Writing in the Guardian, onetime Bookseller editor Nicholas Clee states:

"Borders and Waterstone's are in a bind. As critics argue, they ought to be able to present themselves as specialists, offering ranges that their supermarket rivals cannot match. But they are too large to afford to be seen to ignore the bestsellers. So they have to promote Peter Kay and Jamie Oliver and Martina Cole as well, even though they struggle to compete with the prices offered by Tesco [the grocery chain] and Amazon. The market, determined by discounts, compels them to lose money.

"The troubles of Borders and Waterstone's could be good news for independent booksellers that offer refreshing alternatives to the homogenised offerings of the chains. Many bookbuyers support them as a matter of taste and principle. But taste and principle have only limited effectiveness in competition with ease and range (Amazon) and cheapness (supermarkets, the chains--and Amazon). The best independents, and those lucky enough to operate in areas away from heavyweight competition, are doing well. For others, the market is tough."

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The Supreme Court heard arguments yesterday in an intriguing case that could lead to the overturning of a 96-year-old antitrust ruling that prohibits manufacturers from requiring retailers to sell their products for a set minimum price. The Bush administration, the National Association of Manufacturers and business groups want to overturn the ruling, arguing that discounting can "degrade" brands and erode service. According to accounts in today's Wall Street Journal and New York Times, they seemed to find a sympathetic ear in Justice Antonin Scalia. Some 37 states and the Consumer Federation of America are fighting to retain the ruling. New York's solicitor general argued that Congress, not the court should change the rule and that the only certain result of a change would be higher prices. Four justices seemed to agree with this point of view.

If the rule is overturned, any agreements about a price minimum would be subject to the "rule of reason" and courts could "evaluate the anti-competitive effects of a marketing restriction on a case-by-case basis," as the Times put it.

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Books-A-Million plans to open two stores in Alabama, both of which will be in developments managed by Colonial Properties Trust, as are some other BAM stores. One new BAM store will be in Colonial Pinnacle Craft Farms in Gulf Shores, and the other is in Colonial Promenade Fultondale in Fultondale. BAM, whose headquarters are in Birmingham, has 25 other stores in Alabama.

The Fultondale development is expected to be completed in spring 2008, according to the Birmingham Business Journal.

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The Barnes & Noble that will be built in the Chesterfield Towne Center, Richmond, Va., next year will have about 33,000 square feet of space and replaces a movie theater without stadium seating, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported. The mall's manager predicted that B&N would draw as many people to the mall as the movie theater. "A movie theater is primarily a weekend and evening business," he told the paper, but a bookstore attracts people at various times.

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Shanta Small has joined Tarcher/Penguin as associate publicity director and marketing manager. She formerly worked at Random House Children's Books, where she headed publicity campaigns for The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, Flush by Carl Hiaasen, Last Shot by John Feinstein and The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall, among other titles. She also helped launch non-traditional PR campaigns for imprints and licensed characters such as Golden Books, Yearling and Thomas the Tank Engine. She earlier worked at Holt and Abrams.

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One addendum to the Caravan Project story yesterday: the program is a project of the Century Foundation of New York. Caravan founder Peter Osnos is a senior fellow for media at the Foundation.

 

The audiobook version of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will be unabridged, clock in at more than 21 hours, be priced at $79.95, and take up 17 CDs and 12 cassettes.

Random House's Listening Library, which has North American audio rights, is publishing the title simultaneously with the hardcover on Saturday, July 21. Books on Tape, also a division of the Random House Audio Publishing Group, will distribute the title in the library and educational markets.

Jim Dale, who narrated the audios of the first six Harry Potter titles, is recording this one, too. (Listening Library notes that besides winning a Grammy and several Audies, Dale is a member of the Order of the British Empire, courtesy of Queen Elizabeth II.) There are over five million copies of the first six Harry Potter titles in print in Listening Library editions.

In the fourth quarter ended January 31, total revenues at Hastings Entertainment rose 1.6% to $174.2 million, and net income fell 27% to $5.1 million. For the full fiscal year, total revenues rose 1.9% to $548.3 million, and net income dropped 12.3% to $5 million.

Sales of books at stores open at least a year fell 0.8% in the quarter "as a result of decreased sales of new-release trade paperbacks, partially offset by increased sales of new-release hardbacks." Only music fared worse in comp-store categories. The strongest category was video for sale, up 11.7%, mainly because of sales of the Nintendo Wii and Sony PS3 systems.

For the full year, sales of books at stores open at least a year were "essentially flat." The company commented: "Strong sales of mass market and used books offset the negative impact of fewer new-release hardback sales caused by the release of the sixth book in the Harry Potter series in fiscal 2005 but no series releases in fiscal 2006."

