To honor the traditional Columbus Day and to take a break after a grueling three-day week, Shelf Awareness isn't publishing tomorrow. We'll see you again on Monday!

 

British author Doris Lessing has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2007. In announcing the award, the Swedish Academy called her "that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny." The BBC noted that "Lessing is only the 11th woman to win the prize, considered by many to be the world's highest accolade for writers, since it started in 1901."

--- 

During its next two fiscal years, Books-A-Million will open as many as 28 new stores, close as many as 16 and open in two states where it has had no stores, Pennsylvania and Nebraska.

In fiscal 2008, BAM plans to open eight superstores, relocate three to four existing stores and close four to six stores, not counting the ones closed because of relocation. During fiscal 2009, BAM plans to open 15 to 20 stores, relocate five to 10 stores and close two to four stores, not counting stores that close and relocate.

---

But can the store ever move now?

Steve Fischer of NEIBA writes:

"In celebration of Harvard Book Store's 75th anniversary, the City of Cambridge will name the corner of Massachusetts Ave. and Plympton St. (where the store is located) 'Frank, Mark and Pauline Kramer Square.' Frank is the current owner of the store, and Mark and Pauline Kramer are his parents. Mark Kramer founded the store in 1932.

"The dedication will take place on Saturday, October 20th, at 11:00 a.m. and there will be a brief reception in the store following the ceremony."

---

Effective January 1, Phoebe Gaston is joining Book Travelers West as a publishers sales representative and will sell in Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and Utah. Her publishers will include Workman, Ten Speed, Quayside, Dover and Good Books. Based in Denver, Gaston recently graduated from the Denver Publishing Institute.

---

The best offense is a good read? "Usually when you have that many books written about your team, you just won a Super Bowl," New York Giants co-owner and president John Mara told Newsday. He was reacting to the recent publication of three Giants-themed (or Giants-obsessed) titles, including The GM: The Inside Story of a Dream Job and the Nightmares That Go With it by Tom Callahan, Tiki: My Life in the Game and Beyond by former running back Tiki Barber and linebacker Michael Strahan's Inside the Helmet: Life as a Sunday Afternoon Warrior.

---

Masha Hamilton's novel, The Camel Bookmobile, published earlier this year, was inspired by the work of the Camel Mobile Library Service, an outreach program launched in 1996 by the Kenya National Library Service. Masha tells us that the real camel librarian, Rashid Farah, is now seeking a scholarship to continue his studies in the U.S. and then return to Garissa.

In an e-mail, Farah wrote, "In the case of librarianship, I was first person ever in this province to attain a certificate in library studies in 1989. I was also lucky to have been sponsored for a three-year diploma in information studies at Kenya Polytechnic, which I successfully completed in 2003."

According to Masha, "All the librarians I've known are inspiring, and Mr. Farah is something of a hero, determined to bring books into the bush where they've never been before, and in this way breaking through barriers and creating new possibilities in the lives of his patrons. But he very much wants to continue to develop professionally, and I'd love to see him helped." For more information, visit Masha's website or e-mail her at MashaHamil@aol.com.
 

Sales of digital material are still miniscule--less than 1% at their companies--but efforts to sell and market traditional books online continue to grow and reap rewards and developing an appropriate digital infrastructure is the key task at the moment, four executives at major international houses indicated yesterday during a panel at Frankfurt called "the Quest for Global Digital Sales."

Interviewers Michael Cader of Publishers Lunch and Andrew Wilkins, publisher of Bookseller and Publisher magazine in Australia, ably and humorously got panelists to open up about digital issues--even if the executives sometimes answered questions asked of others and sidestepped the ones posed to them.

The panel defined digital broadly and found challenges greater than, for example, the issue of whether and when and on what platform e-books will take off.

HarperCollins president Brian Murray said that "the two pieces to the puzzle" for publishers are making a transition from the tradition of "printing on paper and selling that" and creating value in the digital world.

Murray noted that in the past several years, HarperCollins has invested heavily in infrastructure--one measure is that it now has 12,000 titles digitally stored. Moreover, he continued, digital efforts affect all parts of the publishing process, from editing to work flow to marketing. "We're feeling quite digital at the moment," he added.

