Starbucks has picked the third book in its relaunched book program: Listening Is an Act of Love: A Celebration of American Life from the StoryCorps Project edited by Dave Isay (Penguin Press, $24.95, 9781594201400/1594201404), the AP reported. The collection of 50 stories compiled in a book and on CD will go on sale at Starbucks' company-operated stores on November 8, the book's pub date.

Accounts of daily life by StoryCorps contributors are broadcast on Fridays on NPR's Morning Edition. StoryCorps has interviewed more than 10,000 people since 2003.

Previous Starbucks picks were For One More Day by Mitch Albom and A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah.

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CreateSpace, which Amazon.com bought in 2005, has launched an online Books on Demand service and will not charge setup fees for those books--and at the same time is ending setup fees for its DVD and CD on demand services.

CreateSpace on demand books will be displayed on Amazon as "in stock" and will be shipped within 24 hours. They are eligible for various Amazon programs, including Amazon Prime. Books are printed with full-color paperback covers and text may be printed in black-and-white or color and in multiple trim sizes. Authors may order copies at "competitive wholesale prices."

In a statement, Amazon's senior v-p, North American retail, Jeff Wilke said, "The new CreateSpace Books on Demand service removes substantial economic barriers and makes it really easy for authors who want to self-publish their books and distribute them on Amazon.com."

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The winner of the 2007 Miles Franklin Award, Australia's prestigious literary prize, may soon vanish from the shelves of the country's largest bookstore chain, Angus & Robertson. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Tower Books, which distributes the award-winning title--Carpenteria by Alexis Wright--is "among the smaller Australian distributors and publishers that have received a letter from A&R demanding a payment if they want their books to be sold by the company's 180 bookstores around the country. . . . The letter from A&R Whitcoulls Group's commercial manager, Charlie Rimmer, said 'over 40 per cent of our supplier agreements fall below our requirements in terms of profit earned' and 'invites' recipients to pay amounts said to range between $2,500 and $20,000 by August 17."

Michael Rakusin, director of Tower Books, said, "It is incredibly hard to know what the corporate strategy is but there had to be a more polite, more constructive way of discussing it."

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Tintin in the Congo is in trouble again, this time in Belgium, which controlled the country now known as the Democratic Republic of Congo until 1960. Reuters reported that a Congolese student living in Brussels has begun legal action to have the book "declared racist and removed from bookstores."  

"I want to put an end to sales of this cartoon book in shops, both for children and for adults. It's racist and it is filled with colonial-era propaganda," said Mbutu Mondondo Bienvenu.

The book gained international notoriety earlier this summer when Britain's Commission for Racial Equality made a similar demand, prompting Borders to move the comic book from the children's section to the graphic novel section of its stores.

 

The Central Intelligence Agency, which doesn't want Valerie Plame Wilson to state in her memoir when she started working for the agency even though it's a matter of public record, has issued an unusual, long statement blasting Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA by Tim Weiner (Doubleday, $27.95, 9780385514453/038551445X), published June 25, for "paint[ing] far too dark a picture of the agency's past. Backed by selective citations, sweeping assertions, and a fascination with the negative, Weiner overlooks, minimizes, or distorts agency achievements."

After some case-by-case rebuttals, the CIA ends:

"What of the CIA today? This is the agency that did much to oust the Taliban from Afghanistan after 9/11 and collapse the Al-Qa'ida safe haven there. This is the agency that unraveled the A.Q. Khan proliferation network and learned enough about Libya's nuclear program to persuade Tripoli to step back from it. And the agency that has helped foil terrorist plots and erode the structure and leadership of a terrorist movement that is extremely dangerous and highly adaptable. Weiner's verdict: These skilled and dedicated officers are 'the weakest cadre of spies and analysts in the history of the CIA.' "

"The agency makes no claims to perfection--far from it. We strive each day to learn from our successes and failures. Not even Weiner can claim that the CIA shrinks from its past. The huge volume of material we have declassified, rare for an intelligence service, underscores the point. With a strong range of sources, Tim Weiner had an opportunity to write a balanced history of a complex, important subject. But he did not. His bias overwhelms his scholarship. One cannot learn the true story of the CIA from Legacy of Ashes."

Here's more information on the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association fall conference Sunday and Monday, October 14-15, in Baltimore, Md. The former trade show is being changed into a kind of sales conference at which it's hoped publishers will provide booksellers with sales, marketing, display, event and other information that will make booksellers an extension of the sales force for selling fall and winter titles.

Among changes, featured authors will mingle with booksellers at all events, not just their events, giving them more opportunities to meet booksellers and handsell their books. In addition, Lisa Tucker, author of Tales of the Road: What Happens After You've Published, will lead a workshop for authors to discuss bookstore appearances, making the right impression and "the care and feeding of an author."

On to the schedule:

On the eve of the conference, there's an early bird buffet supper on Saturday from 8-9:30 featuring Laura Lippman, author of What the Dead Know, followed by the Quiz Bowl (9:30-11).

After a Harbor walk and breakfast, Sunday morning from 9:45 to 12:15 is devoted to pick of the lists, featuring rep presentations about their favorites on the fall and winter lists, with marketing sheets for all titles. One room is devoted to adult titles; another to children's and YA titles.

The Movable Feast Luncheon features 18 regional authors, a mix of picture book authors and illustrators, YA, adult fiction and nonfiction. The authors spend time at each table, talking about their books and booking store appearances.

