Books-A-Million's mysterious announcement on Monday that it had delayed filing Form 10-Q with the Securities and Exchange Commission is having drastic effects.

After the market closed yesterday, BAM said that Nasdaq may delist the company's stock next Thursday, September 29. BAM is seeking a hearing before Nasdaq to "ask for a waiver of the compliance failure until the company files its Form 10-Q," which it intends to do "as soon as possible." The appeal automatically delays the delisting until the panel rules on the issue. During the appeal, BAM's stock will have a new trading symbol, "BAMME" instead of "BAMM."

BAM blamed the filing delay on "management's ongoing evaluation of the company's internal control over financial reporting"--whatever that means.

Congratulations! The winner of the inaugural Independent Spirit bookstore award is the Toadstool Bookshops, which has stores in Keene, Peterborough and Milford, N.H. Sponsored by the Book Publishers Representatives of New England, the award was announced at the NEBA show last weekend.

Suzette Ciancio, marketing manager, Addison-Wesley Professional and Prentice Hall PTR, and president of BPRNE, said the association is "pleased to honor one of the truly wonderful bookstores in New England. Each of the stores in the Toadstool family has an outstanding staff of booksellers. We feel collectively they represent what is best about the business of bookselling in New England, and in general."

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Cody's Books opens its San Francisco store a week from tomorrow. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, owner Andy Ross has refinanced his home and invested savings to create the $3.5 million store, which measures 22,000 square feet and will stock 150,000 titles. Ross told the Chronicle that his two Berkeley stores gross more than $6 million but that he hasn't had a profit in two years. In reaction, he said, he could have cut staff and shrunk the business, "but the other choice was to do something radically different." Understandably he added, "I'm definitely nervous."

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Pamela Aronson, owner of 16-year-old Pam's Paperbacks, Wilbraham, Mass., offers a variety of incentives to keep customers returning to the store, which stocks some 30,000 new and used books. Purchasers of new books at full price receive a 50% discount on any used book. Used books can be traded for other used books. And Aronson rents new hardcovers for a week at used-book prices. Rentals are especially popular in the summer when people have more time for reading, she told the Springfield Republican.

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Here's a story that popped up yesterday, a day when the Wall Street Journal ran a front-page feature about how retailers are putting more money into in-store advertising and marketing:

Borders and Waldenbooks have teamed up with Robert Sabuda, the children's book illustrator whose Winter's Tale: An Original Pop-Up Journey (Little Simon) appears next week, for a holiday season in-store promotion that will start November 1. "Larger-than-life pop-up scenes" will depict, among other things, a giant paper snowman, snowball fights, sledding and ice skating. 3-D paper snowflakes as well as paper doves will "fly" from store columns.

In addition, Borders and Walden will sell several Sabuda products exclusively during the holidays, including a Sabuda-designed set of paper pop-up ornaments from the Museum of Modern Art, a Sabuda gift card and carrier featuring a pop-up snowman and a limited-edition bear named Snowflake.

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Ingram Library Services has appointed Michael D. Edwards director of sales. He was formerly a senior account executive at Thomson Gale, where he provided library consulting and electronic and reference materials to public, academic and K-12 libraries.

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Ingram Book Group has hired another trade fields sales rep. Eileen Golinski will cover Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont and promote Ingram's client publishers and its wholesale services.

Since 1998, Golinski has operated Golinski Book Service, representing 20 publishers and gift lines. Before that, she was a sales rep for Thomason Book Sales (formerly Meyer Religious Book Sales) and was manager of the Tau Book and Gift Shop.

Ottakar's, whose independent directors have agreed to be bought by Waterstone's owner HMV, said today that sales in stores open at least a year had dropped 3.8% in the first seven weeks of the second half of its fiscal year--in other words, July and most of August. Comparable-stores sales in the first half of the fiscal year were down 0.2%, according to Reuters.

The pretax loss grew to 4.7 million pounds from 2.9 million pounds in the same period a year ago.

Chairman Philip Dunne commented: "Conditions on High Street have weakened over the summer. In the circumstances, our stores appear to have fared relatively better than others." In part because of the London bombings in July, many U.K. retailers have had difficulties this summer. In its most recent financial reports, Borders, too, cited sales difficulties in the U.K.

Dunne, who is part of a management group trying to buy Ottakar's, said that the company is continuing to talk with other parties, according to the BBC.

