"But what we simply need to do is make sure we include the written word as a part of our regular diets. We need to create a balance as best we can as our modes of consumption change for our own benefit. We’re certainly living in an era where the paradigm has shifted away from the written word into the moving pixelated image. But it’s not like when writing entered the fray, we just suddenly stopped talking [laughs]. There’s no reason why we should stop reading y'all. We gotta keep reading."

Jofie Ferrari-Adler

Ben Loehnen

Simon & Schuster is launching a new imprint, Avid Reader Press, that will be led by Jofie Ferrari-Adler, v-p and publisher, and Ben Loehnen, v-p and editor in chief, and will publish its first titles, which include fiction and nonfiction, late next year or early 2020.

Jon Karp, president of Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing, noted that the pair are "two of our most successful and entrepreneurial editors. They started working at Simon & Schuster on the same day in July 2010, and since then have shared a thin wall between adjoining offices. They have also come to share a publishing sensibility that they will now devote to this new venture."

Named for the memoir by former S&S editor in chief Robert Gottlieb, Avid Reader Press will over the next year build a staff, which will include a senior editor specializing in fiction and an editorial, publicity and marketing staff.

In a joint statement, Ferrari-Adler and Loehnen said: "In our experience the most rewarding publishing--for writers, for agents, for booksellers, and, ultimately, for readers--has three common denominators: great books, published with intense focus, in true partnership. We want to put together a small band of cheerful literary warriors who publish every book with avidity."

Among the titles Ferrari-Adler has edited are The Oregon Trail by Rinker Buck, The Library Book by Susan Orlean, Principles by Ray Dalio, Indianapolis by Lynn Vincent and Sara Vladic, The Heart of Everything That Is by Bob Drury and Tom Clavin, Raven Rock by Garrett M. Graff, The TB12 Method by Tom Brady, Tiger Woods by Jeff Benedict and Armen Keteyian, Strength in Stillness by Bob Roth, Men in Green by Michael Bamberger, The Fifth Gospel by Ian Caldwell, Hothouse by Boris Kachka, and Rust by Jonathan Waldman.

Loehnen's titles at S&S include The Chickenshit Club by Jesse Eisinger, The Power of Moments by Chip and Dan Heath, Magic and Loss by Virginia Heffernan, It's All Relative by A.J. Jacobs, The Internationalists by Oona A. Hathaway and Scott J. Shapiro, The Third Wave by Steve Case, Pre-Suasion by Robert Cialdini, The Marshall Plan by Benn Steil, Wolf Boys by Dan Slater, To Change the Church by Ross Douthat, The Silo Effect by Gillian Tett, Sprint by Jake Knapp, The Rise by Sarah Lewis, God's Bankers by Gerald Posner, Energy by Richard Rhodes, Razzle Dazzle by Michael Riedel and Money: Master the Game by Tony Robbins.

Total net book sales in September in the U.S. dropped 3.1%, to $1.46 billion, compared to September 2017, representing sales of 1,080 publishers and distributed clients as reported to the Association of American Publishers. For the year to date, total net book sales have fallen 1.4%, to $11.371 billion, but total trade sales have risen 4.4%, to $5.42 billion.

In the month, sales of adult books slipped 1.5%, to $481 million, while children's/YA was a bright spot, with sales up 8.9%, to $237.6 million. Non-trade categories, particularly higher ed, K-12 and professional books, were a major drag on overall books sales.

Sales by category in September 2018 compared to September 2017:

An Amazon Books location opened last week at 4752 Admiralty Way in Marina del Rey, Calif. Noting that the online retailer also has stores in Palisades Village, Broadway Plaza in downtown Los Angeles, and at Westfield Century City, CBSLA reported that "the move into traditional brick-and-mortar shops is rather ironic for Amazon, as the site's deep discounts on books led to the closure of several bookstore chains." The new store is located in Waterside at Marina del Rey.

Les Hopkins

Les Hopkins, an Arcadia Publishing field sales rep based in Texas serving the Mountains & Plains region, died suddenly on October 11. He was 53 and suffered a stroke.

Arcadia noted that Hopkins was "a road warrior, traveling 45 weeks out of the year doing the job he loved. Les was always up for a conversation and loved booksellers. He was generous and witty and an accomplished trumpet player who loved marching bands and college sports. Always laughing and telling jokes and stories, he was the life of the party. If he wasn't on the road for work, he was spending time with family or riding his RZR side by side through the mountains. We were all lucky to have worked alongside him. He was certainly a bright light to be around, and he will be dearly missed."

A moment many of us have experienced: Literati Bookstore, Ann Arbor Mich., tweeted: "One of my favorite bookstore moments: Just before opening on an autumn Saturday morning, the smell of coffee and fresh new books and hints of the early dawn."

In an impressive slideshow, Xinhua explored the Zhongshuge bookstore in Guanshanhu District of Guiyang, southwest China's Guizhou Province. The design "is inspired by the unique karst landform in Guizhou."

Maria Mann has joined Houghton Mifflin Harcourt as publicity associate.

The Skeleton Makes a Friend: A Family Skeleton Mystery #5 by Leigh Perry (Diversion Books), a video animated by the author's daughter.

Tomorrow:
Live with Kelly and Ryan: Busy Philipps, author of This Will Only Hurt a Little (Touchstone, $26.99, 9781501184710).

The View: Ellie Kemper, author of My Squirrel Days (Scribner, $26, 9781501163340).

MSNBC Live: Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of Leadership: In Turbulent Times (Simon & Schuster, $30, 9781476795928).

