"It is the distribution channels that are more important than the product itself."--Penelope Liechti, BBC's export manager for audiobooks, speaking to Reuters in Frankfurt about the 20% jump in audio sales in the U.K. and Germany this year and last, some of which comes from the growth of Audible.com in the market. (In Germany, reader-listeners may soon be able to download audiobooks onto a USB stick in bookstores and gas stations.)

The revived Kepler's Books & Music in Menlo Park, Calif., has put together its first major events series, the Autumn Literary Festival, which includes a sparkling night of author appearances, a music evening and a Family Day over a long weekend.

On Thursday, November 3, the Night Out with Kepler's features:

• Berkeley professor Jerome Karabel will talk about his new book, The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, at the store.
• Author Tobias Wolff, who incidentally is a Stanford professor, will speak at the Menlo College dining hall.
• Barry Eisler, a Menlo Park resident and author of the Rain thriller series, will speak at the City Council Chambers.
• Ann Packer, author of The Dive from Clausen's Pier, will appear at Trellis Restaurant in Menlo Park.
• Firoozeh Dumas, another Menlo Park resident and author of Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America, will be the focus of a dinner at a private residence.

On Friday, the store offers live music. On Saturday, Kepler's sponsors "an evening" at the Menlo School with Senator Barbara Boxer, whose new political suspense novel is A Time to Run.

On Sunday, the store offers Family Day from noon to 4 p.m. Besides having activities and events, students from Kindergarten through Grade 5 receive a 5% discount and 20% of all proceeds go to area elementary schools.

As noted here yesterday, Books-A-Million finally filed its second quarter Form 10-Q and now believes it is up to date with the SEC. Yesterday members of the company met with the Nasdaq Listing Qualifications Panel to make the case that Nasdaq should stop the process for delisting BAM.

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Sad bookstore news: Cecilia and Kermit Roy, who have owned L & L Bookstore in La Mesa, Calif., near San Diego, for two years, are closing their store on October 30. The Roys said that business at the nine-year-old store had been "improving until gasoline prices skyrocketed here in California. Since that time, we have seen a steady decline in our daily sales."

The couple plan to sell as much inventory as possible during a closing sale and then sell what's left online.

This marks the second time a bookseller going out of business has linked the decision to poor sales in recent months that appear to be related to customers' soaring energy costs.

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Coffee & Books, the last "full-service retail bookstore" in Colville, Wash., last week received an eviction notice from the landlord, according to the Eastern Washington Stateman-Examiner. Owners Rod and Lisa Shinn bought the store from the former tenant, the Booknook, three years ago. Coffee & Books has stocked classics, historical fiction, nonfiction and children's books and done many special orders, about half of its business.

With an eviction date of October 31, a move that will allow the store to set up in time to serve Christmas shoppers will be "a real challenge," Rod Shinn told the paper.

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Reuters offers an overview of publishers who sell their books directly to consumers online, which now, after Simon & Schuster joined the club, includes all major houses and a wide range of small and medium-sized publishers.

Some publishers say they have "limited retail ambitions." Apparently referring to Barnes & Noble, Pat Schroeder, president of the AAP, said, "The retailers have become publishers, so why can't publishers become retailers? It's an experimental thing. Everyone's trying to figure out what the right thing to do is."

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Consider this for informal debate or something to post in-store: Time magazine's "100 best English-language novels" since 1923, the magazine's founding.

Today WAMU's Diane Rehm Show does some planning with Thomas Barnett, author of Blueprint for Action: A Future Worth Creating (Putnam, $26.95, 0399153128).

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Tonight on the Charlie Rose Show: Adam Gopnik, author of The King in the Window (Miramax, $19.95, 078681862X).

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Sunday on 60 Minutes, Michael Jordan does some one on one about his new book, Driven from Within (Atria, $35, 0743284003).

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Yesterday Talk of the Nation talked with Jung Chang and her husband, Jon Halliday, authors of Mao: The Unknown Story (Knopf, $35, 0679422714).

Footsteps in the fog will sound ever louder during the rest of October.

The Turner Classic Movie Channel is projecting an unusual promotion for its Alfred Hitchcock festival that runs from October 24-30 and features 39, yes 39, films from the oeuvre of the master. Called Footsteps in the Fog, the promotion uses the title, typeface and idea of a 2002 title, Footsteps in the Fog: Alfred Hitchcock's San Francisco by Jeff Kraft and Aaron Leventhal (Santa Monica Press, distributed by IPG, $24.95, 1891661272) and features a sweepstakes. The grand prize is a trip to Northern California and tour of settings of Hitchcock classics such as The Birds and Vertigo guided by the book's authors.

