A letter of agreement detailing the principles under which the Association of Booksellers for Children and the American Booksellers Association "will pursue further development of a merger proposal" has been released by the boards of directors of both organizations, Bookselling this Week reported.

 

The agreement notes that "after June 1, 2010, ABC and ABA will enter into a good-faith process at the staff level to generate a formal plan for how ABC will be integrated into ABA should a merger vote be approved. This plan will address programming, staffing, and projections for financing these elements under a merged organization."

 

The process will be overseen by the joint ABC/ABA Task Force, with a goal "to generate a merger plan that can be put before the voting members (booksellers) of the ABC for a formal vote in September 2010. Who constitutes the voting membership of ABC shall be determined in accordance with the existing ABC bylaws."

If the merger vote passes with a two-thirds majority of the voting membership of the ABC, "a formal date for ABC dissolution be set. Ideally this day will be at the end of the ABC's accounting period, which runs January 1-December 31."

You can read the letter of agreement in full here.

 

Wikipedia has launched a new feature that offers English-language readers the "ability to create custom books from Wikipedia's huge bank of free content. Because of the way Wikipedia's images and copy are licensed, they're free for anyone to access, use and share in this way," Mashable reported.

PediaPress, which is "in a long-term business relationship with Wikipedia to print these books," currently offers paperbacks and will soon add hardcovers to its catalogue, with variable prices depending upon the number of pages. Mashable wrote that "paperback prices start at $8.90. Users can also simply download a PDF of the 'books' they create."

---

Fifty "really cool bookstore blogs" were featured by AccreditedOnlineColleges.com, which noted: "Despite the recession and the success of big bookstore chains, the indie bookseller movement is still going strong. Communities around the country fight for their bookstores at all costs because loyal readers recognize that they're not just places to buy books: they're welcoming, culturally rich meeting places for intelligent discussion, learning and soul searching."
 
---

In a letter to her customers, Susan Weis, owner of breathe books, Baltimore, Md., introduced the concept of a "breathe investor's program: creative solution for today's economic reality."

Despite the bookshop's success and strong community support for events, Weis said, "I am not immune to the current economic situation. It's become increasingly difficult to keep cash flow at a level to cover operating costs. That money allows us to pay presenters to come to breathe, and to stock the great variety of books, music, gifts and other items on our shelves, drawing a diverse group of customers. Inventory is a major investment."

In addressing the challenge, she has chosen to do "something that may sound counter-intuitive: we're going to expand. I believe that I need to bring you more of what you want.... In order to finance the new business plan, we are starting a community investment program, modeled after a successful program in Brooklyn where the community recently supported the creation of a new bookstore in their neighborhood."

---

Powell's Books "has grown into a 'semantic superpower,' with the reputation as the largest new- and used-book store in the world," the Portland Business Journal wrote in its announcement of an upcoming "Power Breakfast" discussion with Mike Powell and his daughter, Emily.

---

Cool idea of the day: Translation display in transition. A display created by Boswell Book Company, Milwaukee, Wis., earlier this year to accompany the Best Translated Book Award "has sold well and we receive many compliments on it," the Boswellian blog reported.

To sustain the translation momentum, Boswell revamped the display in response to PEN American Center's recent World Voices Festival of International Literature in New York City.

"So, with an aesthetic facelift and some new titles, the books-in-translation display is alert and refreshed, ready for another round of introducing Milwaukee readers to works from other countries," the Boswellian wrote.

---

Headed to New York City for BookExpo America? Check out BEA's "NYC Bookstores Open House Self-Guided Tour" map.

---

MSNBC's The Red Tape Chronicles examined the recent controversy surrounding Amazon's new software upgrade through which "Kindle users who highlight passages will now have a record of those highlights sent back to Amazon servers, where they will be compiled and sorted to help produce a new feature called 'Popular Highlights.' "
 
Larry Ponemon, who runs privacy consulting firm the Ponemon Institute, said the feature "definitely steps over the line. From a privacy point of view there's a creepiness factor. Reading is one of those things that is very personal, something you do in your own space.  How you read and what you emphasize is really important to people." 