Holtzbrinck board member Dr. Ruediger Salat focused on the infrastructure for an online presence by publishers and praised the introduction during the fair of Libreka, formerly known as Volltextsuche-Online, a site sponsored by the Boersenverein, the German publishers, wholesalers and booksellers association, that offers digital versions of German books online. Libreka is still very small but aims to offer e-versions of all books in the German equivalent of Books in Print. "The beauty of this solution is that copyright is protected," Salat said. Also this pan-publisher solution is an improvement over what occurred in the music industry, where, by contrast, "no customer was willing to search in five to ten labels' different websites to find the music they wanted," he said.

The biggest challenge, he continued, is to speed up ways to create a business model that "rewards authors and protects copyright." While the book remains "a stable product with a stable fan club," he said nonetheless that digital opportunities offer "access to younger readers."

Penguin CEO John Makinson stated that one of the biggest challenges for international publishers is dealing with territorial and copyright issues that arise in the digital era. Each of the big global publishers is "by heritage a federation of trade publishing companies," created to deal with printed books and neatly divided territories. But the new age, he implied, blurs these distinctions.

Random House CEO Peter Olson said that his house's sales online of books are 10% and growing at 20%-25% a year and "we are just at the beginning of becoming more proficient at taking advantage of the Internet in marketing."

Olson emphasized Random House's concerns for copyright, which are currently an issue with Google. A pay-for-page model with Google would benefit both parties, he said, and so he is confident that a deal can be worked out with the search engine giant. Random is very interested in selling parts of its books, particularly nonfiction, online, for example, a recipe from a cookbook or a few chapters from a title.

The upheavals of the music industry have made publishers cautious and wary. Penguin's Makinson said that "if I'm awake at night, it's because of the music industry and the speed at which it changed."

Speaking as someone whose parent company has a substantial music business, Olson stressed that there are "fundamental differences between the music and publishing industries." For one, the music industry has sold compilations for years and consumers have long wanted to listen to single songs. Also "there is no inherent advantage for the physical product in music," he said, while the traditional book is portable and "hard to improve on."--John Mutter

 

This morning on Good Morning America: Richard M. Lerner, author of The Good Teen: Rescuing Adolescence from the Myths of the Storm and Stress Years (Crown, $24.95, 9780307347572/0307347575).

---

This morning on the Early Show: Cal Thomas, author of Common Ground: How to Stop the Partisan War That Is Destroying America (Morrow, $25.95, 9780061236341/0061236349).

---

Today on the Diane Rehm Show: Rachel Herz, author of The Scent of Desire: Discovering Our Enigmatic Sense of Smell (Morrow, $24.95, 9780060825379/0060825375).

---

Today on NPR's Tell Me More: Anupama Chopra, author of King of Bollywood: Shah Rukh Khan and the Seductive World of Indian Cinema (Grand Central, $24.99, 9780446578585/0446578584).

---

Today on KCRW's Bookworm: Ana Castillo, author of The Guardians (Random House, $24.95, 9781400065004/1400065003). As the show put it: "This is a novel about borders in which borders disappear: the border between old and young, between secular and sacred, between states--but not the border between the U.S. and Mexico. We investigate the obduracy of certain borders and the porous nature of others."

---

Today on the View: Alan Greenspan, author of The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World (Penguin Press, $35, 9781594201318/1594201315), and his wife, Andrea Mitchell.

---

Tonight on Larry King Live: Stephen Colbert, host of the Colbert Report and author of I Am America (And So Can You!) (Grand Central, $26.99, 9780446580502/0446580503).

---

Tonight on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart: Howard Kurtz, Washington Post reporter, author of Reality Show: Inside the Last Great Television News War (Free Press, $26, 9780743299824/0743299825).

---

Tomorrow morning on Good Morning America: Jill Greenberg, author of Monkey Portraits (Little, Brown, $17.99, 9780316005128/0316005126).

---

Tomorrow on Food Network's Paula's Party: Amy Sedaris, author of I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence (Grand Central, $27.99, 9780446578844/0446578843).

---

Tomorrow on Larry King Live: Eric Clapton, author of Clapton: The Autobiography (Broadway, $26, 9780385518512/038551851X).

---

Tomorrow evening on Real Time with Bill Maher: Joy Behar, author of When You Need a Lift: But Don't Want to Eat Chocolate, Pay a Shrink, or Drink a Bottle of Gin (Crown, $19.95, 9780307351715/0307351718).