CEO John Marmaduke called the holiday season "highly promotional, but I feel that our sales and merchandise margin shortfall, compared to our internal projections, are a result of specific merchandising initiatives, which occurred in the fourth quarter and are not indicative of our ability to produce increased earnings growth." He added that the company is "focused specifically on improving our merchandising and buying functions in fiscal 2007 through, among other things, realignment of senior management in these areas. While we remain cautious in this challenging environment, we are optimistic about our outlook and believe we will be able to develop our brand and grow earnings in fiscal 2007."

This morning the Today Show offers the word about The Gospel According to Judas, by Benjamin Iscariot by Jeffrey Archer and Francis J. Maloney (St. Martin's, $16.95, 9780312375201/0312375204).

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This morning on the Early Show and later today on the View: actor John Lithgow, whose new children's book, Mahalia Mouse Goes to College (S&S Children's Publishing, $17.99, 9781416927150/1416927158), is on sale today. The story is set at Harvard, Lithgow's alma mater, and the book is packaged with a CD of Lithgow reading the tale at the university's commencement.

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Today the Diane Rehm Show hears from former M*A*S*H star Mike Farrell, author of the memoir Just Call Me Mike: A Journey to Actor and Activist (Akashic/RDV Books, $21.95, 9781933354088/1933354089).

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The Tonight Show with Jay Leno talks with Richard Engel, NBC News Middle East Correspondent and author of A Fist in the Hornet's Nest: On the Ground in Baghdad Before, During & After the War (Hyperion, $13.95, 9781401307622/1401307620).

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Tonight on the Colbert Report:

• Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, whose The Mighty and the Almighty: Reflections on America, God, and World Affairs (Harper Perennial, $14.95, 9780060892586/0060892587) is now out in paperback. She also appears on the Charlie Rose Show tonight.
• James Fallows, national correspondent of the Atlantic Monthly and author of Blind Into Baghdad: America's War in Iraq (Vintage, $13.95, 978030727796/0307277968).

 

Starring Nick Nolte, Scott Mechlowicz and Amy Smart and directed by Victor Salva, Peaceful Warrior, based on Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book that Changes Lives by Dan Millman, opens in more than 1,000 theaters this coming Friday, March 30. The film was released with limited distribution last year.

Originally published in 1980, Way of the Peaceful Warrior is the autobiographical story of the author's relationship with an unlikely mentor whose teachings about spirit over strength profoundly affected him.

New World Library has published a trade paperback movie tie-in edition of Way of the Peaceful Warrior ($12.95, 9781932073201/1932073205) as well as Wisdom of the Peaceful Warrior: A Companion to the Book That Changes Lives by Dan Millman ($12.95, 9781932073218/1932073213).

In an unusual promotion, Best Buy and Universal Pictures will give away up to $15 million in tickets to the movie through April 1 online at bestbuy.com/peacefulwarrior. Universal is taking the money it would have used on a traditional marketing campaign to fund the giveaway. "We wanted to find a way to give this film--and films like it--a real chance to compete in this marketplace," Adam Fogelson, president of marketing at Universal, said in a statement. "This movie's inspiring and positive message connects powerfully with people."

Andrew Carnegie by David Nasaw (Penguin Press) has won the $50,000 New-York Historical Society American Book Prize, according to today's New York Times. The Society's board chairman called the book "magisterial" and noted that Carnegie "set himself the ultimate goal of donating all his wealth to society, and at the same time he became a devoted advocate of world peace. The example set by this extraordinary life is remarkably relevant to us today." Nasaw is the Arthur Schlesinger professor of history at the City University of New York Graduate Center.

 

Karl Pohrt of Shaman Drum, Ann Arbor, Mich., was one of three booksellers to win the South Awareness Tour sweepstakes, sponsored by Algonquin Books (with the help of Shelf Awareness) to celebrate the publication of A Miracle of Catfish, a novel Larry Brown had nearly completed before his untimely death in 2004, and to join the 14th Annual Oxford Conference for the Book, which honored Larry Brown this year. Here he offers an account of the beginning of the tour:

March 22

Disembarking from the plane in Memphis this early afternoon is like emerging from a sensory deprivation tank. It is shocking. It's around 80 degrees here with a few clouds. There is a slight breeze. Sunnyland.

Dianne, my official photographer, and I collect our bags and head over to the Avis Rental Car office. We join our comrades, Stan Hynds, a pal of mine from Northshire Bookstore in Vermont, and Kevin Samprell, from Powell's Bookshop in Portland. Craig Popelars, our Algonquin Books host, and his friend Pete Macaluso are waiting next to a red Grand Marquis LS. The South Awareness Junket is ready to roll out.

We drive south from Memphis, down interstate 55, the Mississippi Delta on our right and the hill country on the left, to Oxford.

