Libro.fm plans to launch in the U.K., Australian and New Zealand in July and will begin by inviting booksellers in those countries to register as well as join its Audiobook Listening Copy (ALC) program. The ALC program gives booksellers upcoming and new audiobooks to listen to for free on Libro.fm in advance of the international launch.

"In 2022, 29% of new visitors to our website were from outside the U.S., so we know that there are readers all around the world who are eager to support their local bookshops with their audiobook purchases," said Madison Mullen, product manager, Libro.fm. "We have six years of experience working with 12,000-plus booksellers across 2,100 bookstores in the U.S. and Canada, and our highest priority is making sure that Libro.fm is an audiobook service that booksellers around the world will be proud to promote to their customers."

Currently, more than 80% of Libro.fm partner bookstore revenue comes from monthly memberships, though customers can also purchase individual audiobooks. Noting that Amazon's Audible has a subscription model, Libro.fm co-founder and CEO Mark Pearson commented: "We live in a subscription driven world for audiobooks, and also use à la carte offerings to bring new customers to bookshops."

Dan Slevin, CEO of Booksellers NZ, said, "Globally the audiobook business is booming and we're delighted to see an option that will allow local audiobook readers to access content from Aotearoa (and the world) and support their local bookshop at the same time."

Libro.fm's international expansion announcement comes just two days after Bookshop.org said it plans to offer audiobooks and e-books in the U.K. as well as add e-books in the U.S. Bookshop partners with Libro.fm to offer audiobooks in the U.S.

Erica Atkins

In response to the horrible news of the murder last weekend of Erica Atkins, owner of Birdsong Books, Locust Grove, Ga., a GoFundMe campaign has been launched to benefit the family; the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance is organizing booksellers to mentor Atkins's daughter, Jasmine, who plans to keep the store open; and the Book Industry Charitable Foundation (Binc) is providing support.

The GoFundMe to help Atkins's family was launched by Shanna Amoah and in one day has raised $1,000 toward its goal of $10,000. Amoah wrote in part, "To know Erica was to love her. She was the kindest, sharing, loving, smart, and determined lady. She was a mother, niece, sister, friend and leader. She leaves behind a young son, a daughter, employees and her beloved business. She was a light and will be truly missed by many."

SIBA has been in contact with Atkins's daughter, Jasmine, who plans to keep the store open to honor her mother's legacy. She told SIBA, "My mother started the bookstore because her parents met at a bookstore. She's always had a fascination with books and it was just something that stuck with her. My mother was the smartest woman I know. She wanted to get children to start reading again and put down the phones after the pandemic because she knew that was important."

Jasmine said that her top request is for "mentors who can guide her in the business of bookselling," SIBA wrote. Atlanta-area booksellers especially are encouraged to help and should contact SIBA board member Julia Davis of the Bookworm Bookstore, Powder Springs, Ga., via e-mail.

Booksellers at the Copperfield's Books store in Petaluma, Calif., have organized a union, joining the Industrial Workers of the World, but their request for voluntary recognition has been denied, the union said. Without voluntary recognition, the usual next step is to have eligible staff vote on unionizing. Unions at Moe's Books, Berkeley, Calif., and Page 1 Books in Albuquerque, N.Mex., are also affiliated with the IWW.

The Copperfield's Books Union stated that it has "overwhelming support among staff [and] will continue seeking recognition. As it stands, staff members, including those who have been with Copperfield's for decades, are making minimum wage, or barely over minimum wage, and many of us struggle to meet basic financial needs to survive. Our union will be diligent in securing living wages, better healthcare, and non-discrimination training for all workers."

The union added, "We want to reiterate that we love Copperfield's and we care a great deal about upholding its values as a place of knowledge and inclusivity. We would not be organizing if we did not care. We are only asking Copperfield's Books to be the fair and responsible employer that the community already believes it to be. We are asking Copperfield's Books to recognize our union and to engage in good-faith negotiations for better wages, benefits, and working environments."

The union is seeking community support and plans to hold a "unionization celebration" tomorrow, March 11, 12-4 p.m., outside the Petaluma store, with speeches at 2 p.m. "Come say hello, learn more about what it means to unionize, and show your support! We are proud to be part of Copperfield's Books--we would not be organizing if we did not care. We ask you now--our family, friends, and members of the community--for your support."

Founded in 1981, Copperfield's has nine stores in Sonoma, Napa and Marin Counties, just north of San Francisco.