TCM has highlighted the sweepstakes on its Web site, has put a full-page ad in its monthly magazine, is running a one-minute ad spot several times a day and is showing a five-minute documentary featuring the book's authors between films. As if all that isn't enough, when the festival begins this coming Monday, TCM will do an e-mail blast to 250,000 Entertainment Weekly subscribers highlighting the sweepstakes, festival and book.

Thrilled by the thriller promotion, Santa Monica Press publisher Jeffrey Goldman told Shelf Awareness that the house, which has sold 25,000 copies of the title, recently went back to press for the fourth time with a run of 5,000 to supplement copies already on hand. Calling TCM "a very supportive company," Goldman said that he and the channel "have had an open dialogue for several years about all of my film books," which include Silent Echoes: Discovering Early Hollywood Through the Films of Buster Keaton, Dogme Uncut, The Keystone Kid and the new L.A. Noir: The City as Character. "They've helped out in many ways via Web site reviews, back cover blurbs from their hosts" and now with this promotion.

The following are the bestselling titles during the week ended Sunday, October 16, at Great Lakes Booksellers Association and Midwest Booksellers Association stores as reported to Book Sense.

Hardcover Fiction

1. Knife of Dreams by Robert Jordan (Tor, $29.95, 0312873077)
2. The March by E. L. Doctorow (Random House, $25.95, 0375506713)
3. A Breath of Snow and Ashes by Diana Gabaldon (Delacorte, $28, 0385324162)
4. The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown, $26.95, 0316734934)
5. Son of a Witch by Gregory Maguire (ReganBooks, $26.95, 0060548932)
6. A Wedding in December by Anita Shreve (Little, Brown, $25.95, 0316738999)
7. The Widow of the South by Robert Hicks (Warner, $24.95, 0446500127)
8. Blue Smoke by Nora Roberts (Putnam, $25.95, 0399153063)
9. Consent to Kill by Vince Flynn (Atria, $25.95, 0743270363)
10. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova (Little, Brown, $25.95, 0316011770)
11. The Painted Drum by Louise Erdrich (HarperCollins, $25.95, 0060515104)
12. Friends, Lovers, Chocolate by Alexander McCall Smith (Pantheon, $21.95, 0375422994)
13. Goodnight Nobody by Jennifer Weiner (Atria, $26, 0743470117)
14. The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd (Viking, $24.95, 0670033944)
15. The Divide by Nicholas Evans (Putnam, $26.95, 0399152067)

Hardcover Nonfiction

1. The World Is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman (FSG, $27.50, 0374292884)
2. The City of Falling Angels by John Berendt (Penguin, $25.95, 1594200580)
3. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion (Knopf, $23.95, 140004314X)
4. Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner (Morrow, $25.95, 006073132X)
5. 1776 by David McCullough (S&S, $32, 0743226712)
6. 1491 by Charles C. Mann (Knopf, $30, 140004006X)
7. My FBI by Louis J. Freeh (St. Martin's, $25.95, 0312321899)
8. Natural Cures "They" Don't Want You to Know About by Kevin Trudeau (Alliance, $29.95, 0975599518)
9. What Remains by Carole Radziwill (Scribner, $25.95, 0743276949)
10. A Crack in the Edge of the World by Simon Winchester (HarperCollins, $27.95, 0060571993)
11. Julie and Julia by Julie Powell (Little, Brown, $23.95, 031610969X)
12. Symptoms of Withdrawal by Christopher Kennedy Lawford (Morrow, $25.95, 0060732482)
13. The Purpose-Driven Life by Rick Warren (Zondervan, $19.99, 0310205719)
14. Blink by Malcolm Gladwell (Little, Brown, $25.95, 0316172324)
15. A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle (Dutton, $24.95, 0525948023)

Trade Paperback Fiction

1. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (Riverhead, $14, 1594480001)
2. Wicked by Gregory Maguire (ReganBooks, $15, 0060987103)
3. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (Penguin, $15, 0143034901)
4. My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult (Washington Square, $14, 0743454537)
5. The Plot Against America by Philip Roth (Vintage, $14.95, 1400079497)
6. Broken for You by Stephanie Kallos (Grove, $13, 0802142109)
7. Light on Snow by Anita Shreve (Back Bay, $14.95, 0316010677)
8. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon (Vintage, $12.95, 1400032717)
9. Snow by Orhan Pamuk (Vintage, $14.95, 0375706860)
10. The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory (Touchstone, $16, 0743227441)
11. The Known World by Edward P. Jones (Amistad, $13.95, 0060557559)
12. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd (Penguin, $14, 0142001740)
13. The Virgin's Lover by Philippa Gregory (Touchstone, $16, 0743269268)
14. Case Histories by Kate Atkinson (Back Bay, $13.95, 0316010707)
15. The Best American Short Stories 2005 edited by Michael Chabon (Houghton Mifflin, $14, 0618427058)

