"There are many different ways books can surprise and delight. I think--I hope--any book lover can relate.... The greatest satisfaction of a bookseller resides here as well. We truly want share with you the passion we feel for 'our' books. If you've ever asked, you know what I'm referring to. You feel it when her voice intensifies, eye-widen and cadence accelerates. You see it when he takes off to grab a book, returning to present it to you--two-handed--like a holy text. We're passionate about books. It's why we're here, working at Booksellers.... We've got something that can't be reduced to a formula nor coded as an algorithm. We've got a passion for books and a desire to share it."

In another of its oddly presented, sometimes incendiary and stiffly written commentaries, Amazon yesterday posted a statement on its dispute with Hachette in the Kindle forum of the Customer Discussions section of its website. From "the Amazon Books Team," the "update re: Amazon/Hachette business disruption" provides "specific information about Amazon's objectives." (Amazon gets points this time around for not referring to books as "demand-weighted units.")

The company argued again that its objective is "lower e-book prices" and again said that all e-books should be priced to consumers at $9.99, although it conceded that there are "legitimate reasons for a small number of specialized titles to be above $9.99."

It argued that e-books should be priced lower than printed books because "there's no printing, no over-printing, no need to forecast, no returns, no lost sales due to out-of-stock, no warehousing costs, no transportation costs, and there is no secondary market--e-books cannot be resold as used books. E-books can be and should be less expensive."

In addition, Amazon argued again that lower prices increase sales, claiming that the average e-book selling 100,000 copies priced at $14.99 would sell 174,000 copies at $9.99. "Total revenue at $14.99 would be $1,499,000. Total revenue at $9.99 is $1,738,000."

The company proposed that the $9.99 "total pie" be divided 30% for Amazon, 35% for the author and 35% for Hachette. It wrote: "Is 30% reasonable? Yes. In fact, the 30% share of total revenue is what Hachette forced us to take in 2010 when they illegally colluded with their competitors to raise e-book prices. We had no problem with the 30%--we did have a big problem with the price increases."

It conceded that Hachette would have to make the decision about how much to give authors. "We would send 70% of the total revenue to Hachette, and they would decide how much to share with the author. We believe Hachette is sharing too small a portion with the author today, but ultimately that is not our call."

Amazon didn't comment on other demands that it usually makes of suppliers, such as, in Hachette's case, paying for buy buttons and having an Amazon person devoted to Hachette. Likewise, it didn't address the rationale for making similar demands of Bonnier Group in Germany, where price fixing doesn't allow Amazon to pass on lower costs to customers.

HarperCollins president and CEO Brian Murray will be the sole speaker at Frankfurt Book Fair's CEO talk October 8, the day the fair opens. For the second year in a row, the event features a single guest. In 2013, Penguin Random House CEO Markus Dohle was the sole speaker at an event that had usually offered a panel of publishing CEOs.

During this year's talk, Murray will be questioned for an hour by various trade reporters, which will be followed by a 30-minute q&a session. The event will be moderated by Ruediger Wischenbart and its focus is "the current transformation of the global book business."

Amazon Publishing is partnering with Alloy Entertainment, a division of Warner Bros. Television Group, on a digital-first imprint that will focus on YA, new adult and commercial fiction. Alloy Entertainment will be part of the Powered by Amazon program. The three launch titles for the imprint were released yesterday: Imitation by Heather Hildenbrand, Every Ugly Word by Aimee Salter and Rebel Wing by Tracy Banghart.
 
Authors who publish with the new imprint receive an advance and royalties paid on a monthly basis. Alloy Entertainment will also look for opportunities to develop acquired titles as television series, feature films and digital entertainment, the company said.

Macmillan is adding frontlist e-books to its public library e-lending pilot program, marking the first time the company has made its catalogue of digital books published during the previous 12 months available for lending in libraries. Macmillan's frontlist titles, which are offered to libraries under the two year/52 lend model currently in place for backlist, will be available to order in early August.

The pilot program has been in place since March 2013. With the addition of frontlist books, Macmillan has approximately 15,000 titles available in its public library lending program and will continue to add new books weekly. The books are offered on the same day they go on sale in the retail market.

"Librarians have been asking for our frontlist titles for their collections," said Alison Lazarus, president, sales. "With more than a year of our current pilot behind us and a better sense of the market, we feel comfortable expanding our offering to our full catalogue."

Congratulations to Christine Onorati (and husband, Vincent), owner of WORD Bookstores in Brooklyn, N.Y., and Jersey City, N.J., on the birth of twin girls yesterday. The good news was shared on Twitter by ‏@wordbookstores:

We're delighted to announce the births of Cora & Vivian, future booksellers of WORD! Cheers to @conorati & @vonorati  http://37.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lknbhiT1kb1qb7645o1_400.gif

photo: Erica Miller/The Saratogian

Yesterday, Hillary Clinton's signing event for Hard Choices drew more than 1,200 people to the Northshire Bookstore in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. Here Clinton is escorted by Northshire co-owner Chis Morrow, with general manager Nancy Scheemaker standing watch just behind them.

