Dick Harte, president of BookSite, writes concerning yesterday's story about Kindle 2:

Carolyn Reidy is right in her appraisal that popular titles should be priced similarly whether traditionally bound or e-book editions. E-books have not lowered publishing costs of new popular titles so why should they receive a special discount? E-books are an avoidable and discretionary layer of production cost and administrative complexity laid on top of a relatively efficient form of publishing that has existed for centuries. The overall cost of publishing, promotion and distribution of a new title is greater with Kindle in the mix than if left to traditional book retailing including Amazon e-commerce.

Digital books have a number of valuable attributes. They are an efficient way to store and supply marginal backlist titles, and digital books may be supplied via print on demand or with proprietary platforms such as Kindle. We should encourage that evolution. But Amazon's attempt to gain unfair advantage over the primary distribution channel for books is not healthy for the industry, economy or consumer. 

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In the same story, Authors Guild executive director Paul Aiken said that the prospect that Amazon may be a "very dominant player who could squeeze most of the profits out of this new market is frightening for authors and publishers."

Hut Landon, executive director of the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association, wrote in response:

Perhaps the Authors Guild should suggest that authors not link only to Amazon on their websites. Acting as a sales agent for one dominant and frightening player may not be a wise long-term strategy. Many independent bookstores can fulfill orders as Amazon does, and IndieBound.org offers an affiliate program for authors and a connection to 200 independent bookstores.

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Robin J. Dunn, director of St. John's College Bookstore, Annapolis, Md., writes about changes that will be made to BEA after this year's show (see story below):

I had already decided to give this year's BEA a miss precisely because it was scheduled for New York City, but now it looks as though last year's BEA will have been my last for a long time. New York is a fabulous city--but as a venue for a conference, it's far too expensive and difficult to get around. The Javits Center is a dreadful, and its meeting rooms are too small. The whole New York City BEA experience is literally just not worth the money it costs. Even though I had to fly across the country to get to it, the overall cost of attending the 2008 Los Angeles BEA was over $600 cheaper than the previous year's in New York, and I was able to accomplish much more. The plan to hold the event midweek--when it's harder for a great many booksellers to leave their stores for several days at a time--merely adds a further huge disadvantage. It's all very well wooing all those important publishers, but I do find myself wondering just who they will eventually have left to exhibit to.

Big changes for BEA.

BookExpo America will hold the show in New York City for the foreseeable future, is shortening the event to three days from four days and staging it midweek.

The next show, which takes place May 29-31 in New York City, will not be affected by the changes. But thereafter, instead of being held next year in Washington, D.C., and in Las Vegas, Nev., in 2011, the show will take place in New York City. BEA has booked space at the Javits Center through 2012.

The first day of BEA will consist of educational programming, and the exhibit floor will open 4-6 p.m. The following two days the exhibit floor will be open all day. Organizers said that more changes will be announced shortly.

In a statement, industry v-p and BEA show manager Lance Fensterman called the BEA changes "responsive to industry needs" and emphasized that BEA had been talking with many book industry representatives about "what type of change is most necessary to make BEA relevant in the years ahead" and to provide "a new vision" for the show.

Fensterman said, too, that changes "will provide the majority of our exhibitors with a cost reduction, as well as more flexibility in managing their presence at the show."

As for the site of the show, Fensterman stated, "New York City is also the publishing capital and we are anxious to build a strong identity between New York and BEA. There is a significant media presence in New York City and we would like to take advantage of this, not only by building media attendance, but by involving the media in a substantive way in our programming."

The shortened schedule is a matter of focusing on "quality, not quantity," Fensterman continued. "Shortening the show dates and trying to make the show fit into people's schedules conveniently and without being a burden is a positive step in this direction. We want to increase the quality of our programming by stripping away unnecessary sessions, and we want to extend some programming to the show floor so that we have a thoroughly interactive and engaging atmosphere from the moment the show begins to the moment it concludes. . . . We want everyone under one roof, in a highly charged and stimulating atmosphere where there is enormous potential for creating influence, buzz and general excitement about books."

