"Starbucks is saying what the rest of the U.S. is saying, that the consumer is getting hit. They're not immune."--James Walsh of Coldstream Capital Management in the New York Times, commenting on Starbucks's quarterly results, announced yesterday, which noted the first decline in customer visits since the company began reporting that statistic.

Continuing a recent trend of reversing policy decisions, New York Governor Eliot Spitzer has backed down on an effort to begin having Amazon.com and other e-tailers collect sales tax on purchases from New York, according to the New York Sun.

The governor's budget director said in a statement that the move, which was scheduled to go into effect on December 7 (Shelf Awareness, November 14, 2007), will be postponed until at least after the holidays.

The paper said that state Republicans were preparing to attack the policy as "evidence that the governor had reneged on his pledges not to raise taxes."

The postponed policy would have considered Amazon's affiliates as sufficient nexus to require the company to collect sales tax from customers in New York.

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Amazon.com will unveil its e-book reader on Monday in New York, according to the AP and CNET Networks. The Kindle, as the device is said to be called, apparently includes a headphone jack for listening to audiobooks and can download publications such as the New York Times.

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Bookselling This Week profiles Brad Smith and the Paulina Springs Books, Sisters, Ore., which he bought in 2003. On December 1, he celebrates by opening a second bookstore in nearby Redmond. "I just felt there was a really good opportunity there," Smith told BTW. "The new store will be very similar in character and displays, but I have to get in there to find out what my customers' interests are to know what to stock.

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Thirteen booksellers opened stores in October and became members of the American Booksellers Association. See them here.

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The Escapes section of the New York Times escapes to the Pioneer Valley in central Massachusetts, checking out bookstores in Northampton, Amherst and nearby towns. An accompanying story, with a very nice photo of the Odyssey Bookshop, S. Hadley, highlights the many author events that take place at stores in the area.

Similarly, the Student Life, the student paper of Pomona College, Claremont, Calif., offers an armchair tour of bookstores in Los Angeles County.

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Larry Portzline, founder of bookstore tourism and the National Council on Bookstore Tourism, is creating Friends of Indie Bookstores USA, a membership organization similar to the Friends of Libraries USA that aims to "promote and support independent bookstores by actively engaging indie 'fans' in a variety of ways, including news, events, advocacy, information sharing, bookstore tourism, social networking, and marketing programs."

He hopes funding will come from multi-level memberships, grants, corporate sponsors and products and service. The organization will also seek programming and marketing partnerships with the bookselling industry, publishers, libraries, educators, literacy organizations and others. Portzline also imagines that Friends of Indie Bookstores chapters will form in cities and towns around the country and work with local indies.

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Bill Pronzini will receive the title of Grand Master from the Mystery Writers of America next May 1 in New York City during the Edgar Awards banquet. MWA executive v-p Daniel J. Hale said that Pronzini "is not only a passionate author and reader of crime fiction--he is also one of the most ardent proponents of the genre. For 40 years, he has distinguished himself with consistently high-quality writing and editing in all areas of the field, including creating one of the longest-lasting detective series ever."

Pronzini has written more than 70 books, including 32 novels in the Nameless Detective series and three written with his wife, Marcia Muller, who was the MWA's Grand Master in 2005.

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Another charge against O.J.: Amir Pourtemour is suing O.J. Simpson, charging that If I Did It borrowed from his 1995 book, The Perfect Alibi: O.J. Simpson's Strategy for Murder, the New York Times reported.

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Are aging Boomers bookstore bound? The Hartford Courant suggested that when "leading-edge Boomers" begin hitting the age of 62 in January, they will enter a frontier "with a myriad of new challenges, including retirement decisions, health problems, care-giving responsibilities and financial issues."

Where will they go for advice?

"Boomers are getting into their 60s and they're starting to panic as they see those unmistakable signs of aging," said Sarah Bedell, owner of the Bookworm bookstore, West Hartford, Conn. "They've controlled every part of their lives up to now and they want to be able to control, or even avoid, old age as well. So they're seeking out as much information as they can find to try to hold off the inevitable."