---

Sunday on CBS News: Cheech Marin, author of Cheech the School Bus Driver (HarperCollins, $16.99, 9780061132018/0061132012).

---

Sunday on Meet the Press: Bill Cosby, author of Come On People: On the Path from Victims to Victors (Thomas Nelson, $25.99, 9781595550927/1595550925).

---

Sunday on 60 Minutes: Joel Osteen, author of Become a Better You (Free Press, $25, 9780743296885/0743296885).

Book TV airs on C-Span 2 from 8 a.m. Saturday to 8 a.m. Monday and focuses on political and historical books as well as the book industry. The following are highlights for this coming weekend. For more information, go to Book TV's website.

Saturday, October 13

6 p.m. Encore Booknotes. In a segment first aired in 1990, Robert Caro, author of Means of Ascent: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Vol. 2 (Vintage, $20, 9780679733713/067973371X), discussed Johnson's career through World War II, as well as revelations about the fiercely contested 1948 senatorial election and "the 87 votes that changed history."

7:30 p.m. In an event held at Hue-Man Bookstore, New York, N.Y., Randall Robinson, author of An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President (Basic Civitas, $26, 9780465070503/0465070507), talks about the history of the Haitian people. (Re-airs Sunday at 4:30 PM)
     
9 p.m. After Words: Time magazine editor-at-large Nancy Gibbs interviews Lynne Cheney, author of Blue Skies, No Fences: A Memoir of Childhood and Family (Pocket, $26, 9781416532880/1416532889). The vice president's wife looks back at her life growing up in Casper, Wyoming. (Re-airs Sunday at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m., and Monday at 12 a.m.)

Sunday, October 14

8 a.m. From the 2007 New Yorker Festival, a panel on the Iraq War featuring authors Jon Lee Anderson, Phebe Marr and George Packer, as well as Ali Allawi, former Iraqi Minister of Defense, and David Kilcullen, senior counter-insurgency adviser to General David Petraeus.

This rivals Margaret Osondu's efforts to get Oprah to visit Osondu Booksellers in Waynesville, N.C.

The website for Stephen Colbert's I Am America (And So Can You!) includes a petition to have Oprah pick the title for her book club that reads in part:

"My dearest Oprah,

"Congratulations! Out of nearly 300 million Americans, you have been selected to promote Stephen Colbert's I Am America (And So Can You!) on your wildly popular television show. I'm writing to express my excitement on your behalf. This is the break you've been waiting for!"

The lure for Oprah: to repair the book club's "troubling record. So far, you've given your implicit endorsement to liars, hermaphrodites, the apocalypse, and, in honoring Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Fidel Castro. All of which are actively plotting to destroy America. Isn't it about time you chose a book that cared about this nation?"

"Selecting I Am America (And So Can You!) for your Book Club will go a long way toward erasing the long-standing concerns and nagging doubts about your patriotism that have dogged you ever since they were first raised in this letter."

---

Speaking of Colbert, BookPeople, Austin, Tex., has taken a loud and boisterous position on I Am America. See evidence of the store's decision to stand tall for truthiness on the right.

 

 

 

The Associated Press suggested that Christopher Hitchens may not be thanking a higher power should he win this year's National Book Award for nonfiction, but he was among the finalists announced yesterday by the National Book Foundation. This is the first NBA nomination for the British-born Hitchens, whose eligibility for the prize changed last April when he became a U.S. citizen. 

The winners in all four categories will be revealed at a November 14 ceremony in Manhattan, hosted by author/humorist Fran Lebowitz and featuring honorary medals for Joan Didion and NPR's Terry Gross. Each winner will receive $10,000, while the other finalists get $1,000.

The National Book Foundation offers a downloadable finalists poster that booksellers and librarians can access on its website.