Last week, Reed Exhibitions, which owns BEA, cancelled BookExpo Canada, which had been held in June in Toronto. The impetus was the withdrawal of major exhibitors, including most internationally owned publishers.

HarperCollins has shut down the Collins division, is realigning imprints and has made cutbacks in the children's division, too, including shutting down the Bowen Press, which had been set to launch this month.

In connection with the moves, Steve Ross, president and publisher of Collins, and Lisa Gallagher, senior v-p and publisher of William Morrow have been laid off. (Ross may be reached at slross58@gmail.com; Gallagher may be reached at lisagallaghernyc@gmail.com.) Brenda Bowen, head of the eponymous children's imprint, has also left HarperCollins. At least one sales rep has been let go. The New York Times said that at least five Collins editors are gone and that "several sales, marketing and publicity staff members" from Collins and other divisions were also laid off. As many nine people in the children's division have been laid off, and reports are that at least one rep has been let go.

The changes resemble some of the divisional mergers at other publishers, particularly Random House, and stem from similar problems. Last quarter, book sales at HarperCollins fell 25% and in the second half of last year operating profit dropped nearly 75%.

Under the restructuring, much of the current Collins list will appear under the Collins general nonfiction books will be published by Harper. Collins Reference books will "remain intact" under Bruce Nichols, v-p, publisher of Collins Reference, who will also serve as executive editor at Harper. Collins Business books will be published as Harper Business books; Hollis Heimbouch, v-p, publisher, will continue to oversee the business books program and also become executive editor at Harper. The Smithsonian program continues under Elisabeth Dyssegaard. Collins Living titles will be published as William Morrow books.

Except for Collins Reference and Collins Design, all Collins trade paperbacks will be folded into Harper Perennial and Harper paperbacks. Collins Design's v-p and publisher Marta Schooler and her staff will continue to publish under that imprint. The Avon trade paperback line will also become part of the Harper Perennial and Harper paperback section, all of which reports to Carrier Kania, senior v-p and publisher.

Liate Stehlik has become senior v-p, publisher of William Morrow/Eos/Avon and will continue to oversee Avon and Harper mass market titles. Mary Ellen O'Neill is joining this group as v-p, executive editor, and now also will manage the William Morrow cookbooks program.

In other developments, the children's book group will be moving its offices back to HarperCollins's main building on West 53rd Street.

John Grisham, one of the few bestselling authors whose work is not sold in electronic format, is "close to wrapping up an agreement" with Random House to make all of his titles available as e-books, the Wall Street Journal reported.

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The Old Corner Book Shop, Fort Collins, Colo., closed Friday because of health issues for owner Jane Tester, but the Coloradoan observed that "hopefully the final chapter hasn't yet been written on the 50-year-old bookstore. . . . Tester's family is seeking a buyer for the store, and hopefully someone will step forward. Flourishing bookstores are a sign of a healthy community."

Even Tester's competition is rooting for a positive outcome. According to the Coloradoan, "the staff at the Book Rack of Fort Collins said they wanted to continue to be known as the second oldest bookstore in Fort Collins because that would mean the Old Corner Book Shop was still around."

In a letter, the Book Rack commented, "We have always had great respect for Jane and her ability. She was an easy colleague to work with and provided the reading public with a high level of service."

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Amazon's Kindle has generated a lot of media coverage in the U.S. this week, but the International Herald Tribune explored "roadblocks" keeping the product out of the hands of a potential international audience. The paper reported that "the company has remained mum about its international plans for the reader. While analysts had expected the device to be introduced in Britain in time for the year-end holidays, that did not occur. . . . Analysts say mobile operators in Europe, which are eager to generate new revenue from sales of 'content' like books, may be holding out for a larger share of the proceeds of book sales than Amazon wants to give them."