While expressing concern about the new feature, Paul Stephens, director of policy and advocacy at the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, called the technology "terrific" and told Red Tape Chronicles he "would have no problem with it if users had to actively opt-in to participate, rather than be automatically included. But he said he is worried that despites Amazon's efforts to preserve the anonymity of the information, clever statisticians might be able to combine the Amazon information with other data to determine users' identities--a trick that has been employed successfully before with other anonymous data."

---

Obituary note: Irish author Bree O'Mara, "who was on her way to London hoping to finalize a publishing contract for her second novel," was among the 103 victims of the Afriqiyah Airways crash in Libya this week, the Guardian reported. She was 42.
 
---

Anne Brichto, co-owner of three bookshops in Hay-on-Wye, said the "age of the book is over." WalesOnline reported that Brichto intends "to set up an art installation at Addyman Books on the death of the book."

"Most things can be reproduced on your iPhone or your laptop as far as information goes and I would very much say the age of the book is over or getting near over," Brichto said.

---

"Can This Business Be Saved? Experimenting With New Models for Trade Publishing," a lecture given by former HarperStudio head Bob Miller (now Workman Publishing group publisher) at the BookNet Canada Technology Forum conference in March, can be viewed in full at GalleyCat.

---

In a blast from the past, Boing Boing featured "a 1986 ad for Radio Shack's 'Electronic Book,' which connected to your computer's joystick port, and the interacted with software supplied on a cassette or disk."

---

True Blood, the book-turned-TV series, is morphing once again. USA Today reported that "the steamiest bloodsuckers of the bayou have a comic book of their own. For those who can't get enough of HBO's True Blood, which returns for a third season in June, a six-issue comic book miniseries from IDW Publishing will make its debut at the San Diego Comic-Con in July."

---

Book trailer of the day: Elliot Allagash by Simon Rich (Random House). The trailer was filmed in NBC's Studio 8H, home of Saturday Night Live, where Rich is a writer.

---

At Vintage/Anchor Books:

Sloane Crosley has been promoted to deputy director of publicity. She joined the company in 2002 as a publicist and earlier worked at HarperCollins and a literary agency.
Kate Runde has been promoted to associate director of publicity. She joined the company in 2004 as a publicity assistant, briefly left to work at Picador, and returned in 2007 as a senior publicist.
Dan Ozzi joins the company on Monday as a senior publicist. He has been a publicist at PublicAffairs and earlier worked at Oxford University Press.

 

Tomorrow Tatiana Nicoli marks a milestone: the one-year anniversary of her departure from the legal field to launch a new career. She has moved fast in that new career: next Monday, May 17, the lawyer-turned-bookstore owner is opening, in a soft launch, Boulevard Books & Café in the Dyker Heights section of Brooklyn, N.Y.

Since trading briefs for books, "it has been a whirlwind," said Nicoli. While getting to know the industry and setting up her store, she has received guidance from some knowledgeable sources--fellow Brooklyn booksellers, including BookCourt proprietor Henry Zook, a friend of her father, who offered Nicoli insights when she was first getting into the business.

Nicoli met Christine Onorati, the owner of WORD, and Stephanie Anderson, the store's manager, at the NAIBA conference this past fall. Rebecca Fitting, co-owner with Jessica Stockton Bagnulo of Greenlight Bookstore, responded to Nicoli's Tweet inquiring about the Random House sales rep for Brooklyn. At the time, that rep was Fitting herself (who has since left her position with the company). They have offered words of wisdom on everything from mistakes to avoid to operating inventory management systems. "The advice and help that I've gotten from these ladies has been invaluable," Nicoli said.

Initially Nicoli thought that advice was too good to be true. "Coming from the legal field where everything is so competitive, my first inclination was that they wanted to know what their competition is like," she said. "Then I realized how genuine it was." To help learn the workings of a bookstore, Nicoli also worked for a day at both WORD and Greenlight.

When it came to choosing a locale for the store, there was never any question where Nicoli would set up shop. "I didn't choose Brooklyn," she said. "It chose me because I was born there." She has lived in Dyker Heights for more than 30 years, having moved there when she was an infant. Boulevard Books & Café, around the corner from her abode, is located on a commercial strip in a residential, family-oriented neighborhood.

Since purchasing the two-story building, a former law office, Nicoli has transformed the ground-level retail space, doubling it from 900 to 1,800 square feet by expanding into the property's backyard. (A photographer who rents the upstairs apartment has been tapped to take pictures at store events.) A 900-sq.-ft. basement will be used for birthday parties and as a community gathering space.

