Cool (or yummy) idea of the day: During the second annual Edible Book
fundraising event at the Lilly Library, Florence, Mass., visitors could
taste 16 dishes inspired by books. Masslive.com reported that the delectable tomes ranged from "a cake based on The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman to a platter of horse shaped cookies inspired by Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses."
The "Best in Show" award went to John Riley, owner of Gabrielle's Books, Northampton, who made Aristotle's Second Book of Poetics, a fictional book in Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose.
"I
love old books and I love food, so I thought this would be a fun event
to enter," he said. "I used baklava for the pages because if you leave
the edges exposed it looks just like old pages. For the cover I used
lavash flat bread covered in espresso and the labels on the book were
made with marzipan and licorice."
---
Milestone Books, Vestavia Hills, Ala., has received a Blue Ribbon
Small Business Award from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, according to
the Birmingham Business Journal.
"The award recognized excellence in financial performance, business
history, staff training and motivation, community involvement, customer
service and business planning."
---
Describing
Controversial Bookstore, San Diego, Calif., as "still as quirky as when
it started in 1963," the University of California, San Diego, Guardian
added that the bookshop is "an uncensored literary experience worth
trying" and "ideal for anyone seeking spiritual guidance and
enlightenment."
---
Lily Allen was "never the most obvious pick to judge a major literary prize," according to the Guardian, which reported that the pop singer has now withdrawn from the Orange Broadband prize judging panel due to "ill-health."
---
Clavis, the 30-year-old Belgian children's book publisher, is publishing its first English-language list this spring, which will include 10 titles, and will put out another 17 in the fall. The company will be distributed here by Independent Publishers Group; Samara Klein, who formerly sold to the trade, subsidiary and foreign markets for Abrams Books for Young Readers and Amulet Books, will act as liaison between Clavis and IPG, support sales and promote titles. She will work in the company's new New York City office.
Clavis publishes books for toddlers that use a key specifying the appropriate age for each book and the concept the book addresses. It also publishes entertaining and literary middle grade and young adult fiction as well as picture books by authors and illustrators from around the world, many of whom have already been published in the U.S.
For more information contact Samara Q. Klein, senior manager, Clavis Publishing, 275 Madison Ave., Suite 403, New York, N.Y. 10016; office: 212-880-1505; cell: 646-492-2316; e-mail: samara@clavisbooks.com; clavisbooks.com.
---
SUNY Press has become, it says, the first university press in the country to offer both e-book and hardcover versions of its frontlist titles simultaneously. Under the DirectText initiative, readers will be able to download and print PDF editions from the press's website, sunypress.edu, for $20.
There are 20 DirectText titles available now; by the end of June about 50 titles will be in e-stock, and another 60 will come online by the end of the year.
The press noted that an important market for the program is graduate and upper-level undergraduate students. "DT encourages professors to assign monographs to their classes the moment they are published at a fraction of the hardcover price," Gary Dunham, SUNY Press director, said in a statement.
SUNY Press also says it was "the first publisher to launch the Google co-branded full-text search function on its Web site, allowing visitors to do a full-text search across a 4,000 title list and read the complete first chapter of many titles."
---
Tom Roberge has joined Penguin Books as publishing coordinator, focusing on backlist and movie tie-ins. He'll also help the publishing process for Penguin Classics and Penguin Originals. He was formerly managing editor at A Public Space, the literary journal. Before that, he was events coordinator at McNally Robinson NYC in New York City and was a bookseller at Water Street Bookstore, Exeter, N.H.
---
Andrea Ross has been promoted to senior v-p, special markets, at HarperCollins. She joined the company five years ago as senior director, special sales, for children's books, then also general books, and in 2005 was named v-p, special markets. Earlier she worked at Random House and Workman.
HarperCollins president of sales Josh Marwell said that the special markets department has had "record sales" under Ross. Recent achievements include custom projects with Saks Fifth Avenue and Radio City Music Hall.