Laurie Halse Anderson

American author Laurie Halse Anderson has been named laureate of the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, which is given annually to authors, illustrators, oral storytellers and reading promoters "for their outstanding contribution to children’s and young adult literature." The winner receives five million Swedish kronor (about $466,200). The award ceremony will be held May 30 in Stockholm.

The jury's citation said: "In her tightly written novels for young adults, Laurie Halse Anderson gives voice to the search for meaning, identity, and truth, both in the present and the past. Her darkly radiant realism reveals the vital role of time and memory in young people’s lives. Pain and anxiety, yearning and love, class and sex are investigated with stylistic precision and dispassionate wit. With tender intensity, Laurie Halse Anderson evokes, moods, and emotions and never shies from even the hardest things."

Anderson is the author of more than 30 books, including Shout; Speak; The Impossible Knife of Memory; and Wintergirls. The prize organizers noted: "In her richly expressive novels for young people--all narrated in the first person--Anderson gives voice to the adolescent experience with sometimes brutal honesty. Here is resignation, even desperation, but also a determination for change kept alive by the search for meaning, identity, and truth. The yearning for love and belonging is a recurring theme for Anderson.... Alongside her writing, she is powerfully committed to issues related to sexual violence, diversity, and book censorship."

Hardcover books, a welcoming space to read a sampling before buying them, and titles organized by genre are among the things preferred most by members of Gen Z readers--ages 10-25, as defined for the Wi2023 presentation in Seattle. The panelists, ranging from teens to early 20s and nominated by local booksellers, engaged in a lively, candid conversation moderated by Tegan Tigani, children's buyer for Queen Anne Book Company, Seattle, Wash., and nominated to be the next president of the American Booksellers Association.

Payton Ransdell, longtime patron of Queen Anne Book Company and now a college graduate working as guest services supervisor at the Bellevue Arts Museum, Bellevue, Wash., said she believes one of the most important things about being in a bookstore is "being seen and heard by the bookseller. Establishing a personal connection is important, especially post-pandemic." Ransdell had worked in a B&N where she felt the experience could be "overwhelming" for patrons. "Indie bookstores are all cozy," she said.

(l.-r.) Moderator Tegan Tigani; Payton Ransdell; Aurora Cox-Hultquist; Rachel Tromble.

Shelf talkers that suggest "If you liked this, you'll like that" are helpful, said Rachel Tromble. She used to go to the school library often, but now that she's in high school, they don't offer a lot of the newer books. She is also "not always happy" with the recommendations that pop up for her on GoodReads. "Bookstores that separate titles by genre makes it easier to find things," Tromble said. "There was also a trust gained from my coming in so much." She created a website for classmates when she was in middle school "so they could get excited about reading."

Aurora Cox-Hultquist agreed that shelf talkers can be helpful, "but every shelf talker says every book is like Stranger Things. All the things I like on TV and in films are based on books." For Cox-Hultquist, the bookstore is within walking distance, whereas the library is a drive away, so she's much more likely to frequent the bookstore. She watched the Third Place Books location near her being constructed and knew "I would be there and reading." A key attraction was the  store's monthly Teen Lit Club, and the group's leader would recommend additional titles to her, but that has since ended. She uses the school library mostly for homework, but a recent display included "some books I might want to check out."

Ransdell, Tromble and Cox-Hultquist all said they started reading YA books at "age 10 or 11." Ransdell named specific gateway titles, first introduced to her by her older sister: Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater; The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins; and Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. When Tigani asked what would keep them reading and coming back to the bookstore, Cox-Hultquist said it's the environment: "Sometimes it's just, 'I want to go to the bookstore and hang out,' " she said. She discovered Libro.fm at her bookstore, and confessed it was book programs such as the Teen Lit Book Club that first attracted her. Ransdell agreed that book clubs first lured her into Queen Anne Book Company also, and from there she volunteered to work at author signings in the store and formed a deeper connection to the bookstore community.  

"What do we get wrong?" Tigani asked. Ransdell was the first to respond, "We like reading the classics, too. I loved The Odyssey." She added, "It's okay to point out the wrongs of those books. Teachers get afraid to teach them; that's not the right approach." Cox-Hultquist agreed, saying, "Don't shy away from recommending classics. Some of my favorite books are classics, like Romeo and Juliet." Tromble added another important point: "It's a misunderstanding that we don't like reading. I don't always like the required reading." --Jennifer M. Brown

Dina Norlund

Dina Norlund, the Norwegian author and illustrator known for the graphic novel The Snowcat Prince and other work, died of cancer last month. She was 27 years old.