Afternoon workshops run from 2:30 to 6 and include the following topics:

• Shop Local: Forming Business Alliances in Your Community.
• Getting the Most Out of Your Floor Space. (This is an expansion of a recent NAIBAhood Gathering and addresses store design, layout and customer impressions.)
• Children's Pick of the Lists selected by regional booksellers.
• Children's Book Editor-Author Panel, which will feature children's book editors Paula Wiseman and Jean Feiwel and their authors, Kate Feiffer (Henry the Dog with No Tail/S&S Books for Young Readers) and Lauren Thompson (Ballerina Dreams/Feiwel & Friends).
• Internet Marketing, which will cover basics as well as blogs, MySpace and webcasts.
• Non Author (or authorless) Events.
• And three ABA education modules: Staff Development; How to Do a Customer Survey; and How to Be the Story.
  

The Reading Room (5-6) will highlight four emerging regional authors.

At the opening reception (6-7:30) publishers and authors will be at display tables to sign books and talk with booksellers. Kim Gombar of HarperCollins will receive the Helmuth Sales Rep of the Year Award.

The Awards Banquet (7:30-9) will feature the NAIBA Book of the Year Awards, the Legacy Awards and the International Association of Crime Writers's annual Dashiell Hammett Awards. Afterwards the Noir Bar (9-11) will celebrate the Hammett Awards finalists and other thriller, crime and mystery writers.

On Sunday, the breakfast (8-9:30) will include NAIBA's annual meeting and another pick of the lists, by independent rep groups.

From 9:30-4 the exhibit floor is open.

The Children's Author/Illustrator Show & Tell (Noon-1:30) highlights authors and illustrators in the region who want to do store and school events; they will meet with booksellers to show off their talent and presentations.

At the Networking Lunch (Noon-1:30) attendees will discuss by table such topics as emerging leaders; bookstore tourism; ABFFE; and getting the most from an ABA membership. Also NAIBA Board members will host a table to chat with booksellers about the new direction of the conference and benefits of being a member of NAIBA.

Autographings will be held from 1-3:30.

 

This morning's Book Report, the weekly AM radio book-related show organized by Windows a bookshop, Monroe, La., features interviews with:

• James Lee Burke, whose new book is The Tin Roof Blowdown (S&S, $26, 9781416548485/1416548483).
• Melody Golding, photographer for Katrina: Mississippi Women Remember (University Press of Mississippi, $32, 9781578069569/1578069564).

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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Tonight on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart: Senator Joe Biden, author of Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics (Random House, $25.95, 9781400065363/1400065364).

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Tonight on the Colbert Report: Tina Brown, author of The Diana Chronicles (Doubleday, $27.50, 9780385517089/0385517084).

The longlist for the 2007 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, which honors "the best novel of the year written by a citizen of the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland," consists of 13 titles and includes four first novels. The shortlist will be announced on Thursday, September 6, and the winner will be announced on Tuesday, October 16.

The Guardian calls the list, which is shorter than the usual longlist, "one of the most low-key in many years." Among the titles on it: Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach and Lloyd Jones's Mister Pip, which has just been published in the U.S.

Incidentally the Prize administrators have relaunched the website, which now includes an online magazine with author interviews and news as well as an interactive debate section.

 

Garnering the top spot on the Readers' Forum bestseller list is a book that can be purchased only at this Wayne, Pa., retailer. Written and published by store co-owner Ed Luoma, Without Knowing It has sold some 800 copies since it went on sale May 18. The memoir has even outpaced Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which is the store's No. 2 seller for the week ending Friday, August 3.

Luoma described Without Knowing It as part "psychological mystery" and part "quirky romantic comedy with some unexpected twists." Without Knowing It encompasses themes of friendship, loss and hope and is told in both epistolary form and first-person narrative. Along with endeavoring to make sense of the suicide of a close friend, Luoma reveals what ensues when he finds himself inexplicably drawn to a bookshop customer.

Without Knowing It has proven popular with Readers' Forum customers, many of whom were eagerly anticipating the book's arrival. "I sold six copies before the truck was unloaded," said Luoma, who made the decision to take on the role of publisher after Without Knowing It was enthusiastically received by several editors but ultimately turned down.

For the book's cover, Luoma chose an image of the painting Summer Night's Dream by Edvard Munch, and the title comes from a phrase in Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet. Throughout the narrative are references to literary works and writers. For example, a bookstore customer ambitiously chooses Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past as the inaugural selection of a reading group, which sets in motion some of the story's events.

Much of Without Knowing It takes place in Readers' Forum, re-named Bound Matters in the book. The local setting, noted Luoma, appeals to the store's clientele, who have also made the tomes Water for Elephants, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan and Eat, Pray, Love among the retailer's top five bestsellers. Customers "recognize characters in it, but at the same time you don't have to be familiar with the neighborhood to enjoy it," said Luoma. "It should appeal to people who love books no matter where they are because it is, in large part, about the love of language and a good story, and in a way it's about the book business."

The business of selling this particular book has been rewarding for Readers' Forum. Some 10% of the first printing of 5,000 copies sold within a month, and it continues to sell an average of 8-10 copies per day during what is typically the store's slowest summer period.

Without Knowing It is featured on a display table as well as in the store's front window and has been designated a discussion pick by several area reading groups. The book's exploration of such topics as depressive disorders, alcoholism, sexual orientation, friendship and the notions of what constitutes a family, commented Luoma, provide plenty of fodder for discussion.

Luoma is undecided about future self-publishing ventures, but he might not want to disappoint the growing audience for Without Knowing It. Already some readers have asked for a sequel.--Shannon McKenna

Readers' Forum is located at 116 N. Wayne Avenue, Wayne, Pa. 19087; 610-254-9040; www.readers-forum.com.