On October 1, Sony plans to launch both the Sony Reader and a bookstore on the Internet that will offer some 10,000 e-books from "the top six publishers," according to Reuters. The Reader will retail for about $350. The company estimated that e-books would cost 25% less than printed versions of the same title.

Unlike most computers and previous e-book devices, the screen of the Sony Reader is not backlit, allowing the company to make the ironic pitch that its e-book reader closely resembles paper. The Reader holds about 80 e-books at a time, weighs nine ounces and measures 7" X 5" by 1/2".

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Effective January 1, Holtzbrinck will handle sales and distribution for Watson-Guptill Publications. Watson-Guptill's own distribution clients will also be distributed by Holtzbrinck; they include Allworth Press, AM Editores, AVA Publishing, C & T Publishing, Graphis Press, Hollywood Creative Directories, Kalmbach, Links International, Loew-Cornell, Rotovision, Three Dog Press, Vanguard Productions and Visual Reference Publications.

In a statement, Watson-Guptill publisher and general manager Amy Rhodes, who joined the company early this year, commented: "I have worked with Holtzbrinck in the past, and found their quality of service and the collaborative efforts of the sales teams to be exemplary."

In the late spring, the company notified its commissioned sales groups that it would end their relationships at the end of the year. The company is also closing its distribution facility in Lakewood, N.J.

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Opened only in February, the Bookstore at Serendipity Coffee Shop, Craig, Colo., is moving across the street into larger space and will be renamed Downtown Books, according to the Craig Daily Press. The store, which has specialized in used books, will add more new books as well as more sidelines and gift items.

Owner Carol Valera Jacobson plans to start a monthly reading series, "knit nights" and children's story times. "I'd like to be a meeting place for the arts," Jacobson told the paper.

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Mary and Don Froehlich are renovating a 115-year-old farmhouse in Waynesboro, Va., and will open a combination new and used bookstore, butterfly garden and natural foods café that will be called Stone Soup Books, the Staunton News Leader reported. The couple hopes to have 10,000 volumes and will emphasize garden and cookbooks.

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Mark Anderson has joined the University of California Press as associate sales manager. He was formerly special markets manager at Ten Speed Press, where for seven years he dealt with gift, gourmet, natural products, catalogue, New Age, online retailers and grocery accounts. Earlier he had been director of sales and marketing at Bookpeople, the onetime regional wholesaler. 

Vicki Erwin had wanted to have her own bookstore so long that she can't remember "how long back I wanted one." Now her wish has come true. As of the end of the summer, the former Scholastic rep and children's book buyer at the Booksource and City Books is owner of Main Street Books, St. Charles, Mo., a two-story, 1,800-sq.-ft. general bookstore with some tourist business in the historic district of the St. Louis suburb.

"I absolutely love it," Erwin told Shelf Awareness. She said it is particularly gratifying "to see how the end customer responds," something she didn't know in all the years she was either selling or buying books. "It's so fun," she continued, telling of the joy of being able to recommend books--for example, Plain Truth to someone who asked for something on Amish life. Likewise, several people to whom she handsold The Memory Keeper's Daughter have already returned and thanked her. Most satisfying, she said, is "talking with kids about books. They tell you the truth."

For now, Erwin has only "little plans" to make changes at Main Street, which recently moved into its larger, "more visible" quarters. "I realize I can't jump in and do everything at once," she said. Not surprisingly, considering her background in children's books, Erwin wants to expand the children's section. She's already adding some sidelines, particularly wooden toys such as the Melissa & Doug line. "We may become a bookstore with a nice toy selection," she said.

She would also like to add more reading groups to the store's three; institute book-themed birthday parties; and have local writers meet at the store and offer writing classes.

Among programs Erwin plans to continue:

• Main Street's author events, which feature many local authors and authors who write about history.
• The partnership providing books for the book club on KMOX radio's morning show.
• The partnership servicing books at several gift shops in area hospitals. ("It's mostly fiction and a lot of mass market," Erwin said.)

