'Vive the Independent Bookseller!'
"When my first work of fiction, Legend of a Suicide, was published in France, I learned some surprising lessons about the astounding power of the independent bookseller. Things are done a bit differently there in a way that especially highlights the role of a store like Powell's and sheds light on how difficult and precious is the work it does....
"I wondered after my very positive French experience if perhaps there was a different reading public in France than in the U.S., a more reliable audience willing to read a greater range of works--a more receptive literary reader. And then I realized that American readers of exactly this bent do exist, but they are somehow harder to find. And this is where our independent booksellers step in. Though not bolstered by the protections of their government (or the implicit insurance of a devoted public), our indie booksellers bring everything that is great in French publishing to readers who chose them as their gatekeepers."
Pete Hamill, Jodi Picoult, Darin Strauss and Ian Ayres. These works, "expressed at their natural length," are now available for both Kindle devices and app users at prices between 99¢ and $4.99. 
"Even as a little kid, I remember being obsessed with books," said Barr. "I was eight or nine when I saw a novelty sweater in a gift catalog and told my parents I had to have it because of the logo: 'So many books, so little time.' It only came in adult sizes, but I wanted it so badly they had one made for me.
Amy Chua's Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, the parenting book that launched a thousand debates in the U.S. recently, is now on the shelves of Beijing bookstores, though "much of the incendiary packaging had been toned down," 
"We bibliophiles are a romantic bunch, aren't we?" asked the 
Kate Childs, associate publicist at Random House, has nice things to say about 
U.K. publisher Visual Editions has given Laurence Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman "the loopy graphic treatment it deserves." 
E.C. Osondu, author most recently of Voice of America, recommended his 
Jennifer Hunt, fiction editorial director at Little, Brown Books for
Young Readers is moving to Los Angeles, Calif., and setting up a West
Coast office at her home for the company. She will continue to oversee
the acquisition and development of the middle grade and YA fiction lists
and will now "explore opportunities in the entertainment and digital
arenas."
As the second Digital Book World conference began in the
ballroom of the New York Sheraton Tuesday morning, Forrester analyst James McQuivey
encouraged the crowd to "pat yourselves on the back for choosing to
believe" in the e-book market; according to a recent survey, he said, 89%
of the publishing executives consulted were optimistic about how the digital
revolution would affect the industry, and 83% believed their companies were
ready to compete in the changing market place (although, on a more sobering note,
not all of them had a plan for that 
yet). Good thing, too: as e-reader prices
had dropped "dangerously close" to $100 two years earlier than
Forrester had anticipated, e-book sales were expected to rise another 139% this
year, to $1.3 billion, and quite possibly encompass half of all book sales by
2014--a prediction which left some audience members nonplussed.
Mitchell Kaplan, owner of Books & Books, with stores in South Florida, the Cayman Islands and Westhampton Beach, N.Y., has been involved in more varieties of business ventures than any bookseller we know. At a Winter Institute panel on new partnerships between booksellers and publishers, he discussed some of these ventures and said he hoped booksellers would feel that "if you have something you'd like to pursue that flows naturally out of the book business or what you're doing now, you might say, 'Why not?' " He noted that he has always had an entrepreneurial spirit--he was a founder of the Miami Book Fair International--but that six or seven years ago, he decided simultaneously to try to "create value" out of the many relationships he had in the industry and community as well as have "a good time."
Among the projects he's done in the past few years:
Red Riding Hood, an upcoming, ultra-modern reinterpretation of the classic fairy tale starring Amanda Seyfried as "the crimson-caped protagonist, looks to be a long, long way from Grandma's house and a lot closer to the violent psycho-sexuality of those fraternal creeps, the Brothers Grimm," 
Small wonder these girls are weird: they have a father who thinks in iambic pentameter and quotes the Immortal Bard rather than holding an ordinary conversation! Eleanor Brown makes an auspicious debut with this very fetching novel about Rose (Rosalind, As You Like It), Bean (Bianca, The Taming of the Shrew) and Cordy (Cordelia, King Lear). Despite their father's eccentricities and their mother's rather vague presence, there is no malice anywhere, and real concern, care and counsel are voiced. Well, at least that's true of the parents; the sisters kvetch and carp, as sisters will.