The Perseus Books Group, which bought Consortium Book Sales and Distribution this summer (Shelf Awareness, August 1, 2006), will merge Consortium's warehouse, customer service and finance operations into its Jackson, Tenn., distribution center but is keeping the distributor's sales and marketing offices intact in St. Paul, Minn. The move will be effective March 1. At the same time, Perseus is renaming its CDS distribution division Perseus Distribution Services. All Perseus publishers and joint venture partners will also be serviced by the Jackson, Tenn., facility, which the company described as a state-of-the-art, 600,000-sq.-ft. operation.

In connection with the changes, Perseus distribution clients will be able to choose either Consortium's "comprehensive, full-service sales and marketing" services or Perseus Distribution Services's "unbundled menu of services in the tradition of CDS." As necessary, Perseus will help Consortium sell in channels where Perseus has special expertise, notably in special sales, gift, warehouse clubs and academic channels.

Consortium currently has some 100 client publishers, including City Lights Publishers, Copper Canyon Press, Feminist Press, New Society Publishers, Ocean Press, Seven Stories Press and Soho Press. Perseus has more than 50 client publishers, including Abbeville, Distributed Art Publishers, Harvard Business School Press, Planeta, Taschen and the University of Michigan Press.

"A common distribution platform for all publishers provides simplicity and scale, and at the same time, we offer unparalleled choice to publisher clients in what services they get, and how they get them--all inclusive or a la carte," David Steinberger, president and CEO of the Perseus Books Group, said in a statement. "Can any other distribution player offer the same choice?"

Consortium president Julie Schaper said that Consortium was running out of space in its St. Paul warehouse and the warehouse lease was ending soon. "By bringing our distribution to Jackson, we can accommodate the growth of our current clients' business, as well as our growing list of publishers," she continued. "We also make life a little easier for our customers and clients, as we can consolidate shipments weekly to the same destination."

CEO Don Linn, who bought Consortium in 2002, will continue to play "a key role" in the transition until January 1, when he will leave the company. He said, "I'm leaving Consortium and our clients in very good hands." Steinberger commented: "Don Linn has led an exceptional organization and we thank him for his work in bringing together the best of both worlds for independent publishers."
 

Congratulations to Bookshop Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, Calif., which is celebrating its 40th birthday!

This coming Friday, the store will hold its annual Bookshop Birthday party and sale, although Casey Coonerty Protti said it will be "bigger and better than ever" because of the milestone. The event includes some traditional fare--cake servings while the "Hot Damn String Band" plays and the sale--as well as a video montage of the store's history that includes some footage of the inside of the old Bookshop Santa Cruz shot weeks before it was destroyed in the 1989 earthquake.

The store has also been celebrating with an events schedule over the past two months that has included Amy Sedaris, Senator Barbara Boxer, John Robbins, Jonathan Franzen, James McGreevey and David Sedaris (an outside event co-sponsored by the store)--with Charles Frazier to come. The store has collected memories of the store from these and other authors, which have included Franzen's comment: "Bookshop is the alert, bright eye of downtown Santa Cruz. Long may it shine." And Jim Hightower wrote, "If books have souls (and I believe they do), Bookshop Santa Cruz is their heaven. Happy 40th."

Last but not least, the store will hold a party for Neal Coonerty "to honor my dad for all his years as a bookseller," as his daughter put it, before he is sworn in as County Supervisor, a position he won earlier this year (Shelf Awareness, June 7, 2006).

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Congratulations, too, to the ABA, which has sold out the second annual Winter Institute, which will be held in Portland, Ore., February 1-2. The association had space only for 500 bookseller attendees, a level it reached yesterday.

The ABA is keeping a waiting list in case of cancellations.

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ISBN-13 countdown: in eight weeks, the International Standard Book Number becomes a 13-digit number. For more information about the change, go to the Book Industry Study Group's Web site.

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One non-Penguin sales rep asks us plaintively whether anyone else is interested in the new Thomas Pynchon novel, Against the Day (Penguin Press, $35, 159420120X), which comes out November 21. So we pass the question along. 

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Barnes & Noble College, which has managed Liberty University's bookstore for some 10 years, is proposing to build a $2 million, 20,000-sq.-ft. bookstore on the school's Lynchburg, Va., campus, according to the Lynchburg News & Advance. The current B&N store, which has less than 10,000 square feet of space, would be converted to classrooms.

Liberty University vice chancellor Jerry Falwell Jr., told the paper that sales would likely double because the current store "is not out where everybody can see it, so we're losing a lot of business."