The Courant reported that "publishers are responding to this perceived need by filling store shelves with new guides on healthy aging, avoiding memory loss, retirement, downsizing and other aging-related topics."

"I expect that this is a trend that's going to continue for a long time," said Bedell. "There's a receptive audience and millions more coming. We're going to see increasing numbers of these books as boomers head on throughout every stage of their lives."

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Nancy Frater, owner of BookLore, Orangeville, Ontario, told the Orangeville Citizen that she "remains undaunted and determined to soldier on" despite the recent announcements by Canadian chain stores, including Wal-Mart, that they will be selling books at U.S. listed prices. "The stock at Wal-Mart is different than at BookLore," she said. "I don't look at Wal-Mart as competitors. I look at them more as colleagues."

Frater has decided, however, to re-price books at U.S. price plus 10% and sell children's books at par. "Three weeks ago, we started to re-price," she said. "You have to make the decision that you still have to keep your customers." She continues to believe that she holds the advantage in her commitment to the community: "The independent book store always supports the community. We have a mandate to support local authors and illustrators."

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Iceland is experiencing a reading and publishing boom, according to Iceland Review, which expressed amazement at "how much is published in this country of a mere 300,000 souls who seem to spend their evenings and weekends writing poems, novels, cook books and biographies. Very few get rich from their penmanship. Why? Because a bestselling book in this country will sell perhaps 8,000 to 12,000 copies."

The Association of Publishers' most recent Journal of Books lists 800 titles published this year, compared to 392 in 1997. Iceland Review noted that "publishers have in recent years found a way to reverse the reading habits of the nation. They have increasingly started to publish popular books in paperback versions, which are popular among the younger generation. . . . The ever-expanding tourist market is also lucrative and has opened a new market for photographic books about Iceland and souvenirs in the form of translated books."

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At his blog, Picador U.K. publisher Andrew Kidd offers more details on recently announced plans to publish some books next spring in simultaneous paperback and hardcover editions.

Since the announcement, "most authors, and their agents, have been very positive. Booksellers, in the main, have given the idea the thumbs up. The press has been generally (sometimes even wildly) enthusiastic, with a few unsurprising exceptions, and it's reassuring to discover that people remain open to change."

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"Main street bookstores at risk" was the headline in the Kyiv Post for an article on the declining number of bookshops in Ukraine's capital city. Recently, civic activists  pressured the city council to preserve the Znannya bookstore, the last surviving bookshop on Khreshchatyk, Kyiv's main street.

In 1991, there were 140 bookstores in the city, but Oleksandr Afonin, president of the Ukrainian Association of Publishers and Booksellers, said that only 36 bookshops are open now, including "several book supermarkets." He called the situation countrywide "almost disastrous"--the number of bookstores in Ukraine has declined from 3,000 in 1991 to about 500.

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More on signed book clubs: Richard Davies of AbeBooks.com confirms the observation yesterday by Mary Benham at Book Passage that members of that store's First Editions Club who bought signed first editions of The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini when it appeared in 2003 were prescient. This year on AbeBooks.com a signed first edition of The Kite Runner sold for $1,500. 

Douglas Pocock, group sales director of Egmont U.K., will spearhead a U.S. children's book division as executive v-p of Egmont U.S. Already, he told Shelf Awareness, he is close to announcing the appointment of a publisher for the venture and is in contract negotiations with what he called "the premier distributor in the U.S."

The yet-to-be-named publisher will "shape the editorial team," and the U.S. office will have a small design staff (both in-house and freelance), a marketing department that will oversee publicity (publicists will be freelance to start), and a salesperson who will act as liaison with the distributor. The company will then "scale up," according to Pocock, growing from approximately eight employees in the first year to 13 in the coming years, with a goal "to be a leading U.S. children's publisher within five years."

Pocock said the focus is to originate projects in the U.S. with a "U.S. team that understands the U.S. market," and not to push U.K. titles that are "not right" for the U.S. market. The first Egmont U.S. list is planned for fall 2009. "The list will reflect, on a smaller scale, what we do in the U.K., with a mix of commercial and prestigious titles," he said. With a smaller emphasis on picture books, the list will focus primarily on middle grade fiction, Egmont's strength in the U.K., according to Pocock. He also sees an opportunity with young adult fiction in the U.S. "In the U.K., the YA market is tough to crack," Pocock said. "We do it in the U.K., but it's a small part of our list."