Main Street Books was founded 13 years ago by Mary Fran Rash, who retains an interest but will retire soon. In a sense, Erwin first knew of the store before it was founded. "I was in the historic district years ago and saw the schoolhouse and thought it would be a darling bookstore," Erwin said. The next year when she returned, Rash had opened her store in the schoolhouse. Erwin shopped at the store regularly and called on it as a Scholastic rep. Earlier this year, Erwin was in the store and heard that Rash was going out to lunch with a prospective buyer. She quickly told Rash that she would be interested in buying the store. "I knew I'd kick myself if I didn't take this opportunity," she said.

Once of the most gratifying aspects of the purchase, Erwin said, was the positive response she got from her accounts. (At Scholastic, she covered the Western U.S. via telephone and did field sales in the central part of the country.) She said she misses "all my booksellers"--among them were Blue Marble, Lemuria, Square Books and Joseph-Beth. "It was a hard, hard separation for me."

Main Street Books is located at 307 S. Main St., St. Charles, Mo. 63301; 636-949-0105; Mainstreetbooks.net.

Consortium Book Sales & Distribution is adding eight new publishers, effective with the spring 2007 season:

• A&C Black, London, England, the publishing house of Adam and Charles Black, which was formed in 1807 when Adam Black opened a bookshop at age 23. Originally in Edinburgh, the company has been located in London for more than a century. The company recently purchased Methuen Drama, making it one of the U.K.'s leading drama publishers.
• ArtNetwork, Nevada City, Calif., which for more than 20 years has focused on helping artists deal with the business aspects of their careers. The books are formatted for left-brained people, with lots of room to write in the margins, highlighted topics and an index.
• Bellevue Literary Press, New York, N.Y., a start-up press and an offshoot of the Bellevue Literary Review, both of which are sponsored by the New York University School of Medicine and aim to publish writing of "the greatest artistic and intellectual merit" from the larger community, both medical and non-medical.
• Central Park Media, New York, N.Y., a 16-year-old video and book publisher focused on Japanese and Korean animation and graphic novels and a leading North American publisher of Japanese manga and Korean manhwa.
• DramaQueen, Houston, Tex., a relatively new publisher of graphic novels, manhwa and yaoi from Korea and Taiwan.
• Long River Press, San Francisco, Calif., founded in 2002, a small press publishing fiction and nonfiction on all aspects of Chinese history, culture and society aimed at both a general and academic readership and the trade and museum stores. Editorial offices are in the Bay Area and production facilities in China.
• Small Beer Press, Northampton, Mass., founded in 2000 by two former booksellers to publish the kind of books they loved handselling, particularly literary and innovative fantasy fiction. Its authors include Carol Emshwiller, Angélica Gorodischer, Ursula K. Le Guin, John Crowley, Naomi Mitchinson, Sean Stewart and Kelly Link.
• Snowbooks, London, England, a three-year-old publisher that won the 2006 Small Publisher of the Year at the British Book Trade Awards. It is launching its U.S. publishing program with titles that represent a range of genres, including crime, thrillers, women's fiction, historical and contemporary fiction, political and social nonfiction, martial arts, fitness, crafting and humor.

 

This morning Imus in the Morning talks with 60 Minutes' Andrew Rooney, whose new book, Out of My Mind (PublicAffairs, $26, 1586484168), comes out next week. 

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This morning on the Today Show: the show's own financial guru Jean Chatzky talks about her new book, Make Money, Not Excuses: Wake Up, Take Charge, and Overcome Your Financial Fears Forever (Crown, $24.95, 0307341526).

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This morning on Good Morning America: Daniel Goleman, author of Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships (Bantam, $28, 0553803522).

Also on Good Morning America, James Carville, author of Take It Back: A Battle Plan for Democratic Victory (S&S, $14, 0743277538). The Democratic strategist is also appearing on CNN's American Morning.

