We're so happy to announce that Shelf Awareness columnist and contributor Robert Gray won last week's New Yorker cartoon caption contest, which we mentioned here July 31. Congratulations!
P.S. It was the best, wittiest caption by far!
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Some birthday gifts have a more lasting effect than others. In
1987, Toni Bruner received 600 romance novels from a friend,
effectively doubling her collection and leading her to open New &
Recycled Romances, Costa Mesa, Calif.
"So here we are, 20 years later," Bruner told the Daily Pilot, "still in the happy ending business. And we're getting busier and busier, because so many small bookstores are closing."
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The Summit Daily News ran a brief "Bizline" Q&A with Jim and Karen Berg, owners of the Next Page, Frisco, Colo.
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Gallimard Jeunesse, the French publisher of Harry Potter titles, will
not seek damages from the 16-year-old boy who apparently translated
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows into French and posted it online,
according to the AP (via the Washington Post). The boy spent a night in jail and could still be prosecuted in the courts.
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A note about Brooke Astor, the New York City socialite
and philanthropist who died yesterday at age 105: in May, Norton
released The Last Mrs. Astor: A New York Story by Frances Kiernan ($24.95, 9780393057201/0393057208). A former editor at the New Yorker and author of Seeing Mary Plain: A Life of Mary McCarthy, Kiernan painted what USA Today called "an intimate, 'sexy' portrait."
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"Can life's problems really be solved by reading a book?" The Hindu
reported that Indian book buyers seem to think so: "The trend towards
using self-help books for motivation, inspiration, spiritual guidance
or just personality improvement has been rising over the years,
according to booksellers in the city."
"People rely on
self-study more now," said M. Raju, manager of the Oxford bookstore on
Haddows Road, Chennai. "In terms of volume of sales, it's about 25 per
cent of our total sales." The most popular titles include Who Moved My Cheese?, The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari and The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.
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Effective
September 6, Maria Kjoller is joining Lerner Publishing Group as
director of rights, special sales and international distribution, with
the aim of strengthening rights sales and expanding the company's
presence in educational and international markets. Kjoller was formerly
subsidiary rights director at Farrar, Straus & Giroux Books for
Young Readers.
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Paul
Feldstein, formerly managing director of Trafalgar Square, now part of
IPG, and Susan Feldstein, most recently commissioning editor for
Northern Ireland at Gill & Macmillan, have formed the Feldstein
Agency, which will offer a variety of services, including agenting,
scouting, right sales, editorial services, recruitment and
international sales and distribution consulting to publishers and authors in the U.K., U.S. and
elsewhere.
The Feldstein Agency is located at 47a Princetown Road, Bangor, Northern Ireland BT20 3TA; 011-44-2891-462662; thefeldsteinagency.co.uk.
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What does prime bookstore display space cost in Finland?
"Suomalainen Kirjakauppa, the largest Finnish bookstore chain, is
selling prominent display spots to publishers in the same way as it is
selling them advertising space," the Helsingin Sanomat reported. "Premium promotion spaces include for
instance the reservation of a front-of-store table or a display window
at each outlet. Another alternative is to buy a display stand outside a
shop."
Kristiina Rantanen, who is
in charge of purchasing at Suomalainen Kirjakauppa, said, "The
promotion spaces at our stores are not automatically subject to a
charge. We discuss them separately with publishers." The Helsingin Sanomat asserted that some spots have specific pricing, however: "For example,
the hiring of a display spot for two weeks at the bookstore’s outlet in
the Kamppi shopping centre cost EUR 700 [about $953] in 2006."
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In a blog post for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer,
Michael Lieberman, co-owner of Wessel and Lieberman Booksellers,
Seattle, Wash., challenged the bookseller rating system now used by
Abebooks, which, he argued, "has nothing to do with bookselling
and everything to do with order fulfillment. The amount of stars you
earn is based exclusively on your order fulfillment percentage. Nothing
more, nothing less. The system is skewed toward failure for the
bookseller."
Lieberman wrote that "at some point the tide is
going to turn, and there are signs that is beginning to turn, where the
negatives far outweigh the positives and it no longer makes sense to
sell your books on these types of sites. It is always hard to jump out
of a revenue stream but it sure beats being drowned in one."
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