Trade Paperback Nonfiction

1. A Million Little Pieces by James Frey (Anchor, $14.95, 0307276902)
2. The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson (Vintage, $14.95, 0375725601)
3. Why Do Men Have Nipples? by Mark Leyner et al. (Three Rivers, $12.95, 1400082315)
4. Sudoku Easy, Volume 1 by Will Shortz (St. Martin's, $6.95, 0312355025)
5. Sudoku Easy to Hard edited by Will Shortz (St. Martin's, $6.95, 0312355033)
6. Bad Dog by R. D. Rosen et al. (Workman, $9.95, 0761139834)
7. Will in the World by Stephen J. Greenblatt (Norton, $14.95, 039332737X)
8. The End of Faith by Sam Harris (Norton, $13.95, 0393327655)
9. The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell (Back Bay, $14.95, 0316346624)
10. What to Expect When You're Expecting by Heidi E. Murkoff et al. (Workman, $13.95, 0761121323)
11. Sudoku Easy to Hard by Will Shortz (St. Martin's Griffin, $6.95, 0312355041)
12. The Bookseller of Kabul by Asne Seierstad (Back Bay, $12.95, 0316159417)
13. Chronicles by Bob Dylan (S&S, $14, 0743244583)
14. Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson (Random House, $14.95, 0375760989)
15. The Living Great Lakes by Jerry Dennis  (St. Martin's Griffin, $13.95, 0312331037)

Mass Market

1. The Colorado Kid by Stephen King (Hard Case Crime, $5.99, 0843955848)
2. London Bridges by James Patterson (Warner, $7.99, 0446613355)
3. Angels & Demons by Dan Brown (Pocket, $7.99, 0671027360)
4. Hour Game by David Baldacci (Warner, $7.99, 0446616494)
5. Melancholy Baby by Robert B. Parker (Berkley, $7.99, 0425204219)
6. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (Warner, $6.99, 0446310786)
7. Double Shot by Diane Mott Davidson (HarperTorch, $7.99, 0060527307)
8. The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason (Dell, $7.99, 0440241359)
9. Metro Girl by Janet Evanovich (HarperTorch, $7.99, 0060584025)
10. One for the Money by Janet Evanovich (St. Martin's, $7.99, 0312990456)

Children's (Fiction and Illustrated)

1. Eldest by Christopher Paolini (Knopf, $21, 037582670X)
2. Inkspell by Cornelia Funke (Chicken House, $19.99, 0439554004)
3. A Family of Poems by Caroline Kennedy, illustrated by Jon J. Muth (Hyperion, $19.95, 0786851112)
4. Eragon by Christopher Paolini (Knopf, $9.95, 0375826696)
5. Junie B., First Grader: Boo . . . and I Mean It! by Barbara Park, illustrated by Denise Brunkus (Random House, $3.99, 0375828079)
6. Nothing Can Keep Us Together (Gossip Girl #8) by Cecily Von Ziegesar (Little, Brown, $9.99, 0316735094)
7. Junie B., First Grader: Jingle Bells, Batman Smells! (P.S. So Does May) by Barbara Park, illustrated by Denise Brunkus (Random House, $11.95, 0375828087)
8. Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown, illustrated by Clement Hurd (HarperCollins, $7.99, 0694003611)
9. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Movie Tie-in) by Ann Brashares (Delacorte, $6.99, 0553494791)
10. Winter's Tale: An Original Pop-Up Journey by Robert Sabuda (Little Simon, $26.95, 0689853637)
11. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling (Scholastic, $29.99, 0439784549)
12. The Invasion of the Boy Snatchers (The Clique #4) by Lisi Harrison (Little, Brown, $9.99, 0316701343)
13. Flush by Carl Hiaasen (Knopf, $16.95, 0375821821)
14. The Second Summer of the Sisterhood by Ann Brashares (Delacorte, $8.95, 0385731051)
15. Girls in Pants by Ann Brashares (Delacorte, $16.95, 0385729359)

[Many thanks to Book Sense, the GLBA and the MBA!]