Borders Group wants to sublease four of its stores in Chicago to other retailers, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. Two of the stores are in Lincoln Park, and the others are in the Uptown and in Hyde Park areas. If the spaces are sublet, the stores will be closed.

Borders recently began looking to sublease its Block E store in Minneapolis, Minn., which it opened only four years ago (Shelf Awareness, January 20, 2007).

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Ian McEwan will be the subject of the first Out of the Book movie to be made by Powell's Books, and the director will be Doug Biro, a former RCA Records creative director and director of music videos for Christina Aguilera and Rufus Wainwright, according to today's New York Times.

The 23-minute video will be unveiled at BEA and shown at screenings June 13-17 through more than 50 bookstores across the country. McEwan's new novel, On Chesil Beach, will be published on June 5 by Nan A. Talese/Random House. Except for his appearances in the video, McEwan will not tour U.S. bookstores for this title.

For more on Powell's Out of the Book program, see our story earlier this month (Shelf Awareness, March 1, 2007).

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Following bankruptcy court approval last Friday, Baker & Taylor has completed the acquisition of Advanced Marketing Services. The deal includes AMS assets for selling to warehouse clubs and AMS's wholesale operations in the U.K. and Mexico. B&T will operate AMS's warehouse club business under a new brand and has resumed full shipping operations to the warehouse clubs.

Noting that AMS has been the dominant warehouse club book wholesaler for more than 20 years, Richard Willis, B&T's chairman and CEO, said in a statement that the acquisition is "a perfect fit with Baker & Taylor."

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North Atlantic Books, Frog Ltd. and Blue Snake Books, all formerly distributed by PGW, are now being distributed by Random House.

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Effective in spring 2008, when the company begins publishing titles independently, new Atlas Books titles will be distributed by W.W. Norton, which distributes books by some 19 independent publishers. Since its founding five years ago by James Atlas, Atlas Books has published in partnership with other publishers, including HarperCollins, Perseus--and Norton. The Atlas/Norton joint project is the Great Discoveries series, which has included works by, among others, Madison Smartt Bell, Barbara Goldsmith, David Leavitt and David Foster Wallace.

Titles on Atlas Books's new list include Myshlaevsky's Chin, a glimpse into the Stalin archives by the editor-in-chief of the Yale University Press; a memoir, Socialism Is Great!, by a Chinese factory worker; and The Culture of Torture, a journalist's dispatch from the front lines of Afghanistan and Iraq.

John Oakes, executive editor of Atlas Books, called distribution by Norton "a natural step" for the house.

 

Here's a new hot place for singles to meet: waiting to meet Lisa Scottoline.

At an event last week at a Barnes & Noble in Bryn Mawr, Pa., for her new book, Daddy's Girl, Lisa Scottoline (center) immediately recognized Shelley Mealo and Robert Castaldi, whom Scottoline had met a year ago at a signing for Dirty Blonde at the same store. "Last year, when they got to me after waiting in the line to get their books signed, you could feel the sparks between them," Scottoline said. "I commented on how cute they were together and asked how long they had been dating. They told me 'we just met on the line and we are going for coffee after the signing.' " Coffee apparently went well: they came together this year. "We all clapped for them and celebrated their love," Scottoline added. "See, books really do bring people together."

This morning on the Today Show: Jose Cancela, author of The Power of Business en Espanol: 7 Fundamental Keys to Unlocking the Potential of the Spanish-Language Hispanic Market (Rayo, $19.95, 9780061234996/0061234990).

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This morning's Book Report, the weekly AM radio book-related show organized by Windows a bookshop, Monroe, La., has the theme "Southern cooking" and features interviews with three authors:

• Donald Barickman, author of Magnolias (Wyrick & Company/Gibbs Smith, $29.95, 9780941711876/0941711870)
• Matt Lee and Ted Lee, authors of The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook (Norton, $35, 9780393057812/039305781X)

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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Today the Diane Rehm Show discusses Madame Bovary with a panel of guests, including Kate Lehrer, author of the novel Confessions of a Bigamist (Three Rivers Press, $13, 9781400083206/1400083206), and Michael Dirda, Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post columnist and author of Book by Book: Notes on Reading and Life (Holt, $17, 9780805078770/08050787700).

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Tonight on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart: Chris Hansen, NBC News correspondent and author of To Catch a Predator: Protecting Your Kids from Online Enemies Already in Your Home (Dutton, $24.95, 9780525950097/0525950095).


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Tonight on the Colbert Report: Benjamin Barber, author of Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole (Norton, $26.95, 9780393049619/0393049612).
 

Timothy Egan, a reporter for the New York Times, has won the fourth biennial TCU Texas Book Award for The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl (Houghton Mifflin/Mariner). The $5,000 award is sponsored by the Friends of the TCU Library and TCU Press.