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The Winona Daily News recounts the eight weeks that Chris Livingston, owner of the Book Shelf, Winona, Minn., spent quickly putting together Common Good Books, the St. Paul store owned by Garrison Keillor that opened last week (Shelf Awareness, November 1, 2006). Serving as project manager, Livingston had all of eight days to install fixtures, receive inventory and open for business! He said he also had to learn fast how to communicate with Keillor "to understand what he really wanted."

Powell's Books is opening its new 32,500-sq.-ft. store in Cedar Hills Crossing in Beaverton, Ore. (Shelf Awareness, June 9, 2006), on Friday, November 17. The new space replaces Powell's current Beaverton store in Cascade Plaza, which is closing Sunday, November 12. The new store, twice the size of the Cascade Plaza store, has an expanded children's section, more author events space and greater space for browsing.

Powell's will celebrate with a general reception at 6 p.m. on the 17th. Following the reception, Mireille Guiliano, author of French Women for All Seasons and French Women Don't Get Fat, joins the fete. In the coming weeks, the celebration continues with events starring:

• Erik Larson, author of The Devil in the White City and the new Thunderstruck (on November 20)
• Medical journalist Andrew Holtz, author of The Medical Science of House, M.D. (November 22)
• Nick Bantock, author of the famed Griffin & Sabine saga, whose new illustrated novel is Windflower (November 28)
• Christopher Kimball, publisher and editor of Cook's Illustrated magazine, who presents the newly revised edition of The America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook (November 29)

Speaking for himself and his daughter, founder Michael Powell said in a statement, "Emily and I want to thank our Beaverton customers, who have been so supportive over the past 22 years. We are very committed to our west-side shoppers and pleased to offer them a wider selection of books and more services."

The new store is located at 3415 S.W. Cedar Hills Blvd., Beaverton, Ore. 97005.

This morning on the Today Show, Martha Stewart tells everything about Martha Stewart's Homekeeping Handbook: The Essential Guide to Caring for Everything in Your Home (Crown, $45, 0517577003).

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This morning on the Early Show: Julia Hansen, author of A Life in Smoke: A Memoir (Free Press, $24, 0743289587).

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Today Good Morning America welcomes Rachael Ray, whose new cookbook is Rachael Ray 2,4,6,8: Great Meals for Couples or Crowds (Crown, $19.95, 1400082560).

GMA also takes a turn with John O'Hurley, author of It's Okay to Miss the Bed on the First Jump: And Other Life Lessons I Learned from Dogs (Hudson Street Press, $19.95, 1594630321). The actor and Dancing with the Stars alum will then appear on Live with Regis and Kelly.

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Today on WAMU's Diane Rehm Show: PBS NewsHour anchor Jim Lehrer talks about his 16th novel, The Phony Marine (Random House, $23.95, 1400064864).

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Today on the Rachael Ray Show: Brian Wansink, Ph.D., author of Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More than We Think (Bantam, $25, 0553804340).

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Today Emeril Live hosts Kevin Clash, author of My Life as a Furry Red Monster: What Being Elmo Has Taught Me About Life, Love, and Laughing Out Loud (Broadway, $19.95, 0767923758).

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Today on the Martha Stewart Show: Dr. Andrew Weil offers advice from an updated edition of Eight Weeks to Optimum Health: A Proven Program for Taking Full Advantage of Your Body's Natural Healing Power (Knopf, $22, 0307264920).

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Tonight on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno: Courtney Love, whose new book is Dirty Blonde: The Diaries of Courtney Love (Faber & Faber, $35, 0865479593).

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Tonight on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson: Philip Rosenthal, creator and executive producer of Everybody Loves Raymond and author of You're Lucky You're Funny: How Life Becomes a Sitcom (Viking, $25.95, 0670037990).

Comment? A week after Canadian-born Nancy Huston won the Prix Femina for her novel Lignes de Faille (Shelf Awareness, October 31, 2006), for the first time an American has won the Prix Goncourt, France's prestigious literary prize, the New York Times reported. The winner is Jonathan Littell, whose Les Bienveillantes (The Kindly Ones), the long fictional memoir of a former SS officer, was the talk of the Frankfurt Book Fair last month. Rights for U.S. publication were since bought by HarperCollins.

Littell grew up in France after his father, Robert Littell, a journalist and thriller writer, moved his family there. Les Bienveillantes has also won the Academie Francaise's annual fiction prize.