When asked if Egmont would attempt to get back rights to U.K. titles that have been issued in the U.S., such as Jenny Nimmo's bestselling Charlie Bone series (published in the U.S. by Scholastic/Orchard), Pocock said that was not the main goal, though the company will assess titles on a "case by case basis." He added, "Our U.K.-based authors would prefer to work with Egmont in the U.S."--Jennifer M. Brown

This morning on the Today Show: P. Allen Smith, author of P. Allen Smith's Living in the Garden Home: Connecting the Seasons with Containers, Crafts, and Celebrations (Clarkson Potter, $32.50, 9780307347237/0307347230).

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Tonight on the Late Show with David Letterman, in a repeat: Slash, author of Slash (HarperEntertainment, $27.95, 9780061351426/0061351423).

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, November 17

6 p.m. Encore Booknotes. In a segment first aired in 1998, George H. W. Bush and Brent Scowcroft talked about their book, A World Transformed (Vintage, $16, 9780679752592/0679752595). They first worked together in 1976, when Scowcroft was head of the NSC and Bush head of the CIA. Scowcroft later served as President Bush's National Security Adviser.

7 p.m. Victor Davis Hanson, Heather MacDonald and Steven Malanga, co-authors of The Immigration Solution: A Better Plan Than Today's (Ivan R. Dee, $24.95, 9781566637602/1566637600), take a critical look at U.S. immigration policy. (Re-airs Sunday at 2 a.m. and 12 p.m., and Sunday, November 25, at 4 p.m.)

9 p.m. After Words. Leon Aron interviews Garry Kasparov, author of How Life Imitates Chess: Making the Right Moves--from the Board to the Boardroom (Bloomsbury USA, $25.95, 9781596913875/1596913878). Kasparov discusses his chess career and his role as leader of a coalition opposed to the current Russian leadership. (Re-airs Sunday at 6 p.m. and 9:00 p.m., and Monday at 12 a.m. and 3 a.m.)
     
10 p.m. Coverage of the 2007 National Book Awards ceremony in New York City.
          
Sunday, November 18

3 p.m. History on Book TV. Thomas DeFrank, author of Write It When I'm Gone: Remarkable Off-the-Record Conversations with Gerald R. Ford (Putnam, $25.95, 9780399154508/0399154507), talks about the series of candid conversations he and Ford had over 32 years that the former president asked be published only following his death. (Re-airs Sunday at 8 p.m.)

John Connolly was born in Dublin, Ireland, studied English in Trinity College and journalism at Dublin City University, then spent five years working as a freelance journalist for the Irish Times, to which he continues to contribute occasionally. His first novel, Every Dead Thing, was published in 1999 and introduced the character of Charlie Parker, a former policeman hunting the killer of his wife and daughter. Six Charlie Parker novels followed, most recently The Unquiet, published this year by Atria. He has also written three stand-alones: Bad Men, Nocturnes (novellas and short stories) and The Book of Lost Things, a story about fairy stories and the power that books have to shape our world and our imaginations. He is currently working on The Reapers, which, if he stops pfaffing about, will be published next year. Here he continues to procrastinate by answering questions we put to people in the book business:

On your nightstand now:

Pegasus Descending by James Lee Burke and Perfect From Now: How Indie Rock Saved My Life by John Sellers.

Favorite book when you were a child:

Gosh, I think that varied according to my mood. The first book I ever read was an Enid Blyton book, so I guess that started me on the reading path, but I can remember being hugely fond of a book of children's verse, mainly because it had one poem about a child being sick in bed that was illustrated with a drawing of said kid surrounded by toy soldiers that were carefully balanced on the bedclothes. I used to do that when I was sick. It was desperately hard to get the soldiers to stay upright, and if you sneezed, they all fell over. The kid in the picture was having the same problems, I seem to recall . . .

