An AbeBooks.com trick or treat gift profiles the Haunted Bookshop in Iowa City, Iowa, a store that features a ghost named Claire, "part of the team," according to owner Nialle Sylvan.

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The Massachusetts Attorney General has approved Nantucket's anti-chain store amendment to the town's zoning laws that passed at the April 3 Town Meeting, the Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror reported. The Attorney General's needed to O.K. the measure before it could be enacted (Shelf Awareness, April 4).

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Earlier this month, Eso Won Books moved to Leimert Park Village in Los Angeles. The store's new address is 4331 Degnan Blvd., Los Angeles, Calif. 90008; 323-290-1048. For a picture of the grand-reopening party of the highly regarded African-American bookstore two weeks ago, click here.

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Cool idea of the day: The Book Cellar, Chicago, Ill., is the "last but not least" stop on the Lincoln Square Wine Stroll, which will be held Thursday evening and is sponsored by the Lincoln Square Chamber of Commerce. The sold-out stroll visits four spots besides the bookstore--a grill, a café, a bistro and a wine store--and costs $35 for wine and hors d'oeuvres.

The Book Cellar, an elegantly designed store, includes a café that besides wine, sells coffee, tea, sandwiches, baked goods and more. The store has a range of gifts; some magazines and other periodicals; a strong fiction section; other sections that include children's, cookbooks and wine, health, local subjects, travel and mystery; staff recommendations; a lot of signed copies; and plenty of very inviting seating. Founded in 2004 and owned by Susan Takacs, who previously worked in nursing, the store is open every day, usually until 10 p.m. 

And here's another cool idea from the Book Cellar: wine is available at half price during book club meetings. Sign us up!

The Book Cellar is located at 4736-38 N. Lincoln Ave., Chicago, Ill. 60625; 773-293-2665; bookcellarinc.com.

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Another bookseller-politician? David Unowsky, longtime owner of the former Hungry Mind/Ruminator Books bookstore, has filed paperwork to run for a St. Paul, Minn., city council seat next year, according to the Pioneer Press. Reportedly he is seeking Democratic and Green party backing. 

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When Mitch Albom visited Seattle, Wash., two weeks ago to promote For One More Day, he stopped at the headquarters of Starbucks, which is selling the book in its thousands of outlets. According to the Seattle Times, Albom read to 600 employees at Starbucks, then during the rest of one long day, he answered questions from some 250 people at a local Starbucks and read at a literary salon.

"It's a win-win situation," said Kim Ricketts, founder and owner of Kim Ricketts Book Events, which organizes readings at Boeing, Starbucks, Microsoft and public nonbookstore places in Seattle and San Francisco. "When I organize an event at, say, Microsoft, those employees get to hear about something they're interested in. The author gets an audience with a group of people interested in what he's doing, and the publisher gets a room full of people who are buying books."

But one bookseller said it isn't quite a full win-win situation. "I know for a fact that there are bookstores out there that rely entirely on their five big author events a year," Robert Sindelar, manager and buyer at Third Place Books, told the Times. "If those big authors stop coming, they'll shut their doors."
 

This morning on the Today Show: Jack Welch and Suzy Welch, answering questions about Winning: The Answers: Confronting 74 of the Toughest Questions in Business Today (Collins, $12.95, 0061241490).

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Today on the View: Courtney Love, whose new book, Dirty Blonde: The Diaries of Courtney Love (Faber & Faber, $35, 0865479593), comes out today.

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Today on the Rachael Ray Show: Michael Crider, author of The Guy's Guide to Surviving Pregnancy, Childbirth, and the First Year of Fatherhood (Da Capo, $12.95, 0738210277).

Nancy Huston, a Canadian who lives in France and writes in French, has won the Prix Femina for her novel Lignes de Faille, "spanning decades and continents and revealing how the decisions of one generation affect succeeding ones," according to the New York Times.

Irish author Nuala O'Faolain won the Prix Femina for foreign work for The Story of Chicago May (Penguin, $14, 1594482179), a biography of the Irish criminal.

With the exception of Wild Fire, which appears next Monday, the following titles have laydown dates of next Tuesday, November 7:

Wild Fire by Nelson DeMille (Warner, $26.99, 44657967X). Another thriller featuring ex-NYPD detective John Corey.

The Rising Tide by Jeff Schaara (Ballantine, $27.95, 034546141X). The first of a trilogy set during the World War II by the author of historical novels set during the Civil War, Revolutionary War and World War I.

The Gods of Newport by John Jakes (Dutton, $26.95, 0525949763). Another accomplished historical novelists sets his latest in the Gilded Age of Newport, R.I.