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The Hurston/Wright Legacy Awards, created in 1990 to honor "published writers of African descent" and judged by "the national community of black writers," were awarded over the weekend:

• Fiction: Nancy Rawles for My Jim, "a first-person account of Sadie, the wife of the runaway slave in Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn."
• Nonfiction: historian John Hope Franklin for his autobiography, Mirror to America.
• Contemporary Fiction: Clyde W. Ford for The Long Mile. Ford is the creator of the Charlie Noble mystery series.
• Debut Fiction: Denise Nicholas, who starred in TV's Room 222 and In the Heat of the Night, for Freshwater Road.
  

The Washington Post has a long story on the award and this year's winners.

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Alan Zweibel has won the 2006 Thurber Prize for American Humor for his novel, The Other Shulman (Random House). A five-time Emmy winner, Zweibel was an original writer for Saturday Night Live, creator and producer of It's Garry Shandling's Show and is a producer of Curb Your Enthusiasm. The Thurber judges--P.J. O'Rourke, Henry Alford and Celia Rivenbark--described The Other Shulman as "the hilarious story of an overweight, stressed-out, middle-aged man who convinces himself that running the New York City marathon will solve all his problems."

Runnersup were Kinky Friedman for Texas Hold 'Em: How I Was Born in a Manger, Died in the Saddle, and Came Back as a Horny Toad (St. Martin's) and Bill Scheft for Time Won't Let Me (HarperCollins).
 

Significant titles whose laydown dates are next Tuesday, November 14:

Cross by James Patterson (Little, Brown, $27.99, 0316159794). Alex Cross returns.

Santa Cruise: A Holiday Mystery at Sea by Mary Higgins Clark and Carol Higgins Clark (Scribner, $22, 1416535527). This year's Christmas mystery present from the mother-daughter team.

The Christmas Pig: A Fable by Kinky Friedman (S&S, $15.95, 1416534989). A sweet Christmas tale by the possible--but not likely--new Texas governor.

The Long Night of Winchell Dear: A Novel by Robert James Waller (Crown, $21, 0307209962). A tale about an oldtime gambler from the author of The Bridges of Madison County.

Nature Girl by Carl Hiaasen (Knopf, $25.95, 0307262995). Another bizarre, entertaining novel from the author of Skinny Dip, Sick Puppy and Lucky You.

The Senator and the Priest by Andrew M. Greeley (Forge, $24.95, 0765315912). The priest-author writes of a virtuous senator (imagine this: no negative campaign ads!) and his brother, a priest.

The World Almanac and Book of Facts 2007 (World Almanac Books, paper $12.99, 0886879957; hardcover $32.99, 0886879957). For the first time in 139 years, the almanac offers readers free extra content online.

Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid by Jimmy Carter (S&S, $27, 0743285026). The prolific former president addresses the Israeli-Palestine conflict and suggests solutions based on his long knowledge of the region and key players.

Home: The Blueprints of Our Lives by John Edwards (Collins, $29.95, 0060884541). The former senator collects reminiscences by more than 50 well-known people about their childhood homes--and includes many photographs.

The following were the most expensive books sold on Abebooks.com during October:

$9,000. SMS, Collection of Original Multiples by Duchamp, Man Ray, Lichtenstein, Christo et al. A series of paper portfolios from the leading artists of the 1960s - one of 35 deluxe copies.
 
$6,394. Ex decreto Concilii Tridentini by Catechismus. A rare 17th century first edition of a key work in Catholic doctrine.
 
$5,850. Al-Mawakib (The Procession) by Kahil Gibran. A rare copy of an ode written in classic Arabic along with a letter and drawings by the Lebanese-born philosophical essayist, novelist, poet and artist.
 
$4,500. The Healer's Way by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough. A signed manuscript of the novel, loosely based on the author's nursing experiences in Vietnam, complete with notes and corrections.
 
$3,500. Schoenheit im Olympischen Kampf by Leni Riefenstahl. A special edition with 280 pages of photos and an embossed Olympic medal from the filmmaker known for her documentary about the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
 
$3,000. 1984 by George Orwell. An unsigned U.K. first edition of Orwell's dystopian masterpiece.
 
$3,000. Traite de l'homme et de la formation du foetus by Rene Descartes. A 1680 third edition in French of the first European textbook of physiology.
 
$2,889. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. A first printing first edition of the book that won the Pulitzer Prize in 1980.
 
$2,500. Narrative of Voyages to Explore the Shores of Africa, Arabia and Madagascar by Captain W.F.W. Owen. A set of books charting a key 19th century voyage of discovery.

$2,500. Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air by Joseph Priestley. First edition from Priestley's series detailing his experiments with gases between 1779 and 1786.