With the refreshing theme "sea-change by the seashore," the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association Trade Show and Convention takes place on Sunday and Monday, October 16 and 17, at the Tropicana in Atlantic City, N.J.

The trade show will held on Monday. Sunday's schedule starts with a beach stroll at 8 a.m. that will include book chats, "fresh salt air and virgin umbrella drinks." Next is breakfast; besides the food, the meal will consist of informal bookseller roundtables.

Panels and seminars during the day address the following topics: adult and children's picks of the lists; the sales rep-bookseller relationship; using coop for four non-author events; outside sales; and electronic marketing, including setting up a store Web site, managing the online shopping cart and e-mail newsletters.

Betsy Burton, co-owner of the King's English, Salt Lake City, Utah, and author of an eponymous memoir, is the keynote speaker. The annual book & author luncheon features Jonathan Safran Foer, whose new book is Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, and Newberry honor winner Suzanne Fisher Staples, author of Under the Persimmon Tree.

At Sunday's lunch, NAIBA presents its Legacy Award to Pete Hamill.

Late in the day, the Reading Room is followed by an opening reception/exhibit preview and the Movable Feast, which has 26 authors on the menu. Since this is Atlantic City and across the country poker is as hot as a hand with four aces, it's only appropriate that at 10 p.m., as a kind of dessert, Pete Fornatalli, author of The Poker Aficionado, and several gaming authors will teach the basics, tricks and nuances of card games.

Monday begins with the Breakfast of Champions, which includes the presentation of the Helmuth Sales Rep of the Year Award to Scholastic's Sue Flynn and the four NAIBA Books of the Year. The association will also hold its annual meeting during the meal.

For more information, go to NAIBA's Web site.

A History of Violence, based on the graphic novel by John Wagner and Vince Locke (DC Comics, $9.99, 1563893673), directed by David Cronenberg and starring Viggo Mortensen, Maria Bello, Ed Harris and William Hurt, opens tomorrow. This gritty thriller follows Tom Stall (Mortensen) as he thwarts an attempted robbery on his diner by killing two men in self defense. As a result, he is unwillingly thrust into the national spotlight, and must cope with both his new reality and threats to his family.

On the menu on the Early Show today: chef Bobby Flay, author of Bobby Flay's Grilling for Life: 75 Healthier Ideas for Big Flavor from the Fire (Scribner, $22, 0743272722).

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This morning on the Today Show, Kathleen Flynn-Hui discusses her new book, Beyond the Blonde (Warner, $21.95, 0446500178).

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Today KCRW's Bookworm talks with Francine du Plessix Gray, author of Them: A Memoir of Parents (Penguin Press, $29.95, 1594200491). The show states: "After an affair with the great Russian poet Mayakovsky, Francine du Plessix Gray's mother married a man who became a kingpin in the Condé Nast fashion magazine empire. All the high fashion and social elite of New York are discussed, but they pale beside the evocation of true genius. Mayakovsky and poetry triumph over commerce."

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Today Diane Rehm hosts Ron Powers, author of Mark Twain: A Life (Free Press, $35, 0743248996).

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Yesterday Talk of the Nation was up close and personal with Walt Harrington, editor of The Beholder's Eye: A Collection of America's Finest Personal Journalism (Grove, $14, 0802142249).

Book TV airs on C-Span 2 from 8 a.m. Saturday until 8 a.m. Monday and focuses on political and historical books as well as the publishing industry. For more information and a full schedule, go to Book TV's Web site.

Saturday, September 24

10 a.m. Live coverage of the National Book Festival, Washington, D.C. Featured authors include Andrea Mitchell, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, Thomas Friedman, David Brooks, Joseph Ellis, David McCullough, Andrew Carroll, Robert Carter and Robert MacNeil. (Re-airs at 9 p.m.)

7 p.m. Encore Booknotes. In a show originally aired in 1994, Milton Friedman discussed F.A. Hayek's Road to Serfdom, the influential book for whose 50th anniversary Friedman wrote the introduction.

8 p.m. Afterwords. Barbara Slavin, senior diplomatic reporter for USA Today interviews Tony Blankley, editorial page editor for the Washington Times, about his book The West's Last Chance: Will We Win the Clash of Civilizations? (Regnery, $27.95, 0895260158). (Re-airs Sunday at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m.)