The 2007 NBA finalists :

Fiction

• Mischa Berlinski for Fieldwork (FSG)
• Lydia Davis for Varieties of Disturbance (FSG)
• Joshua Ferris for Then We Came to the End (Little, Brown)
• Denis Johnson for Tree of Smoke (FSG)
• Jim Shepard for Like You’d Understand, Anyway (Knopf)

Nonfiction

• Edwidge Danticat for Brother, I’m Dying (Knopf)
• Christopher Hitchens for God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (Twelve/Hachette)
• Woody Holton for Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution (Hill & Wang/FSG)
• Arnold Rampersad for Ralph Ellison: A Biography (Knopf)
• Tim Weiner for Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (Doubleday)

Poetry

• Linda Gregerson for Magnetic North (Houghton Mifflin)
• Robert Hass for Time and Materials (Ecco/HarperCollins)
• David Kirby for The House on Boulevard St. (LSU Press)
• Stanley Plumly for Old Heart (Norton)
• Ellen Bryant Voigt for Messenger: New and Selected Poems 1976-2006 (Norton)

Young People's Literature

• Sherman Alexie for The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (Little, Brown)
• Kathleen Duey for Skin Hunger: A Resurrection of Magic, Book One (Atheneum Books for Young Readers)
• M. Sindy Felin for Touching Snow (Atheneum Books for Young Readers)
• Brian Selznick for The Invention of Hugo Cabret (Scholastic)
• Sara Zarr for Story of a Girl (Little, Brown)

 

Megan Sullivan is the head buyer at the Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, Mass. She's been working at the store for eight years, reading books for 27 years (she started very early in life) and also running a literary blog for more than three years. On Bookdwarf, she writes about books she reads as well as book news. Here she answers questions we put to people in the book business:

On your nightstand now:

The Radetzy March by Joseph Roth, Omega Minor by Paul Verhaeghen, Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson. I get so many galleys at work. I'm always reading new books, so I try to mix in some classics here and there.
 
Favorite books when you were a child:

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte and My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George. I loved the idea of living inside a tree or just the idea of running away in general.

Your top five authors:

I hate this question--it's so hard to name just five. Rupert Thomson, Haruki Murakmi, George Eliot, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Homer.

Book you've faked reading:

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. I've never managed to finish this book even though I've started it at least twice.
 
Book you are an evangelist for:

Middlemarch by George Eliot. So many people cringe when I mention how great that book is. It's probably one of the best books I've ever read.
 
Book you've bought for the cover:

The Wind Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
 
Book that changed your life:

There's not one book, more like different authors that changed my life. Judy Blume showed me how to get lost in books and she prepared me for my next step into the world of challenging literature like Dickens and Bronte. It seemed challenging in fifth grade anyway.
 
Favorite line from a book:

"The baron had a bizarre relationship with food. He ate the most important morsels with his eyes, so to speak; his sense of beauty consumed above all the essence of the food--its soul, as it were; the vapid remainders had to be wolfed down without delay. The beauteous appearance of the victuals gave the old man as much pleasure as their simplicity. For he set store by good solid fare, a tribute he paid to both his taste and his conviction; the latter, you see, he called Spartan. With felicitous skill, he thus combined the sating of his desire with the demands of duty. He was a Spartan. But he was also an Austrian."--Joseph Roth, The Radetzky March
 
Book you most want to read again for the first time:

The Iliad by Homer

How many books you are reading at any given time:

At least two. Sometimes as many as five. I don't go anywhere without a book. I might as well be naked.

Driven more by plot than characterization, Malley's first novel, set in a future England, probes provocative issues about the growth of the human population and our dwindling resources. The year is 2140, and Longevity drugs have been discovered that prolong life for as long as someone uses them. The catch: if you wish to take Longevity drugs, you must forfeit your right to have a child, or "Opt Out." This is clearly stated in the Declaration and fiercely enforced. Of course, some people break the rules: any child born to someone who did not "Opt Out" is considered "Surplus," sentenced to a prison-like orphanage and raised to serve the "Legals" (those who follow the rules). Mrs. Pincent, the House Matron of Grange Hall, brainwashes these Surplus children into believing they are worthless beings who drain the planet of its resources. Anna, the 14-year-old at the center of the novel, has been indoctrinated so well that she has risen to Prefect--and has no friends, since her peers see her, rightly, as an informant. Then one day, Surplus Peter arrives and reveals to Anna that she has parents who love her, and who are part of an Underground Movement that rebels against the Declaration.

