In honor of Amazon.com's 15th anniversary, Time offered "A Brief History of Online Shopping." The story noted that one of the first online purchases took place in 1994, a year before Amazon started, when Pizza Hut fulfilled an order made online for a pepperoni pizza with mushrooms and extra cheese--an item not yet available on Amazon.
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This one paragraph in Ad Age has caused more than a bit of speculation:
"Capitalizing on Oprah Winfrey's huge role recommending books to her fans, the iPad edition of O, The Oprah Magazine, that's expected in the fourth quarter will let users buy e-books and read them within the app itself. The app preserve the basic magazine experience but include visual tags that let users know they can see a video message from Ms. Winfrey or interact in some other way. A module on articles will let users make comments and see other readers' remarks."
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Greg Mortenson, author of
Three Cups of Tea (Penguin Books), has had extensive conversations with U.S. military leaders in Afghanistan and set up meetings between them and village elders in the past year, in large part because of the popularity of the book "among military wives who told their husbands to read it," the
New York Times wrote.
"I never, ever expected it," Mortenson told the paper. He has said that there is no military solution in the country; rather, the education of girls is the longterm solution.
In
Three Cups of Tea, Mortenson tells the story of how he and his Central Asia Institute began to build schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan, which now number more than 130.
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Leonel Fernández Reyna is a fan of the Harvard Bookstore, Cambridge, Mass., and likes to drop by whenever he's in town. That's not so unusual--except that Fernández is president of the Dominican Republic and his visits necessitate the arrival of police cars and limousines.
In a short video, el Presidente told the Harvard Crimson that the Harvard Bookstore "is a place where ideas are disseminated. It is a place where knowledge is diffused. So if you're really interested in ideas, interested about knowledge, about information sharing, this is the place to come." After seeing Paige M. Gutenborg, the store's Espresso Book Machine, he added: "I have seen the future."
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Elliott Bay Book Company owner Peter Aaron has one regret about moving to the Capitol Hill area from Pioneer Square earlier this year: that he hadn't done it sooner. He told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, "We struggled for many, many years. Had I had--I guess 'the guts' is the best way to put it--we would have moved four or five years ago."
One change in the new location: Elliott Bay no longer sells used books, which accounted for about 8% of sales, "partly because Aaron didn't want to be seen as a 500-pound gorilla coming to trump smaller used-book retailers, and partly because he just 'didn't think we were particularly good at used books.' "
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Congratulations to Nancy Olson, owner of Quail Ridge Books and Music, Raleigh, N.C., one of six winners of the Raleigh Medal of Arts, honoring "lifetime extraordinary achievement in the practice of, or in support of, local arts."
The Raleigh Arts Commission cited one of our favorite booksellers for "bringing readers and writers together since 1984 when she opened Quail Ridge Books and Music. Ms. Olson has always stood out in the literary community for the part she has played in discovering and fostering budding authors. She is a champion for many local causes, including hunger relief, AIDS and literacy, which include her 'Books for Kids' program. She has been honored with the Publishers Weekly Bookseller of the Year award and is in the Raleigh Hall of Fame."
The awards will be presented October 6.
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Headline of the day: "Lisbeth Salander, the Vampire Slayer," from the Telegraph of Calcutta.
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Hot books! Last week, Changing Hands
Bookstore, Tempe, Ariz., endured two days without air conditioning
during some of the hottest weather this year, with temperatures reaching
113 degrees.
Booksellers and readers being a hardy breed, the
toasty weather apparently did not hinder customers from visiting, but
inspired a 'kind of beach vibe,' " bookseller Brandon Stout told the Arizona Republic. "It's like when the power
goes out and everyone gets all giddy," he added. "It seemed more fun
than usual."
A cooler business climate returned to the bookshop
Friday.
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Rediscovered Bookshop,
Boise, Idaho, has opened at its new location (Shelf Awareness, April 8, 2010), and Boise Weekly's CobWeb blog offered a little
advice: "Bibliophiles rejoice!... Owner Laura DeLaney said they've been
working double time to complete the move from the Overland Road
location. The new store features roughly the same amount of books, just
in a 'very different layout.' "
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"Will the last
bookstore please turn out the lights?" was the deceptive headline for a Globe & Mail article about the optimism of
Canadian booksellers in the face of marketplace challenges.
For
example, Ria Bleumer--who will soon be opening Sitka Books & Arts in
Vancouver--"is sick of the doom and gloom.... One source of Bleumer's
optimism is the 'ferocious' level of reading she sees going on among
young people. Those ferocious readers will be the regular book buyers of
the future. What stores need to do, she insists, is not only focus on
old-fashioned face-to-face customer service, but also remain flexible
enough to adapt to whatever comes along in the years to come."
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Sugden's
Book Store, an 81-year-old institution in Marietta, Ohio, is "up for
sale once again," the Marietta Times reported, noting that owners
Keith and Angela Malone, who purchased the shop last year in April and
renovated it, are "hopeful whoever purchases it continues running it as a
book store."
"We decided this would be not only a good project
as far as renovations goes, but also we didn't want to see the book
store close," said Angela. "It (is) a very historical business in town."