The View from Castle Rock: Stories by Alice Munro (Knopf, $25.95, 1400042828). The story about this book: more short stories from the short story master.

Ines of My Soul by Isabel Allende (HarperCollins, $25.95, 0061161535). This is the fictional memoir of the real-life Inés Suárez, a Spanish woman who went to the New World and with her lover, a field marshal under Pisarro, helped found Santiago and create what became Chile.

The Godfather's Revenge by Mark Winegardner (Putnam, $25.95, 0399153845). The author's second sequel to Mario Puzo's masterpiece, authorized by the Puzo estate, and apparently the last in the line.

Born in Death by J.D. Robb (Putnam, $24.95, 0399153470). Another Lt. Eve Dallas mystery from Robb, aka Nora Roberts.

A Christmas Secret by Anne Perry (Ballantine, $16.95, 0345485815). 'Tis the season for a new Anne Perry Christmas tale.

The Handmaid and the Carpenter: A Novel by Elizabeth Berg (Random House, $17.95, 1400065380). The pair of the title are Mary and Joseph, parents of Jesus.

One of the best aspects of the Frankfurt Book Fair is meeting book people around the world. Thanks to an introduction from Bill Preston at Baker & Taylor, we talked with Pedro Herz, owner of a bookstore company in Brazil whose retail approaches--particularly online--should strike a chord with and perhaps provide a few ideas to American booksellers.

Livraria Cultura (Cultural Bookstore), which has six elegant bookstores in Sao Paolo, Brasilia, Porto Alegre and Recife, had an unlikely beginning: in the 1940s, Herz's mother, who with his father had fled Nazi Germany in 1938, began a lending library in her house with 10 German books--for her friends in the German-speaking "colony." By 1969, when Herz took over the bookstore, which had moved outside the Herz household, it lent and sold both German-language and Portuguese-language titles. One of Herz's first business acts was to stop lending books, mainly because most of them are paperback and "after a few readings, you need to bind them, and that's expensive," he said.

In the '70s, Herz tried to expand, opening two branches, but found it difficult to match stock with customers. "Later I realized why we didn't succeed," he said. "The branches were too small. We should have carried the same stock in all the stores. It was Murphy's Law: we carried the stock people didn't want."

After closing the two branches, the company concentrated on "growing vertically," as Herz put it, emphasizing an "efficient infrastructure and good service." In 2000, he decided it was time again to try to expand horizontally, so to speak, and opened a branch.

Between having worked out "organizational problems" and with the aid of inventory control systems and the Internet, the branch model has worked. "Technology allows me work online and know exactly how many copies are sold in each store, when a book is sold, so we can transfer books," Herz explained.

Since then, Livraria Cultura has opened a store a year. The stores are quite large, all over 30,000 square feet in size. The stores open every day Christmas and New Year's Day. The next major store project involves one of its Sao Paolo stores, where Livraria Cultura has four sites in the same building. Come February, the stores will moved into one large space in an old cinema, a location that will have the company's first restaurant. (The stores all have cafés.)

Livraria Cultura aims to be "more than a store," Herz said. As befits its name, the stores are "a cultural place. We want people to feel comfortable. We like them to stay for many hours." The stores have many events, including jazz and classical performances.

One of the largest problems for Livraria Cultura, Herz said, "is getting people." Each store has a staff of about 100.

The company's loyalty program awards points or gives discounts. It has 800,000 members; they receive a monthly newsletter via e-mail, and a printed version of it is given out in stores.

The stock is about 80% books; the rest is CDs, DVDs, magazine and other products. Some 30% of book titles are foreign, with the vast majority English-language; most of those English-language titles come from the U.S. and U.K., although for the moment the U.S. is the more attractive source because freight is cheaper and the U.S. dollar is weak.

Perhaps because of his respect for technology--Herz said, "We invest in two main areas: technology and human resources"--Livraria Cultura was one of the first booksellers on the Internet, with a site since 1995. Some 17% of the company's business is on the Internet, and "it keeps growing," Herz continued. "When a store opens, there's a slight drop, but then it picks up again."

The company's stores "supply" the Internet business. In 10 cities, Livraria Cultura provides same-day delivery service (with various partners providing the delivery) of many titles on its Web site. Several partners deliver the books from the stores to the buyers. A rocket symbol next to a title indicates that the book can be delivered; each title has a minimum quantity that must be in stock in stores to be listed as available for same-day delivery. If there are fewer copies on hand than required, the rocket disappears--apparently shot into space.

The Web site includes a section written by customers, I Read, I Liked, I Recommended and many publisher specials (recent ones include Penguin and Wiley). The database contains 1.7 million books, and the company adds 250 new ones a day.--John Mutter