Under the headline "Possible Clinton candidacy draws many to Northshire," the Saratogian reported that the former First Lady, U.S. Senator and Secretary of State "is no stranger to the Spa City, having visited in the past as U.S. Senator. One trip several years ago included an afternoon stop at Saratoga Race Course."

Inspired by California Bookstore Day last month, BookPeople. Austin, Tex, has announced plans for its first National Bookstore Day for the BookPeople Nation on Saturday, August 16. The "special day of fun, frivolity and bookish jubilation" will feature a a number of festive treats, including a "Very, VERY Special Storytime"; the unveiling of the official BookPeople 100, a compilation of the booksellers' best loved books of all time; Literary Trivia; a Magnetic Poetry-A-Thon; a sneak peek of new books coming out this fall; announcement of the fall author event line-up; "two fabulous authors (and a very sweet pup)"; and BookPeople's reveal of "the truth behind our mysterious FOURTH FLOOR!"

"We're also taking this opportunity to say THANK YOU for your continued support of your local independent bookstore with tons of give-aways, cake, champagne and even... FREE BOOKS!" BookPeople noted.

Bill Maher, a bookseller at the Country Bookshop, Southern Pines, N.C., "gets people coming back to the shop for one reason: He knows his stuff," Fine Books magazine reported in its profile of the recently retired history professor who "makes recommendations to the owner as to what history books to buy, and he chooses some books to be featured in his 'Bill's Picks' section."

The Country Bookshop

"I've always liked to read," said Maher, adding: "I want to be able to put in my customers hands books that I am totally sure arrive at the truth as close as possible."

Fine Books noted that "many bibliophiles say indie bookstores offer the best way to buy new books because indie stores have the best staff. Being able to be recommended books and talk about books with a knowledgeable person makes indie customers feel that their shopping experience is unique and fun."

Maher also offered high praise for his Country Bookshop colleagues: "There isn't an employee in here who doesn't know their sections. They talk about them with customers and among themselves. In here, ideas aren't just stored on a shelf. They float around in the air, like tennis balls bouncing off the walls."

The Clean Xpress Laundromat at the MacDonald Shopping Center in Richmond, Calif., has its own small library, thanks to the efforts of Tana Monteiro, who "saw how bored her son was, and that's when something clicked. Why not bring the library to the laundromat?" KALW Public Radio reported.

After enlisting help from the Richmond Community Foundation and West County Reads, Monteiro helped plan a Literary Festival, collected 1,000 donated books, and at the festival announced that bookshelves would be put up at eight locations throughout Richmond. West County Reads placed donation boxes throughout the city.

KALW noted that last year, West County Reads "received 10,000 donated books. The program is expanding. It's in churches and theater spaces, as well as in laundromats. And more bookshelves will be set up around Richmond's neighboring city, San Pablo. Each week, hundreds of books are donated, the bookshelves are re-stacked with books, and each week the bookshelves are emptied yet again, because of something Tana Monteiro knew all along: kids love to read.... The libraries, here, aren't likely to get more staffing or hours anytime soon. But in the corner of a laundromat, a mother and her child are reading together. One book at a time."

The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan by Rick Perlstein (Simon & Schuster).

Tomorrow on the Steve Harvey Show: Tracy Strawberry and Darryl Strawberry, authors of The Imperfect Marriage: Help for Those Who Think It's Over (Howard Books, $24.99, 9781476738741).

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Tomorrow on NPR's Diane Rehm Show: Amy Bloom, author of Lucky Us: A Novel (Random House, $26, 9781400067244).

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Tomorrow on Tavis Smiley: Carl Reiner, author of I Just Remembered (Random Content, $24.99, 9780991536702).

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Tomorrow night on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson: Jón Gnarr, author of Gnarr: How I Became the Mayor of a Large City in Iceland and Changed the World (Melville House, $23.95, 9781612194134).

Warner Bros and RatPac Entertainment have closed a deal for film rights to Donna Tartt's Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller The Goldfinch, which will be produced by Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson of Color Force, along with RatPac's Brett Ratner (Hercules). Deadline.com reported that the deal "ends a long drawn out negotiation and becomes the second book by the bestselling author for Warner Bros., which years ago acquired Secret History."

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At Comic-Con, 20th Century Fox unveiled new footage and cast for The Maze Runner, which opens September 19, Indiewire reported. The movie, directed by Wes Ball, is based on James Dashner's bestselling YA novel and stars Dylan O'Brien, Will Poulter, Kaya Scodelario, Thomas Brodie Sangster and Aml Ameen. Noah Oppenheim, Grant Myers and T.S. Nowlin wrote the adaptation.

Indiewire noted that the film "had been set for a February 2014 release but it was pushed back. That shouldn't be an indication of unhappiness though--Fox already exercised the option to buy The Scorch Trials, the second book in Dashner's four-book series. So is this looking franchise-worthy?"