Other than those two, I loved novelizations of Doctor Who, John Wyndham's science fiction novels, Alistair Maclean adventures and, from about the age of nine, Ian Fleming's James Bond books, although the dodgy sex scenes largely went over my head.

Your top five authors:

Charles Dickens, followed in no particular order by Ross Macdonald, James Lee Burke, Cormac McCarthy, P.G. Wodehouse.

Book you've faked reading:

Men Withering by Francis Macmanus. It was on the reading list in school when I was 14 and remains my most intensely disliked book, as it put me off reading for months. I got about halfway through and then skimmed the rest. Even the title is depressing: it sounds like some form of sexual dysfunction.

Books you are an evangelist for:

The Chill by Ross Macdonald, which I think is one of the most perfectly constructed, and unsettling, mystery novels ever written. I've pressed Ben Hamper's Rivethead on quite a number of people, as it's a brilliant book about how rotten it can be to have to work for a living, and I love Giles Smith's Lost in Music. It's one of the best books ever written about how popular music can shape young men. Oh, and Bleak House by Charles Dickens, which is my favourite novel in English.

Book you've bought for the cover:

Most of them, I imagine. Never judge a book by the cover is one of those pieces of advice that's true about everything except books. I have a copy of Salammbo by Flaubert that has a nude woman apparently being threatened by a big snake, which I bought as an adolescent. I imagine that says more about my pubescent state of mind than about any great appreciation of classic French literature.

Books that changed your life:

The Great Shark Hunt by Hunter S. Thompson confirmed in me my desire to be a journalist, although Thompson's journalism has been a blight upon the trade. It wasn't his fault, but he did spawn a legion of inferior imitators. Reading James Lee Burke's Black Cherry Blues made me realize that mystery fiction could be as beautifully written as any literary fiction. I'd also have to go for E. E. Cummings's Collected Poems, as he remains my favourite poet and gave me a new appreciation for the form, since he was the first poet I discovered for myself. (His love poems are also very useful for seducing women. Er, I'm told.)

Favorite line from a book:

" 'Well, tinkerty-tonk,' I said. And I meant it to sting." That's Bertie Wooster, from one of P.G. Wodehouse's novels or stories. I'm not sure that it's my favourite line from a book, but it's one of the most memorable, and it always makes me smile.

Books you have re-read:

The Last of the Mohicans; Wuthering Heights; The Good Soldier; six nonlectures by E. E. Cummings.

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

It's probably a short story rather than a book: "Jeeves and the Yuletide Spirit." If that one doesn't make you laugh, then I suspect nothing ever will.

Book that you bought with every good intention of reading but that you suspect you never will:

Proust's A La Recherche du Temps Perdu. I bought all three volumes when I was in my early 20s, and they still mock me from the bookshelf in a French accent every time I pass them. " 'ey, Monsieur, bet you thoughz you were cleverrrr. If you are so cleverrrr, zen 'ow come you 'ave not read uzzz . . .?"

Book that you thought you'd find difficult, but didn't:

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, the rather dull bit about Pierre and the Masons, and the even duller essay at the end apart.

Book you lost, then bought another copy of just so that you could finish it:

The Three Musketeers by Dumas. I think I left it on the bus with about 50 pages to go. I immediately went out and bought another copy. It was money well spent as it remains one of the best books I've ever read.

Book that you've read and deeply regret reading, knowing that you'll want the time back on your death bed and you won't get it:

The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown, the only consolation being that I read it in proof and therefore didn't have to pay for it.

Book or books that are your guilty pleasure:

Wilbur Smith novels. I had to interview him a few years back and read Monsoon. It was a big book, but I flew through it, and now I go out and buy his historical novels as soon as they appear. The modern ones aren't quite as palatable because the dialogue is so clunky. Mind you, he writes even ropier sex scenes than Ian Fleming. I'm always faintly embarrassed when I read them, although some are hilariously funny. I will forever be haunted by the line: "She gasped at the sight of Tom's wondrous man thing." Why was it wondrous, I wondered? Did it light up? Did it play a tune?