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This morning on the Early Show: Marisa Acocella Marchetto, author of Cancer Vixen: A True Story (Knopf, $22, 0307263576).

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The Book Report, the weekly AM radio book-related show organized by Windows a bookshop, Monroe, La., will feature two author interviews on today's show, which has the theme "The Road Not Traveled--Until Now":

• Robert Dalby, author of Waltzing at the Piggly Wiggly (Putnam, $21.95, 0399153675)
• Elisabeth Brink, author of Save Your Own (Houghton Mifflin, $23, 0618651144)

The show airs at 8 a.m. Central Time and can be heard live at thebookreport.net; the archived edition will be posted this afternoon.

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On Fox's Hannity & Colmes: Paul Volcker and Mark Califano discuss Good Intentions Corrupted (PublicAffairs, $15.95, 1586484729).

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This morning on NPR's Morning Edition: Pervez Musharraf, president of Pakistan and author of In the Line of Fire: A Memoir (Fireside, $28, 0743283449).

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Today on Oprah: Elizabeth Edwards, wife of former Senator John Edwards and author of Saving Graces: Finding Solace and Strength from Friends and Strangers (Broadway, $24.95, 0767925378).

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Today on Writer's Roundtable on World Talk Radio, Antoinette Kuritz talks with:

• Meg Tilly, whose new novel is Gemma (Syren Book Co., $15.95, 0929636619)
• Claire Kirch, Tilly's book publicist
• Maria Manske, associate publisher, Syren Book Co.

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This evening on PBS's NewsHour: John Danforth, author of Faith and Politics: How The Moral Values Debate Divides America and How to Move Forward Together (Viking, $24.95, 0670037877).

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Tonight on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart: Al Franken, whose The Truth (With Jokes) (Plume, $15, 0452287677) is now out in paperback.

 

The following are more selected titles whose laydown dates are next week:

Tuesday, October 3

The Audrey Hepburn Treasures by Ellen Erwin and Jessica Z. Diamond, with a foreword by Sean Hepburn Ferrer (Atria, $49.95, 0743289862). A souvenir album from Hepburn's estate.

A Photographer's Life, 1990-2005 by Annie Leibovitz (Random House, $75, 0375505091). A collection of the photographer's more recent work.

The Way to Win: Taking the White House in 2008 by Mark Halperin and John F. Harris (Random House, $26.95, 1400064473). The political director of ABC News and the national politics editor of the Washington Post dissect past presidential races and look at the next one.

Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West by Hampton Sides (Doubleday, $26.95, 0385507771). A history the conquest of the Southwest by the author of Ghost Soldiers.

Never Again: Securing America and Restoring Justice by John Ashcroft (Center Street , $24.99, 1599956802). The former Attorney General tells his story.

Why I Jumped: My True Story of Postpartum Depression, Dramatic Rescue & Return to Hope by Tina Zahn with Wanda Dyson (Fleming H. Revell, $19.99, 0800718917). A mother who tried to commit suicide tells her story.

Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution by Caroline Weber (Holt, $27.50, 0805079491). Let readers eat cake.

October 5

From Baghdad, With Love: A Marine, the War, and a Dog Named Lava by Lt. Col. Jay Kopelman with Melinda Roth (Lyons Press, $22.95, 1592289800). Kopelman tells of the war--and his rescue of one four-legged Iraqi.

Cathy's Book: If Found Call, 650-266-8233 (Running Press, $17.95, 076242656X). What the publisher calls "the first-ever fully-immersive multimedia book experience for teens. The book includes working cell phone numbers and web addresses that establish the existence of fictional people, places, and companies, all providing clues that take the reader deeper into Cathy's world."

October 6

My Father, My President: A Personal Account of the Life of George H.W. Bush by Doro Bush Koch (Warner, $29.99, 0446579904). A loving biography by Bush pere's daughter.