Winners of the 2014 New England Book Awards, sponsored by the New England Independent Booksellers Association, are:

Fiction: Euphoria by Lily King (Atlantic Monthly Press)
Nonfiction: Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? by Roz Chast (Bloomsbury USA)
Children's: Firefly July by Paul Janeczko, illustrated by Melissa Sweet (Candlewick)

The New England Book Awards will be presented at the NEIBA Fall Conference in Providence, R.I., September 30-October 2.

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Stacey Lee, author of middle-grade novel Under a Painted Sky; and Don Tate, author of the forthcoming historical picture book Poet: The Remarkable Story of George Moses Horton of Chapel Hill, won the 2014 Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators Book Launch Award, which provides authors or illustrators with $2,000 in funds to supplement the promotion and marketing of newly published works for children.

photo: Jascha Gordon

Lisa Jewell was born and raised in north London, where she lives with her husband and two daughters. She is the author of 10 previous novels, including The Making of Us and Before I Met You. Her new novel is The House We Grew Up In (Atria, August 12, 2014). Find out more at her Facebook page or follow her on Twitter.

On your nightstand now:

I'm reading We Are Called to Rise by Laura McBride. It's about four disparate people: a young Albanian boy at school in Las Vegas, a Mexican-American soldier recovering in hospital after a suicide attempt, a middle-aged woman whose beloved husband has just left her and a youth worker. It's incredibly good so far.

Favorite book when you were a child:

I didn't have a read-over-and-over favourite book, and I'm the same way still. Once is enough for me. I loved all the boarding school books by Enid Blyton as a younger child and Agatha Christie murder mysteries as an older child.

Your top five authors:

It wouldn't be strictly true to say that I have five favourite authors. I have authors who have written some of my favorite books, but that is a very different thing. But at a push I could say Maggie O'Farrell, Charles Dickens, Agatha Christie, Joanna Briscoe and Nick Hornby.

Book you've faked reading:

Never done it!

Book you're an evangelist for:

Alys, Always by Harriet Lane. Short but powerful, and totally underrated.

Book you've bought for the cover:

You by Joanna Briscoe: a girl sitting in a meadow on a vintage chair. Looking at it now, I'm not sure what it was that caught my imagination, but I was right to buy it. It was brilliant.

Book that changed your life:

High Fidelity by Nick Hornby. I wrote my first novel after reading it and realizing that a girl needed to write a book like that.

Favorite line from a book:

I'm not the type of person to remember lines from books.

Which character you most relate to:

Mary Gilmour from The Pile of Stuff at the Bottom of the Stairs by Christina Hopkinson. She has way too much housework to do, demanding children and an unappreciative husband.

Book you most want to read again for the first time:

Sleep with Me by Joanna Briscoe. This was her debut novel, but I read it after reading her second novel; it completely consumed me for 24 hours.

Book you think everyone should read:

If a reader has the gumption, I don't think anyone should go their grave without trying a Charles Dickens.

Andrew Smith (Winger; Grasshopper Jungle) pens a phenomenal novel about life's many detours, told in the unforgettable voice of an epileptic teenager with heterochromatic eyes (one blue, one green) and a strange history.

When 16-year-old Finn Easton was seven years old, a dead horse that was being transported to a rendering plant fell "one hundred sideways miles" off a bridge and landed on Finn and his mother. The impact broke Finn's back and killed his mother. His epilepsy, which he may grow out of, is a "souvenir" of the accident, and if he does grow out of it, he suspects he may miss the way the seizures empty the words out of his head. Finn measures the world in miles instead of minutes, because he believes "distance is more important than time." His crush, Julia Bishop, a Chicago transplant living with her aunt and uncle because of a devastating secret, admires Finn's perspective on life. The moment he meets Julia, Finn wonders "how many atoms from the same calamities out there in the universe our body shared.... Maybe my right hand and her left hand both came from the same supernova." Julia, ever astute, gets why Finn named his dog Laika, is patient with him during his wild mood swings when he's returning from a "blank out" (seizure) and, most importantly, she loves Finn back. Which makes it crushing for both Finn (and readers) when Julia must return to Chicago--the very place where she was victim of a tragedy that makes Finn wish he "could push the world back all those miles with my bare hands and make it change direction," even if it means they'd never have met.

Throughout the novel, Finn suffers from an identity crisis as he questions whether or not he's the product of his father's bestselling cult-classic novel, The Lazarus Door, starring a protagonist with the teen's name, heterochromatic eyes, seizures, and scars identical to the ones he has on his back from his post-accident surgery. So Finn sets out on a road trip with his best friend, the memorable Cade Hernandez, to figure out the ending to his story, when an unexpected accident rewrites their future.

Smith's sly commentary on today's school system ("designed to make us all the same," in Cade's words) intertwines with the story of Finn's desperation to break out and be different--not a reproduction of anyone's expectations. The well-rounded supporting characters and the Southern California setting make for a welcome departure from the usual glitz of Los Angeles life. Hilarious and wise, 100 Sideways Miles is an addictive and panoramic read about the intersecting--and divergent--paths that lie ahead. Breathtakingly good. --Adam Silvera, children's bookseller

Discover: A 16-year-old epileptic whose life was changed when a dead horse fell onto him and his mother.