Exclusive photos from Fantastic Beasts: Crimes of Grindelwald "reveal new corners of the thrilling wizarding world sequel," Entertainment Weekly reported. Directed by David Yates from a screenplay by J.K. Rowling, the film stars Eddie Redmayne, Jude Law, Zoë Kravitz, Johnny Depp, Ezra Miller and Claudia Kim. It opens in theaters November 16.

A shortlist of six titles has been unveiled for this year's Diagram Prize for the Oddest Book Title of the Year. The winner will be decided by public vote here. Voting closes on November 16, and the winner will be announced November 23. This year's six oddest titles are:

Are Gay Men More Accurate in Detecting Deceits? by Hoe-Chi Angel Au
Call of Nature: The Secret Life of Dung by Richard Jones
Equine Dry Needling by Cornelia Klarholz and Andrea Schachinger
Jesus on Gardening by David Muskett
Joy of Waterboiling by Christina Scheffenacker
Why Sell Tacos in Africa? by Paul Oberschneider

From the Midwest Booksellers Association, Midwest Connections Picks for November. Under this marketing program, the association and member stores promote booksellers' handselling favorites that have a strong Midwest regional appeal.

Virgil Wander by Leif Enger (Grove Press, $27, 9780802128782). "Following a near-fatal car accident on Lake Superior, Midwestern movie-house owner Virgil Wander begins to piece together his personal history and the lore of his broken town with the help of a cast of affable and curious locals."

A Cloud in the Shape of a Girl by Jean Thompson (Simon & Schuster, $26, 9781501194368). "A Cloud in the Shape of a Girl is a poignant novel about three generations of the Wise family--Evelyn, Laura, and Grace--as they hunt for contentment amid chaos of their own making. Spanning from World War II to the present, we see these women and their trials, small and large, as they navigate the expectations for their lives and the dreams of everyone they love."

​A Key to Treehouse Living by Elliot Reed (Tin House, $19.95, 9781947793040). "A Key to Treehouse Living is the adventure of William Tyce, a boy without parents. William grows up near a river in the rural Midwest, and--in a glossary-style list--he imparts his particular wisdom on subjects ranging from ASPHALT PATHS, BETA FISH, and MULLET to MORTAL BETRAYAL, NIHILISM, and REVELATION. ​Unlocking an earnest, clear-eyed way of thinking that might change your own, A Key to Treehouse Living is a story about keeping your own record straight and living life by a different code."

Evergreen Tidings from the Baumgartners by Gretchen Anthony (Park Row, $16.99, 9780778307860). "Evergreen Tidings from the Baumgartners is an unmissable dramedy about an aging Midwestern matriarch, Violet, who goes to hilarious lengths to keep up her family's perfect veneer. It’s a smart, funny Wes Anderson-esque sendup of Midwestern suburban life and a celebration of it, with powerful, timely themes of LGBT rights, class, and generational differences."

All the Lives We Never Lived by Man Booker nominee Anuradha Roy (Sleeping on Jupiter) centers on the idea that what one values in life may never be truly translatable, even to a loved one. Myshkin, the main narrator, is abandoned by his mother at the age of nine, never understanding why she left or what she gave up by disappearing. The present day of the book takes place in 1992, when Myshkin looks back on his childhood 60 years earlier. With the arrival of lost letters from his mother, he decides to upend the comfortable distance he's kept from her betrayal and discover what actually happened after her departure. But with each revelation, old memories are cast in strange new lights, and his settled present becomes ever-more fragile.

His mother is Gayatri, a talented painter who is married off as a teenager when her father dies. Having traveled with her father from their native India to places like Bali, she is slowly rubbed raw by this forced domestic life, even with the birth of Myshkin and the support of neighbors in the small town where she and her husband live. When she finally leaves, disappearing one afternoon with a European artist she met years before, she sets off to become the painter she always wished to be.

Myshkin, meanwhile, watches as his father slowly crumbles from the sudden blow of Gayatri's disappearance and the ongoing struggle in India for independence from British rule. But while large political unrest occurs, Roy isn't interested in depicting broad, world-shaking events. The book instead focuses on interactions among Myshkin's family members, all of whom seem to settle for very different lives, barely recognizing what the others consider good. Myshkin eventually becomes a reasonably content old bachelor devoted to horticulture in his hometown, a man who, abandoned at a young age, keeps others at arm's length.

But Roy is subtle, never giving her protagonist a simple epiphany that he needs to be more connected with humanity or some other platitude. Instead, she plumbs the idea that by re-examining his mother, Myshkin has the opportunity to understand better why he lives his life as he does, and why his parents and others around him took such different roads.

In All the Lives We Never Lived, Roy zeroes in on small moments of connection, showing how even in the midst of great national upheaval, it's those moments that ultimately prove the most profound. --Noah Cruickshank, adult engagement manager, the Field Museum, Chicago, Ill.

Shelf Talker: Anuradha Roy's All the Lives We Never Lived paints a thoughtful portrait of family and freedom in the midst of the political upheaval of the Indian independence movement.

The bestselling self-published books last week as compiled by IndieReader.com:

1. Dear Jane by Kendall Ryan
2. Listen, Pitch (There's No Crying in Baseball Book 3) by Lani Lynn Vale
3. Swamp Spook (A Miss Fortune Mystery Book 13) by Jana DeLeon
4. Dream by Carly Phillips
5. Feels Like Home by Olivia Miles
6. Love, Christmas: Movies You Love by Various
7. Lady Osbaldestone and the Missing Christmas Carols by Stephanie Laurens
8. Primordial Threat by M.A. Rothman
9. Most Valuable Playboy by Lauren Blakely
10. Bountiful (True North Book 4) by Sarina Bowen

[Many thanks to IndieReader.com!]