Boulevard's front section is devoted to children's and YA books. The other half of the store features adult titles, as well as a café and a lounge area. The back wall, constructed of glass, has double doors leading out to a garden with a fountain. The store has dark wood floors and shelves, accented with stained glass and Tiffany-inspired lighting. The ambience is "Victorian, classic, cozy and warm," Nicoli said. "I'd like to create an environment where people want to come in and get comfortable." A reading nook on a platform, adorned with a restored Colonial fireplace mantle, will serve double duty as a space for visiting authors to present.

Once the weather turned warm and more pedestrians were out, the construction, which began in December, proved to be great advance publicity. "I'm out in front of the store all the time with the contractors. People stop every day and ask what's happening. When I tell them it's going to be a bookstore they seem really excited about it. One woman even jumped up and down," Nicoli said. Another way she has been connecting with potential customers is through the store's Facebook account, where she has chronicled the store's creation.

The Boulevard Books & Café Facebook page has more than 200 fans, who will be receiving an invitation to the store's grand opening celebration on Saturday, June 5. The day will begin with a ribbon cutting ceremony with Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, followed by children's activities and an evening reception for grown-ups. "I can't wait to finally have a place to settle in," said Nicoli. "I couldn't be happier at this point."--Shannon McKenna Schmidt

Boulevard Books & Cafe is located at 7518 13th Avenue, Brooklyn, N.Y., 11228; 718-680-5881; www.blvdbooks.com.

 

The 26th annual Publishing University, sponsored by the Independent Book Publishers Association, will held on Monday and Tuesday, May 24 and 25, at the Hotel Roosevelt in New York City.

The Monday opening session (1-2:15 p.m.) features Sourcebooks CEO Dominique Raccah, who with the theme Ahead of the Curve, talks about her company's growth over the past 23 years.

The General Session E-Imagination: What's Now and What's Next in E-books will discuss a variety of e-issues (2:30-3:45 p.m.). Moderator is Chris Kenneally of the Copyright Clearance Center. Speakers are Mark Coker of Smashwords, David Hetherington of BLIO/Baker & Taylor, Brad Inman of Vook, Sara Nelson of O Magazine and Michael Tamblyn of Kobo.

At the Tuesday annual meeting and luncheon, marketing guru Seth Godin delivers the keynote address, discussing "the challenges and opportunities that face all marketers--including book publishers--in the Information Age."

Late Monday and on Tuesday there are a variety of panels following the themes of these three tracks: getting started, making a living and growing your business.

Other popular events include speed dating your distributor, which takes place Tuesday, 3:30-4:45. Attendees will be divided into small groups and will spend 12 minutes at at time with representatives of distributors, including PGW, IPG, NBN, Midpoint, Bookmaster and Ingram Publisher Services.

At the Monday banquet, 6-8:30 p.m., the IBPA Benjamin Franklin Awards will be awarded. With more than 50 categories, the awards recognize excellence in editorial and design in small and independent book publishing.

Incidentally graduate students and faculty from the New York University and Pace Publishing programs are attending IBPA's Publishing University free of charge this year.

 

Tonight on Charlie Rose: Carol Burnett, author of This Time Together: Laughter and Reflection (Harmony, $25, 9780307461186/0307461181).

---

Tomorrow on CBS Saturday Morning: Anna Quindlen, author of Every Last One (Random House, $26, 9781400065745/1400065747).

---

Tomorrow on the Today Show: Jessica DuLong, author of My River Chronicles: Rediscovering America on the Hudson (Free Press, $26, 9781416586982/1416586989).

Also on Today tomorrow: Damon Wayans, author of Red Hats (Atria, $19.99, 9781439164617/1439164614).

---

Sunday on Meet the Press: Jonathan Alter, author of The Promise: President Obama, Year One (Simon & Schuster, $28, 9781439101193/1439101191).

---

Sunday on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace: Laura Bush, author of Spoken from the Heart (Scribner, $30, 9781439155202/1439155208).

