Concerning our reference yesterday to a Slate story about how journalists and polemicists misuse BookScan data, Jennifer Joseph of Manic D Press in San Francisco writes:

Here at Manic D it's referred to as "Bookscam" and is useful primarily because it lists which Ingram warehouses have inventory on any given title at any time. It also shows us if Ingram has the wrong data in its system (incorrect author name spelling, distributor, etc). When the BookScan guy did a presentation at PGW last year, it turned out that where BookScan gathers data from (i.e., chains, especially suburban stores; major urban indies but not smaller; big box stores; etc.) has little to do with where the majority of our books are sold. For our demographic, we can get as good a sense of how sales are going from looking at the inane rankings on Amazon.

After 49 years at 1407 Broadway between 38th and 39th Streets in New York City, 1407 Camera & Card Shop is having its last day in business today. Many of the items in the store, which also sells books, will be put in storage. Sometime later this fall, if all goes according to plan, the store will be reincarnated in Northvale, N.J., as a general bookstore with a variety of cards and stationery.

"We're working on a lease now," Kenny Sarfin, one of the owners, told Shelf Awareness. The new site is in a building that is currently under construction. Sarfin hopes that he can move in well before the Christmas season. "In 32 years, I've had only four weeks off," he said. "So I'm looking forward to a few months off--but not any more than that. I have a business to run."

The new store will be three times the size of the city bookstore and have in addition to general books, "a big children's book section, better, handmade cards--not Hallmark cards--sophisticated stationery, and Filofax and Crane's products," Sarfin said. He also wants to sell Godiva chocolates.

The store is moving because its rent was doubling. Since the garment district has become much more quiet--"It looks like Sunday everyday," Sarfin said--the family decided to leave. "We love our store and our customers and have good memories," Sarfin continued. "We're being forced to change, but sometimes a forced change is a good change because it's a change you wouldn't have made otherwise."

Michael Spinozzi, the former executive v-p and chief product officer of Borders Group who left the company in February, shortly after president, CEO and chairman Greg Josefowicz said he would retire within two years (Shelf Awareness, January 25), has been named president of U.S. and Canadian operations of Sally Beauty Supply Co., a new position, according to the Dallas Business Journal.

With headquarters in Denton, Tex., Sally Beauty has more than 3,000 stores worldwide--2,100 in the U.S. and Canada--and distributes beauty products to salons.

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The Toronto Star reports on the irritation Canadian consumers feel about the gap between U.S. and Canadian prices printed on books--a gap that hasn't narrowed to fit the Canadian dollar's rise in value compared to the U.S. dollar.

"This has really become a heated issue," Paul McNally, president of the Canadian Booksellers Association, told the paper. "The customer is pissed and I can hardly blame them."

At least on publisher, Random House Canada, says it is taking steps to adjust prices on backlist titles.

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Zadie Smith has won the £30,000 Orange Prize for Fiction for On Beauty. Her previous two novels, White Teeth and The Autograph Man, were shortlisted for the prize in 2001 and 2003, respectively.

The Orange Prize goes to a work of fiction by a woman published in the U.K. See more at BBC News.

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Today's New York Times revisits charges of plagiarism against Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code, some of which is probed at length in the July Vanity Fair.

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Jamie Brickhouse has joined HarperCollins as director of the Speakers Bureau. He was formerly at Perseus Books Group as v-p, executive director of publicity for Basic Books, Basic Civitas and Counterpoint. Earlier he was associate director of publicity at St. Martin's and worked at Warner Books.

Julie Elmuccio, who has been with the Speakers Bureau since its inception, has been promoted to Speakers Bureau coordinator.

The following is a tip regarding rent from a new Nolo Press audio CD for booksellers called The Bookseller's Little Legal Companion. For a free copy of the CD, write to Nolo at TradeCS@nolo.com. Shelf Awareness will run more tips from the CD over the next few issues.

What happens if you get behind in the rent?

You usually have 30 days to pay before the landlord can terminate the lease and begin eviction proceedings. The landlord also may take some self-help measures such as deducting the money from your security deposit, which you will then have to re-fill.

This morning the Today Show hears from B.J. Gallagher about the breakup of women's friendships, stemming from a story in her book Friends Are Everything (Conari Press, $15.95,1573242004).

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Today the Diane Rehm Show turns the tables on CNN reporter Anderson Cooper, author of Dispatches From the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival (HarperCollins, $24.95, 0061132381).

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Today on the View: Lorraine Bracco, actress, Tony Soprano's therapist and author of the memoir, On the Couch (Putnam, $25.95, 039915356X).

The following is the fourth of four selections of recent titles that could make good picks for Father's Day gifts. Most are newly reviewed titles; several have been reviewed in Shelf Awareness already.


Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin (Viking, $25.95, 0670034872, March)
 
In 1993, descending from a failed attempt to scale K2, emaciated, exhausted and separated from his porter, Greg Mortenson stumbled into an impoverished village in the Karakoram mountains, where he was nursed back to health over a period of weeks. Wanting to repay the villagers for their kindness, he promised to return and build a school for them. The wonderful story of that promise and its results is told in this moving and often funny book.
 
The Whistling Season by Ivan Doig (Harcourt, $25, 0151012377, June)
 
A graceful, passionate writer and a grand storyteller, Doig has written one of his finest novels with this story of Paul Milliron's family in Montana in 1909. The opening lines gently pull you into their world: "When I visit the back corners of my life after so long a time, littlest things jump out first. The oilcloth, tiny blue windmills on white squares, worn to colorless smears at our four places at the kitchen table. Our father's pungent coffee, so strong it was almost ambulatory, which he gulped down from suppertime until bedtime and then slept serenely as a sphinx. The pesky wind, the one element we could count on at Marias County, whistling into some weather-cracked cranny of this house as if invited in." When he writes "Even when it stands vacant the past is never empty," the sentiment is familiar, but surrounded by his wondrous prose, it takes on new resonance.

The Cloudspotter's Guide by Gavin Pretor-Pinney (Perigee, $19.95, 0399532560, June)
 
Gavin Pretor-Pinney is the founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society (Motto: "Look up, marvel at the ephemeral beauty, and live life with your head in the clouds"), and his enthusiasm for all clouds, all the time, is utterly infectious. I found myself, a few pages into the book, walking outside and looking up expectantly, guide in hand. Sure enough, Cumulus humilis ("brilliant-white cauliflower mounds"), a nice change from the usual Stratus opacus ("a sky of stagnant dishwater"). For the author, cloudspotting is a gentle and reflective pursuit, one well-served by knowledge. He mixes physics, chemistry, literature and myth (according to ancient Hindu and Buddhist beliefs, Cumulus clouds are the spiritual cousins of elephants), and includes many delightfully captioned illustrations. Asides range from the questions in Frankie Lymon's doo-wop hit "Why Do Fools Fall in Love" to the one known example of 16th century cloud pornography to the fact that raindrops don't fall in shapes of tears. He travels far afield to see the Morning Glory, a cloud that appears only in a remote part of Australia in September and October, when glider pilots surf this Stratocumulus roll cloud stretching to 600 miles and traveling up to 35 mph. The Cloudspotter's Guide is a grand travel companion for long rides or flights, good reading for gray Stratus opacus days, and a treat for anyone curious enough to look up and wonder.--Marilyn Dahl

Mentioned yesterday for its laydown date next Tuesday, we needed more proofing on our entry for Baby Proof (St. Martin's, $23.95, 0312348649). The author's name is Emily Giffin, and in the book, Claudia and Ben divorce because a few years into the marriage, Ben changes his mind and decides he would like to have children.