Two years ago I signed on for the Delta Literary Tour, offered by the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi. I would unreservedly recommend this tour to everyone. We visited a number of towns there--Greenville, Yazoo City, Clarksdale, Greenwood. As I recall, we toured the public library and the local cemetery in each town. In the libraries I felt the enormous sense of pride people here have toward their writers, musicians and civil rights era heroes.

The cemetery visits were more difficult to understand, and in fact struck me as slightly freaky. In the Yazoo City cemetery we all drank a toast to the memory of Willie Morris, the legendary editor and writer. One of our hosts poured a pint of whiskey into the ground above his grave. Morris struggled with alcoholism, especially late in his life, and I wondered if this was the most appropriate way to honor him.

But what do I know? It's probably like Craig Brewer said about the way he uses sexuality in his films to destabilize audiences: "It's wrong and right all at the same time, which to me is kind of like a real good definition of the South."

And I recall thinking that our tour guide in Clarksdale knew more about the dead in the cemetery there than I knew about my neighbors back home.   

I thought that these folks are in a profoundly different relationship with their past than people are where I'm from. The dead are present in the minds of the living here. People seem to be in an ongoing conversation with their dead. This is one of the strong thematic elements in A Miracle of Catfish.

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If I was to construct a sacred geography of North America, Oxford, Miss., would be identified on the map as a spiritual hot spot right along with Thoreau's Walden Pond, D.H. Lawrence's crypt north of Taos and Harney Peak in the Black Hills, where Black Elk had his vision. Oxford is the hometown of William Faulkner, the all-time top Magus of North American word wizards.

Outside of the Oxford City Hall there is a somewhat goofy statue of Faulkner staring off into the distance and sitting on a park bench, but the pilgrimage site for hardcore Faulkner fandom is Rowan Oak, his home. It is within walking distance of downtown and is now owned and maintained by the University of Mississippi.

As my fantasies of southern plantation homes go, Rowan Oak doesn't live up to the elegance of Gone With the Wind's Tara, but the house is set back from the road and the walk in under the stately cypress trees is very pleasant. The place is serene and comfortable.

Why has Mississippi produced so many extraordinary writers? Its literacy rates are the worst in the nation, the economic possibilities seem limited at best, and so many terrible things have happened here.  

In the case of Oxford, a part of the answer is Faulkner's presence. Faulkner chose the history and the citizens of LaFayette County as subjects for his immense gifts as a writer, elevating Oxford into the pantheon of world literature, marking the place forever. He shaped people's sense of themselves in this community. Larry Brown continued the project.

Oxford is also the home of Square Books, a wonderful independent bookshop that is a defining force in the cultural life of the community. In fact, it is a force in shaping the cultural life of the entire Deep South. I've known owners Richard and Lisa Howorth for about a decade now, having worked with Richard on the ABA Board. Since 2001, he has been the mayor of Oxford. (More on Square Books in a future entry.)

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Our first stop after we check into our hotel is the Thacker Mountain Radio show at the Oxford Conference Center. The large ballroom is packed with people, standing room only. I greet Lyn Roberts, the vivacious former lawyer from New Orleans who runs Square Books while Richard manages Oxford, and famed Arkansas bookseller Mary Gay Shipley. Craig introduces me to Shannon Ravenel, co-founder of Algonquin Books and series editor of the Best American Short Stories and the New Stories from the South. Ms. Ravenel edited A Miracle of Catfish. The program is a wonderful mix of live music and storytelling, featuring Alejandro Escovedo and Clyde Edgerton.

Following the radio show, we drive eight miles southwest of Oxford for dinner in Taylor. If one didn't know any better, the village of Taylor (population 288) might at first glance be mistaken for the sister city of Al Capp's Dogpatch. Actually, it's an artists' community (the rent is cheap) and home of the Taylor Grocery, the exterior and interior of which look to me like something from a set for Lil' Abner. But it's for real. Despite the rustic appearance, this restaurant is a bohemian hangout for writers, artists and musicians. The Taylor Grocery is a restaurant famous for its fried catfish and hushpuppies. The owner, Lynn Hewlett, a lifetime resident of Taylor (and a friend of Larry Brown), is doing heroic work by keeping this place open.

A little past 9 p.m., we're back in Oxford, shoehorned into Proud Larry's, a popular watering hole Brown immortalized in his essay So Much Fish, So Close to Home, for the Larry Brown Concert. The all-star lineup this evening includes Vic Chesnutt, Brent Best, Robert Earle Keen and Alejandro Escovedo, among others. These roots rock/alternative country artists are all here to honor the memory of their friend Larry Brown.

By midnight I've just had too much fun. I'm tired and I've got to pace myself.