 

Focus Features "has added a project to its slate of films for sale in the market: Adventure-thriller Tiger, which Guillermo Arriaga (Babel) is adapting from John Vaillant's upcoming nonfiction tome," Variety reported, adding that the film will be produced by Darren Aronofsky's Protozoa Pictures and Brad Pitt's Plan B Entertainment for Focus and Random House Films, which have a co-production partnership.

Vaillant's book, which is scheduled for an August 24 release by Knopf, is "set in the Siberian plain, where one tiger rebels against human development that's threatening the habitat. When townspeople are tracked and hunted by the tiger, who exhibits almost supernatural power, a conservationist game warden must face down the feline," Variety wrote.

---

The film version of Jack Kerouac's On the Road has added another cast member. Kirsten Dunst will join Kristen Stewart, Sam Riley and Garrett Hedlund in the the adaptation by Walter Salles and Francis Ford Coppola. Variety reported that the project "has long been a passion project of Salles and Coppola, who acquired the rights three decades ago."

"The film greatly benefited from the extra time we had to conceptualize it," said Salles. "The unedited scroll version was published recently and inspired a new version of the screenplay written by Jose Rivera that is at the same time more luminous, daring and muscular than the one we had at the start."

---

Jason O'Mara will star opposite Katherine Heigl in One for the Money, based on  the first novel in Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series. The movie's director is Julie Ann Robinson, and Liz Brixius is rewriting the adapted script, according to Variety.

 

Philippe Claudel and his translator, John Cullen, shared the £10,000 (US$14,522) Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for Brodeck's Report (Brodeck is the title of the American edition from Nan A. Talese). Chair of judges Boyd Tonkin called the novel "as timeless as some legend from Europe's medieval past, as timely as today's reports from any far-flung zone," the Independent reported.

He topped a shortlist that included Julia Franck's The Blind Side of the Heart (translated by Anthea Bell); Pietro Grossi's Fists (Howard Curtis); Alain Mabanckou's Broken Glass (Helen Stevenson); Sankar's Chowringhee (Arunava Sinha); and Rafik Schami's The Dark Side of Love (Anthea Bell).

---

Finalists have been named for the $20,000 National Business Book Award, honoring the author of an outstanding Canadian business-related book published in English or French. Quill & Quire reported that the shortlist includes:

The winner will be announced June 9 in Toronto.

The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron by Howard Bryant (Pantheon, $29.95, 9780375424854/0375424857, May 11, 2010)

Opening lines of a book we want to read:

During the quiet times, always in a small group, or more preferably, a one-on-one setting--in the back of a cab on the way to the airport, over dinner after an exhausting afternoon of smiles, greetings, and waving to the aggressive gaggle of fanatics that always made him nervous--he would try and let you in, try to help you understand him. Henry Aaron would take you back, far past his life and his own individual achievements. You had to go back to the first decade of the last century, and then flip the calendar back further still into the bitter contradictions his people lived, to the land of the ghosts that forever remained inside of him. He would try to take you back to rural Alabama, across the southern Black Belt into the corner of America that created him.--Selected by Marilyn Dahl

Deborah Coonts was raised in Texas on barbecue, Mexican food and beer. She now resides in Las Vegas, where family and friends tell her she can't get into too much trouble. Silly people. Coonts has built her own business, practiced law, flown airplanes, written a humor column for a national magazine and survived a teenager. Wanna Get Lucky? (Forge, May 11, 2010), is her debut novel, and the first in a series she describes as "Sex and the City meets Elmore Leonard in Vegas."

On your nightstand now:

What French Women Know About Love, Sex, and Other Matters of the Heart and Mind by Debra Ollivier because, well, perhaps it's never to late to get it right. The Eight by Katherine Neville--I put it under my pillow every night hoping that perfection can be absorbed through osmosis. Indecent: How I Make it and Fake it as a Girl for Hire by Sarah Katherine Lewis--hey, I live in Vegas and, like everyone else, I sorta wonder... don't you?
 
Favorite book when you were a child:

My father kept a locked room filled with paperbacks from his youth and a stint in the navy. For a kid with an overactive imagination, this was the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. A clever lock-picker at age six, I grew up on Dashiell Hammett, Mickey Spillane, Rex Stout. Mario Puzo taught me there are some really bad people in the world who do awful things to horses... and that it is possible to have sex standing up. I've never been the same.