Born in Oslo in 1995, Norlund made her debut in 2017 with Fern & the Moon Rabbit, a short, self-published book that grew out of an Inktober challenge she participated in. That was followed by the picture book Greylegs and the comics Sprout and Wild, and in 2020 she self-published The Snowcat Prince. It was later picked up by Danish publisher Egmont and went on to be nominated for an ARK Children's Book Award. The English version of The Snowcat Prince was published by Oni Press earlier this week.

"Dina was an incredibly talented artist and storyteller," said Grace Scheipeter, editor at Oni Press. "She was such a joy and inspiration to work with, and her passing is a heartbreaking loss. I know her work will continue to inspire young artists, authors and readers the same way it will inspire me for years to come."

Norlund was also active on YouTube and Twitch, where she posted tutorials, streamed drawing videos and shared encouragement. Prior to her death, she was working on a new graphic novel called Nettle & the Hush-Hush.

Oni Press will be donating a portion of The Snowcat Prince's proceeds to the Norwegian children's charity Sykehusklovnene.

On Wednesday evening, Gibson's Bookstore, Concord, N.H., hosted a launch event for Goodbye to Clocks Ticking: How We Live While Dying, the elegant, meditative memoir by Joseph Monninger (Steerforth Press) about how he dealt with what for a time was a diagnosis of terminal cancer. Before a full house, the author was in conversation with Laura Knoy, former longtime host of NHPR's The Exchange whose podcast ReadLocalNH celebrates New Hampshire authors and independent bookstores.

"My new favorite thing has been sitting in the front of the shop to look at the beautiful blooms outside!" Fable Hollow Bookshoppe, Knoxville, Tenn., posted on Instagram. "It's been almost a month since we've soft opened and we have been doing our very best to get our feet under us! Keeping on top of ordering and figuring out how much to staff which times and still having time to do all the other things has been a real learning process. We're hoping that in a few more weeks we'll be able to start adding more to our days. Things like readings, author signings, bookclubs... all of those great activities that bring people together! Until then, we have loved meeting all of you and getting to share our creation with you! You all have truly been the most wonderful patrons."

Burke's Book Store, Memphis, Tenn., shared photos of the shop's sidewalk chalkboard, noting: "New chalkboard art by the Amazing Amanda!"

Seta Bedrossian Zink has been promoted to senior publicity manager at Running Press/Black Dog & Leventhal.

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Adelaide Cronin has been promoted to sales coordinator from sales assistant at Holiday House, Peachtree, and Pixel+Ink.

The Fraud by Zadie Smith (Penguin Press).

Paulina Chávez (The Expanding Universe of Ashley Garcia, Fate: The Winx Saga) and Rose Portillo (Zoot Suit, The Exorcist II) have been added to the cast of the Disney+ film Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, based on Judith Viorst's classic book, Deadline reported. They join previously announced stars Eva Longoria, George Lopez and Jesse Garcia.

From writer Matt Lopez and director Marvin Lemus, Alexander "tells the story of 11-year-old Alexander Garcia who thinks he has the worst luck in the world. When his family sets off on a road trip to California, he's pretty sure disaster awaits at every corner. His anxiety only increases when a family secret is revealed," Deadline wrote. The film is produced by Shawn Levy, Dan Levine, and Lisa Henson. Marisol Roncali and Chelsea Ellis Bloch serve as casting directors.

The New Literary Project released a shortlist of five finalists for the $50,000 Joyce Carol Oates Prize, which is presented "to a mid-career author of fiction who has earned an extraordinarily distinguished reputation and garnered the widespread appreciation of readers." The winner, to be named in April, will be in brief residence at the University of California, Berkeley, and in the Bay Area in October. The finalists and their most recent publications are:

Rabih Alameddine, The Wrong End of the Telescope (Grove Atlantic)
Clare Beams, The Illness Lesson (Doubleday)
James Hannaham, Didn't Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta (Little, Brown)
David Means, Two Nurses, Smoking (FSG)
Manuel Muñoz, The Consequences (Graywolf)

photo: Wynne Photography

Mia Tsai is a Taiwanese American author of speculative fiction. She has a hard time picking favorites, which is displayed in the sections below. When she's not writing, she's editing, teaching, photographing, taking care of her orchids and trying to convince her dog to play fetch. Her debut novel, Bitter Medicine (Tachyon, March 14, 2023), is a contemporary fantasy about how a Chinese immortal and a French elf navigate love, family loyalty and workplace demands.

Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:

You want:

• Magical calligraphy
• He's a 10 (but has anxiety)
• Action
• Romance
• Xianxia

Bitter Medicine has:

• All that.

On your nightstand now:

Drizzle, Dreams, and Lovestruck Things by Maya Prasad; The River of Silver by S.A. Chakraborty; Partners in Crime by Alisha Rai; The Song of the Cell by Siddhartha Mukherjee.

Favorite book when you were a child:

I had so many. I was a bookworm who read anything I could get my hands on.

Elementary school me:

Black Beauty by Anna Sewell; King of the Wind by Marguerite Henry; Pioneer Germ Fighters by Navin Sullivan. (I found this book at a book sale for 45 cents, and it was old even then. I still have it. It smells like old paper and it's wonderful.)

Upper elementary school me:

The Black Cauldron by Lloyd Alexander; The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien; The Hot Zone by Richard Preston.

Middle school me:

Anna to the Infinite Power by Mildred Ames; E. coli 0157 by Mary Heersink; The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley; Mythology by Edith Hamilton.

High school me:

Sabriel by Garth Nix; The World According to Garp by John Irving; The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan; the Exiles series by Melanie Rawn; Black Wine by Candas Jane Dorsey.

Your top five authors:

John Irving, Garth Nix, Siddhartha Mukherjee.

I feel it's very unfair to pick only five, because if I include certain authors, then I must include others (like my favorite romance authors, or my favorite speculative fiction authors, or my favorite... you get the idea). So I will just stop here!

Book you've faked reading:

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.

Book you're an evangelist for:

Folklorn by Angela Mi Young Hur.

Book you've bought for the cover:

David Mogo Godhunter by Suyi Davies Okungbowa (a gorgeous, gorgeous cover and also a fabulous novel!).

Book you hid from your parents:

The Nancy Drew series, because it wasn't "serious literature" or considered part of the "classics."

Book that changed your life:

Too many to list. The World According to Garp. Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon and Beloved. David Sedaris's Me Talk Pretty One Day. The Lord of the Rings. N.K. Jemisin's The Fifth Season, which rekindled my love of fantasy and has one of the best turns in all of speculative fiction. The Childcraft encyclopedia series, every volume of which I read cover to cover. DK's Eyewitness series about space, which led to Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe.

Favorite line from a book:

I can't think of anything right now, but my hunch is that it was probably written by Kazuo Ishiguro or Toni Morrison.

Five books you'll never part with:

My signed copy of Sabriel; The Chicago Manual of Style; Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones; The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen; Homer's The Odyssey, translated by Emily Wilson.

Book you most want to read again for the first time:

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller.

Pop music and romantic comedies go together like Hepburn and Tracy, as the hallowed status of so many rom-com soundtracks attests. This Bird Has Flown, the first novel from musician Susanna Hoffs (the Bangles, Ming Tea), is a pop confection that's too substantive to qualify as bubblegum and too much fun to qualify as emo. Call it power pop with soul.

As the novel begins, 33-year-old singer-songwriter and lifelong Angeleno Jane Start is in a bad way: not only is she in the "Where are they now?" files, but her filmmaker boyfriend has just left her for (what else?) a young lingerie model. This has precipitated both a mortifying move back into her parents' house and grudging participation in an embarrassing cash grab: Jane finds herself at a Las Vegas bachelor party karaoke-ing her lone, 10-year-old hit song.

Desperate to get away and dedicate some time to songwriting, Jane accepts an offer to stay at her British manager and best friend Pippa's London flat. On the flight to Heathrow, Jane sits next to Tom Hardy, a dreamy Oxford professor of English literature who has never heard of her; for Jane, this is, as she later reflects, "liberating.... We were simply two people who'd made out on a plane, in some mutual moment of fancy." After the flight, Jane gives Tom her number, and they eventually meet up and play house in Oxford. At one point Jane wonders, "How was he single?" And why does his apartment have no personal photos? And why does he seem evasive about his past? And why doesn't Jane just ask him? Because then This Bird Has Flown wouldn't be a romantic comedy!

Hoffs injects moments of exhilaration into the routine humiliations of fallen stardom. (Readers familiar with Hoffs's career may twig that Jane's fate is what might have befallen the author if the Bangles hadn't come back strong after their first hit, 1986's "Manic Monday," which was, like Jane's big song, written by a revered songwriter--in the Bangles' case, Prince.) This Bird Has Flown has sex, drugs/drink, rock and roll, and also a screwball comedy's worth of misunderstandings and a bona fide crisis of conscience. Although there's always the air of inevitability hovering over a rom-com--is there really any doubt that the couple at its center will ultimately unite?--Hoffs is too good to end on the note that readers are listening for. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer

Shelf Talker: Centered on a heartbroken one-hit wonder hoping for a comeback, this romantic comedy from Bangles front woman Susanna Hoffs is the literary equivalent of power pop with soul.