The book has lassoed a range of awards: the 2006 National Book Award for nonfiction, the Oklahoma Book Award and the Western Heritage (Wrangler) Award from the national Cowboy Hall of Fame.

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Nominees for this year's Gumshoe Awards, given annually by Mystery Ink to "recognize the best achievements in the world of crime fiction," are:

Best Mystery

• White Shadow by Ace Atkins
• City of Shadows by Ariana Franklin
• The Night Gardener by George Pelecanos
• All Mortal Flesh by Julia Spencer-Fleming
• Hollywood Station by Joseph Wambaugh

Best Thriller

• The Hard Way by Lee Child
• The Last Assassin by Barry Eisler
• Prayers of the Assassin by Robert Ferrigno
• Marked Man by William Lashner
• The Venus Fix by M.J. Rose

Best European Crime Novel

• The Dramatist by Ken Bruen
• A Walk in the Dark by Gianrico Carofiglio
• By a Slow River by Philippe Claudel
• When the Devil Holds the Candle by Karin Fossum
• The Minotaur by Barbara Vine

Best First Novel

• Out of Cabrini by Dave Case
• A Corpse in the Koryo by James Church
• King of Lies by John Hart
• The Shadow Catchers by Thomas Lakeman
• A Field of Darkness by Cornelia Read

Winners will be announced on May 1.

What's the secret to bookselling success? 

In this third and final stop on the Rainy Day Books siteseeing tour, Vivien Jennings offers the following response to that question: 

Community, community, community.  

"Every day, I feel I have made a difference both to individuals and to the community," she says. "I know that most people are living at a pretty fast pace. If they make time for reading, we want to make sure that they are pleased with the experience. I can truthfully say that wherever my partner Roger and I are, people come up to us and say, 'Thank you so much for what you do for the community.' " 

Community isn't built in a day. The bookstore's strong regional ties are the result of longtime nurturing and an ongoing focus upon diverse communication strategies.  According to Vivien, the decision was made years ago to resist being defined by location, to get out into the community on a regular basis and build "a solid foundation that has supported us through all the tremors that have shaken this business. Almost every day of the year, we are visible throughout the city working with organizations, schools and universities, and other businesses, maintaining a presence for Rainy Day Books." 

How do you build such a community? Vivien has a few answers for that one, too.

Consider e-mail addresses for frontline booksellers: "With the e-mail bookselling capability, customers can communicate with their favorite bookseller at their convenience and have the personal attention and more in-depth conversation they prefer. Staff members can also pace their replies according to the pace of the day. Several of our staff have developed great relationships with customers by e-mail. We tease one male staff member who gets lots of e-mails from moms after the kids go to bed, and he will answer them the next day, and then fill a bag with their selections, which they can just run in and pick up."  

Consider Community Partners: "We started years ago inviting other businesses and non-profit organizations to partner with us on our author events, and it has always been more about awareness than money. What we ask of our partners is that they put their best foot forward in participation, and that they support the event in any way they can. We network our partners with each other as well. With the non-profits, there is no 'turf.' We are always looking for partners with the same spirit of community that we have, which is always about 'a better life in a better world.' " 

Consider Admission Packages: "Our author events schedule is quite diverse, and because we have Admission Packages for the events, it provides a steady stream of customers from all over the city into the store, some of whom are always new. We have had an overall approval and support for the Admission Package concept. Early on, two different stories ran in the media here about our shift. We explained that for the publishers, the tours are very much business, and that our concern was that if we didn’t build confidence that we could produce sales and financial benefit from the author appearances, that the wonderful array of experiences we were providing might start to diminish. It’s all a matter of communication with your customers. We told them we needed their support in sales if they wanted us to continue to provide the community with such unique and wonderful experiences." 

That sense of community is also key for the next generation. Geoffrey Jennings describes the bookstore's success as a communal effort that begins with his mother, "who redefines the concept of 'Type A' personality," and Roger Doeren, "who researched and designed the systems we use throughout the store." It continues to evolve thanks to "a core staff of dedicated readers, and a large core customer base that values our presence in the community. Networking is more than just a Web site; it’s the connections to people who might not be in our immediate geography, but have a place for us in their hearts." 

Consider, from Geoffrey's perspective, the bookstore's future: "As the second generation of Rainy Day Books, I look at our overall strategy and see us successfully adapting to the needs of our customer base. We offer our knowledge, customer service, personality, and service to our community. We think that has value, and so do our customers. Every independent bookseller has a different story to tell. My hope is that our story continues to be entertaining. So far, so good!"--Robert Gray (column archives available at Fresh Eyes Now)