Your top five authors:

Nora Roberts (no one sets a scene better), Janet Evanovich (the master of 'less is more'), Katherine Neville (for sheer mastery of the 'quest' novel before Dan Brown invented it), Diane Setterfield (for the amazing first novel The Thirteenth Tale--an absolute joy) and Clive Cussler, even though he ruined my sex life. Dirk Pitt, call me... please!

Book you've faked reading:

All of the books on the sex trade in Las Vegas, lovingly given to me by well-meaning friends. Please! Way too real. I'm into the fun of Vegas... okay, don't start debating semantics with me.

Book you're an evangelist for:

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. I've turned so many people onto this book, some have accused me of taking a kickback. Not true.

Book you've bought for the cover:

Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child. As a woman who spent her formative years in the South, I feel the need to show that I'm culinarily inclined. One problem, though: I don't cook.
 
Book that changed your life:

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Who is John Galt? I actually met a man named John Galt at a taekwondo dojo in Texas, but that's another story...
 
Favorite line from a book:

"Opinions are like assholes--everyone has one."--from The Intruders by Stephen Coonts. Gotta love it. Still makes me grin.
 
Book you most want to read again for the first time:

The Eight by Katherine Neville because I want to live the adventure anew.

May is Short Story Month. As a writer and reader, my love for the short story has been a long-term commitment. I am not the only bookseller, however, who has found that devotion tested on a regular basis by customers on the sales floor.

How long is a short story?

This was one of the first questions I was asked during the late 1990s when I led a six-session discussion group on reading short stories. It was a good question. I wouldn't say we answered it during our time together, but our exploration yielded hints of how great, if not how long, a short story could be. And the group offered me a chance to talk and listen to gifted readers who were also customers of the bookstore where I worked.

We began with resistance to the call of the story. Many group members had taken part at one time or another in a variation of the following conversation on the bookshop's sales floor:

They were still willing to show up, however, and our subsequent readings and conversations may even have changed--or tempered--a few of their objections to the form.

Strangely enough, the book I used for the discussion group--You've Got to Read This: Contemporary American Writers Introduce Stories that Held Them in Awe, edited by Ron Hansen and Jim Shepard--became a handselling favorite at the bookstore, selling more than 400 copies before it went out of print.

Butler's collection always sold well, too; as did another Pulitzer winner, Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies. A few less publicized collections moved occasionally when a bookseller found the magic words to make a particular title beguiling. It didn't happen enough.

I noticed recently that the current edition of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain no longer includes the word "stories" next to the title on its cover. The original edition did. Here's a confession: When asked, I have often advised authors and publishers to resist the temptation to add "stories" (or worse, "a novel in linked stories") to book jackets because it is such a conversation stopper on the sales floor.

I love good short stories because I love good writing. I'm reading two collections now, and in the car last weekend I listened to Alec Baldwin read Steven Millhauser's "The Dome" (from Dangerous Laughter: Thirteen Stories) on Selected Shorts. It became one of those classic NPR driveway moments.

I even love reading about short story renaissances. I was intrigued by a recent Reuters article (via PC Magazine) about Ether Books, which offers "a catalog of short stories, essays and poetry initially via Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch, by authors including Alexander McCall-Smith and Louis de Bernieres."

"The tech press may be slavering over the iPad, Kindle and Sony eReader as traditional publishers leap over themselves to expand their e-book offerings," Maureen Scott, digital director for the company, told Reuters. "But at Ether Books we've made the decision to go straight to distributing short works via our iPhone app to devices people already own, are familiar with and are happy to use when they have 10-15 minutes to spare."

You often hear the argument that short stories should be more popular now than ever because of the limitations on our reading time. It sounds so logical for something that never seems to come true.

Another Short Story Month is in gear and I keep thinking of questions.

Do writers care more about short stories than non-writing readers do?

And this question from Hansen and Shepard in their anthology's introduction:

Wouldn't it be great, we thought, if there were an anthology based upon the stories that other writers feel passionate about?

It was great. And it was even greater still that talented readers among our customers discovered that passion, too, but I wonder what story collection, if any, they read next.

What is a short story?

"Short stories are fierce, tight, imploding universes where every word matters," said Colum McCann in the National Post.

I like that. So, happy Short Story Month. And one last question: What's your favorite short story collection?--Robert Gray (column archives available at Fresh Eyes Now)