask for a die-hard soccer fanatic in the crowd to offer a rebuttal to a two-page screed in which I delicately point out that soccer is evil, stupid and anti-American, a corrosive influence on our nation's vulnerable young. Soccer fans get extremely uppity when you criticize the lamest sport in the world, so this gambit also tends to yield superb emotional results.

3. Easy on the Visuals

More than 15 travel slides and it starts to look like you're bragging, not edifying. Any PowerPoint feels like a business presentation.

4. Hand Out Gift Certificates

The first thing I do when I walk into a bookstore is buy two or three $20 gift certificates. This is a good way of conveying appreciation to the store for hosting me and a way to thank audience members brave enough to pretend to be sleazy merchants or debate soccer with me. Anyone who gets on stage with me gets a gift card.

When promoting a book called Smile When You're Lying a couple years ago, I passed out index cards and had people write questions for me on the cards. I told them to be sure to include their names on the cards for a gift-certificate drawing at the end of the Q&A. This kept people around and interested until the end of the event.

5. Cut Off the Q&A Early

Don't mistake a few questions for mass interest. Some blowhard or aspiring writer will always hang around asking questions until the lights are turned out. Most people get fidgety after 35 or 40 minutes. By that time, they expect to be getting their books signed and on their ways to the 20 other things they have to do before the night is out. If your mother never told you, I will: it's always better to leave a party 30 minutes early than 30 minutes late.

6. Don't Be Afraid to Say Something Stupid

Writers are expected to be smart, which can make getting in front of an audience intimidating. The typical writer reflex is to become overly thoughtful or cautious when speaking off the cuff. At readings, this makes them about as appealing as a damp sock.

I try to speak at readings the way I do with friends over drinks. Even if I wind up saying something dumb, audiences are generally forgiving, and it rarely makes them like my book less. If all that people wanted was what's in the book, they'd just stay home and read, so I've never seen the point of giving them more of the same when they've come out to see me.

By following these rules I've managed to have, if not always good crowds, at least a good time at readings. Particularly at bookstores that have been incredibly supportive of my books and put on great events, a few of which deserve special thanks and recognition here: Powell's Books in Portland, Ore.; Globe Corner Books in Cambridge, Mass.; Idlewild Books in New York City; Underground Books in Sacramento, Calif.; and Ben McNally Books and the Ben McNally Travellers Series in Toronto. --Chuck Thompson

Thompson is a magazine writer and author of four books, most recently To Hellholes and Back: Bribes, Lies, and the Art of Extreme Tourism (Holt).