Like most of you, we have a lot of books in our house. Too many? Apparently not, as our yearly purchases will attest. The strange thing about having a lot of books, however, is that eventually you reach a point, no matter how organized you think you are, when some of your treasured works start to vanish mysteriously. 

Readers are accustomed to the reality that a book's contents may begin to fade from memory with time. You find yourself recommending a favorite title (if you can remember the title) and then being bamboozled by the logical follow-up question: "What's it about?" Booksellers tend to be better than civilians at countering this tendency, largely through practice and particularly when it comes to their favorite handsells.

But a missing book--the object itself? How does that just fade away? It's a mystery, almost a locked room mystery, though we don't lock the rooms here. So where do they go? The plot is quite subtle and I could cite dozens of examples, but let's start with just one. Not long ago my wife and I were talking about Colum McCann's wonderful 1998 novel, This Side of Brightness. We have all of McCann's books in our collection, most of them signed and personalized because we love his work and, as it happens, Colum and I have been crossing paths occasionally for nearly 30 years.

The King's English's Anne Holman with Colum McCann at MPIBA FallCon in 2019.

At a first novelists event in Vermont in 1996, he inscribed a copy of Songdogs to me with the words: "Well-met in Chester on a winter evening, with great thanks for your supporting my work. Sláinte." Whenever he read at the Northshire Bookstore, where I worked as a bookseller, we would usually have a pint or two with friends and colleagues afterward. And just before the pandemic rolled in, we chatted when he was on tour promoting Apeirogon at MPIBA's FallCon in Denver, Colo.; and later at the 2020 Winter Institute in Baltimore, Md.

I know. That's a lot of background detail just to make this point: When I finally decided to venture downstairs to our home library and fetch my treasured copy of This Side of Brightness from the shelf, I was confident it would be there. But it wasn't. And if Colum's other titles had a hand in its escape, they weren't snitching. 

The mystery still remains unsolved, but it sparked a realization that books as objects can defy your memory just as mischievously as their contents sometimes can. I've begun informally taking stock: Where, for example is the copy of Salman Rushdie's story collection East West that he signed when he visited the bookstore in 1994? Or the copy of Insomnia Stephen King signed when he rolled into town on his limited 1994 cross-country motorcycle author tour? 

It's not like we never cull our collection. We're not book hoarders. But every time I decide to part with a signed or, more reluctantly, a personally inscribed book, it's usually for space considerations, a logical decision prompted by the realities of the business I'm in. I've received (acquired is too ambitious a word for the way in which my books accumulate) many signed editions over the years. Some mean a great deal to me; others not so much.

I'm sorry to say there are books I would never miss, though they seem the most reluctant to run away from home. That reminds me of a possibly apocryphal story about George Bernard Shaw finding a copy of one of his works in a used bookshop and noticing it is signed: "To ___, with esteem, G.B. Shaw." Buying the volume, he subsequently returned it to the original owner with an additional inscription: "With renewed esteem, G.B. Shaw."

I do know, however, what's worth keeping for me. There are books on our shelves that I'd never part with for reasons that can be emotional as well as intellectual. You know what makes certain books in your life talismanic, and part of that magic transcends the pages. 

In a recent Guardian piece headlined "Reading is precious--which is why I've been giving away my books," Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett wrote: "Some people treat books like totemic, magical objects.... When I moved in with my husband, he had very few books, not because he is not a reader, but because he grew up in a Buddhist household, prefers an uncluttered environment and places little value on physical objects. Once he has read a book, he simply donates it or gives it away, and holds on only to the ones he is sure he will reread. Extreme book-fetishists may argue I should leave him, but why should he be forced to live any longer with my hoarding?

"I was thinking about him the other day when I saw an Internet discussion about a man who told a bookshop employee that he only owns one book at a time, buying a new one when he has read the last one and got rid of it. 'The horror! How could he? I simply couldn't!' people wrote, leading me to reflect yet again on that contemporary tendency to treat having books as a sort of identity."

Ah, but some books are part of my identity. It's complicated. It's personal. And when they go missing, it also feels like loss.