Malley is at her best in conveying Anna's inner struggle as she at first resists then comes to accept this new information, which goes against everything she has been trained to believe. In a pivotal scene, Anna realizes, when she overhears Mrs. Pincent, that Peter is telling the truth ("Anna had never known the feeling of hatred before, but now it raged through her body like a rampant cancer"). Several plot points feel contrived (e.g., Mrs. Pincent's history, the role of Surplus Sheila), but the world Anna inhabits seems so chillingly real, that readers will be swept up in the questions it raises: Does one human being have a greater right to the planet than another? If you knew that the world's resources would run out during your lifetime (now that you can live forever), what would you do differently? Is immortality desirable? Perhaps the greatest irony is that the Surplus youth are the ones supplying the stem cells required for the drugs that keep the older population alive.--Jennifer M. Brown

In Tuesday's story about Holtzbrinck Publishers changing its name to Macmillan, we extrapolated that MPS, the new name for the old VHPS, or Von Holtzbrinck Publishing Services, stood for Macmillan Publishing Services. Turns out that we extrapolated wrong: MPS stands for . . . MPS, initials only. The reason involves the use of the Macmillan name by McGraw-Hill on some educational titles.

 

In response to last week's column about the NEIBA panel on bookselling in a digital world, Pamela Grath, owner of Dog Ears Books, Northport, Mich., emailed me ("taking a new path" was her subject line) to share her early experiences with a bookstore blog she started in September: "Not sure where the blog will take me, but it's fun so far. Unlike the more formal web page, the blog invites meandering. It is my intention to have them complement one another, both adding something different to and supporting the bookstore."  

Whenever the subject of bookstore blogs comes up, certain questions get asked every time. Why bother? Who will read it? Who has time? Will it sell books? There are many more, of course, so when a bookseller does commit to blogging, we can't resist asking a few of questions of our own.

Pamela Grath opened Dog Ears Books in 1993 as a used bookstore, though her inventory now includes about 20% new titles. Her blog, Books in Northport, is a mere pup by comparison.

Why bother?

According to Grath, "I started the blog because many of my best bookstore customers are from St. Louis, Chicago, Ann Arbor, etc. They get to Northport only once or, at best, a few times a year, but love my bookstore and Northport. The blog seemed like a space where we might continue our conversations even when friends were far away. Posting entries on a blog also seemed more sensible than writing different versions of the same e-mail to half a dozen people and still leaving out others who would have enjoyed the exchange."

She added that essay-style topics "are always simmering in my head, many related to books and bookselling, many others related to life Up North. I liked the idea of staying in touch with people and letting them know what's going on at Dog Ears Books, in Northport, in my life, and in my mind. Also, living in a beautiful place means no end of photographic subjects to share, along with all the new and old books that come to my attention every week of the year. Tying these threads together struck me as an interesting challenge."

Grath's readers thus far have been enthusiastic in their e-mail responses, though few register a password so they can leave comments. She promotes the blog where she can. "To attract new readers, I've included the blog address on bookmarks I give to store customers. There's a link from my bookstore website, too, and our local Chamber of Commerce put both links on their site, since I'm a dues-paying business member."

She wants to keep the Dog Ears Books website "clean and easily to navigate." It was designed to offer an introduction for customers who've never been to the region as well as "a point of reference for established customers, especially those interested in out-of-print books on particular subjects (e.g., Michigan and the Great Lakes )."

The blog, however, offers an alternative form of communication. "With the blog, my focus can be as wide as I choose. A little philosophical creativity can connect any two topics in the world. Just as conversations with customers in the store range far and wide, beginning from a simple point of reference, so can blog postings and comments. That aspect appeals to me greatly."

Grath views her blog postings as an "introduction to the conversational life of the bookstore and the town, beginning with my musings on various books and subjects. Both are ways to visit the bookstore from afar. There are places I love and visit via the Internet, and I know there are people who feel that way about Northport, Michigan, and Dog Ears Books. Northport is a seasonal economy (orchards and tourism), and finding ways to extend that season is important."

Although it is much too soon to predict what sort of impact the blog will have, Grath is excited about the experiment because "I have some very loyal customers, and I know that building loyalty and community are vital to the survival of bookstores."

Like most Internet tools currently available, bookstore blogs are only as good as the booksellers who create them. Ultimately, it still comes down to motivation and execution--a familiar, even old-fashioned combo platter in this industry.

And Grath's motivation is clear: "'You're living my dream!' people exclaim with envy. There are a lot of sacrifices involved, as you know. But this isn't a job; it's a calling. My bookstore is my world, my way of life."--Robert Gray (column archives available at Fresh Eyes Now)