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Beginning in August, the Bookworm of Winthrop University, Rock
Hill, S.C., will get a new name and location, becoming Winthrop
University Bookstore at the DiGiorgio Campus Center.
"We're
sitting on go," said store manager LeeAnne Johnson.
The Rock Hill Herald reported the move means
more space--from 6,000 square feet to 10,000 square feet--and more
convenience for students, but the "bookstore will continue to be open to
the public."
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Christmas in July. The
Guardian looked ahead to this year's autumn
book season and reported that "the focus is on quality, with Stephen Fry
and Keith Richards replacing the likes of Sheryl Gascoigne and Leona
Lewis on the non-fiction shelves, and the fiction market profiting from
new books by a host of writers, from Booker prizewinner DBC Pierre to
the acclaimed American author Jonathan Franzen."
"Last year there
were about 12 books by comedians and, great as they are, that's
probably a bit too much," said Jon Howells of Waterstone's. "No one's
going to buy them all. [But publishers] are focusing on really strong
stuff this year. It's a much stronger Christmas than last."
Jonathan
Ruppin of Foyles observed: "We can safely say the celebrity book market
has peaked--there are only so many Christmases in a row that you can
buy someone a celebrity autobiography. This year, though, we are spoiled
for choice."
Alan Samson, publishing director at Weidenfeld
& Nicolson, agreed: "I think it is going to be a more upmarket
Christmas than last year. It is mainly that the marketplace didn't have
enough variety last year, and there's a bit more diversity about it this
year."
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Literary award winners seem to be announced
every day, but
Reuters reported that "one of Europe's biggest book
festivals," the Semana Negra, "awarded prizes Friday to writers from
across the Spanish-speaking world who back in their home countries often
cannot read each other."
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The first column in a new
series for the
Guardian by author and book dealer Rick
Gekoski "recalls an exciting discovery at the Hay festival" in the form
of "a dustjacket-less first edition of W.H. Auden's 1965 collection
About
the House" for £6,000 (US$9,180).
Perhaps more notable is
another of Gekoski's observations: "When I did the festival five years
before there wasn't anything remotely interesting in the shops,
confirming my belief that Hay is where books go to die.... There has
been a distinct up-marketing of the Hay bookshops, and even the most
jaded old bookman (that would be me) can find things to covet, if not
necessarily to buy."
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Effective September 7, Matt Brown becomes senior v-p of Scholastic and president of the Klutz division. He takes over from Klutz co-founder John Cassidy, who recently retired.
Brown was most recently co-founder and play czar of big BOING. A "recovering" attorney, he earlier worked at LeapFrog, where he co-founded the Internet division and was v-p of business development, and was co-founder and president of Primordial, creator of Zoob.
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At Publishers Group West and Perseus Distribution:
Roy Remer is leaving his position as Bay Area rep to work at the Zen Hospice in San Francisco, where he has volunteered for the last 13 years.
Ty Wilson, head buyer for Copperfield's bookstores the past seven years, will take Remer's position. Earlier he had been a bookseller, buyer and head buyer at Tower Books, where he worked for 17 years.
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Brett Sandusky has been promoted to director of marketing at Kaplan Publishing. He joined the company in July 2008 as marketing manager and became digital marketing manager a year later. He will continue to be highly involved in Kaplan's digital publishing program.
Last Monday, at a group reading at Square Books, Oxford, Miss., Mary
Miller, author of Big World (Hobart), and Claudia Smith, author of Put
Your Head in My Lap (Future Tense Press), read from their works. Next up
was Kevin Sampsell, author of A Common Pornography (Harper Perennial),
but first, Square Books owner Richard Howorth came out with John Grisham,
saying, "We have a special surprise for y'all. He doesn't usually do
readings, but John Grisham wanted to share some words with you." The
master of legal thrillers then read from his new YA book, Theodore
Boone, Kid Lawyer (Dutton's Children's Books). Then Sampsell finished
off the event, which was attended by a happy crowd of 40. Here (from l.)
Miller, Sampsell, Grisham and Smith.
Dan Swartz--an American ex-pat, Bates College
graduate, ardent folk dancer and environmental activist--opened the
first of four Dan Treehugger Bookstores in Budapest four years (and a
few girlfriends) ago. His is an eclectic enterprise: there are used
paperbacks, new travel guides, a café and a performance venue that hosts
author readings and signings and other English-language
community-building events.
Poetry
Feliks Zhukovski has lived in the same Paris apartment for decades without really knowing the landlady who lives across the hall. He has written and published an annual tourist guidebook to the countries of the Eastern Bloc for as many years as he has lived in that apartment. His daily life has been admirably predictable, the same year in and year out. In Jim Powell's thoroughly engaging debut novel, we meet Feliks at the beginning of 1991, when the U.S.S.R. has collapsed, the Berlin Wall has been rubble for more than a year and a wave of change is sweeping former Eastern Bloc countries. At the age of 61, Feliks realizes in shock, "For my whole adult life, I had subscribed to an ideology that advocated change, radical change, as the solution to society's problems. Yet I did not welcome change in my own life. I resisted it."