"Print publishers in the U.S. have been motivated by fear," said James McQuivey, an analyst at Forrester Research, Cambridge, Mass. "I have a hunch that international publishers are less willing to allow their prices to be compromised. They don't want to send a signal to the market that books are cheaper than they used to be."

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A reminder from Carl Lennertz, v-p for independent retailing, at HarperCollins, that in the tradition of Ecco's State by State, the company is soliciting essays about states from booksellers and librarians and will publish the best submissions in paperback in the next year. Part of the proceeds will go to the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression.

Essays should be about 2,500 words and be Word documents. The deadline is March 1. Lennertz offered this advice: "Take a look at some of the pieces in the book now to see the flavor of what we're looking for, O.K.? Then warm up your Corona (typewriter not beer).

"As you'll see, some authors once lived in the state they wrote about, or do now, but some were sent to the state for a first, fresh look. I don't think you have time for the latter, but really, anything goes. Likewise, I'm open to pieces about parts of larger states.

"NOTE: These are NOT about bookstore life; you're Jane or John Citizen on this, but of course, working in the book life as part of the piece would be more than fine."

For questions, contact Lennertz at carl@harpercollins.com.

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Sterling Publishing has announced the following appointments:

• Ron Davis has been promoted to v-p, special and international sales, digital and gift. In addition to managing the special markets, export sales and subsidiary rights departments, he is responsible for the newly launched gift and stationery business as well as the digital markets group.
• Anne Rogers has been promoted to director, special markets, and is responsible for display marketing and the specialty wholesale business.
• Kate Rados has promoted to director, digital markets, and continues to oversee Sterling digital marketing efforts. She will also support the sales and marketing departments while identifying and exploiting commercial opportunities for Sterling and Lark titles, authors and brands.

Last Thursday, the University Book Store, Seattle, Wash., held its first "Read Dating" event. Participants had eight minutes to chat about their favorite books and authors before moving on to the next person. Stesha Brandon, manager of public relations and events, reported that "a ton of people came, and I think even a few matches were made. We're definitely going to do it again."

Tomorrow morning on the Today Show: Amy Sedaris, author of I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence (Grand Central, $15.99, 9780446696777/0446696773).

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Tomorrow on the Diane Rehm Show: George McGovern, author of Abraham Lincoln: The American Presidents Series: The 16th President, 1861-1865 (Times Books, $22, 9780805083453/0805083456).

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Tomorrow on Ellen: Steve Harvey, author of Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man: What Men Really Think About Love, Relationships, Intimacy, and Commitment (Amistad, $23.99, 9780061728976/0061728977).

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Tomorrow on Talk of the Nation: Larry Smith and Rachel Fershleiser, editors of Six-Word Memoirs on Love and Heartbreak by Writers Famous and Obscure (Harper Perennial, $10, 9780061714627/0061714623).

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Tomorrow on the View: The Diva Code: Miss Piggy on Life, Love, and the 10,000 Idiotic Things Men Frogs Do (Hyperion, $14.95, 9781401323165/1401323162).

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Tomorrow night on Charlie Rose: Ronald C. White, Jr., author of A. Lincoln: A Biography (Random House, $35, 9781400064991/1400064996).

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Tomorrow night on the Colbert Report: Adam Gopnik, author of Angels and Ages: A Short Book About Darwin, Lincoln, and Modern Life (Knopf, $24.95, 9780307270788/0307270785).

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Tomorrow night on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno: Alec Greven, the nine-year-old author of How to Talk to Girls (Collins, $9.99, 9780061709999/0061709999), which stemmed from a class assignment.

Julia Gregson's East of the Sun was named Romantic novel of the year by the Romantic Novelists' Association. The Guardian reported that Alice O'Keeffe, chair of the judges, said the book, which tells the story of three young women traveling to India in the last days of the British Raj, is about "lots of different kinds of love . . . There's the true love they're looking for, the love they develop for India the country, and the deep friendships they establish. . . . We thought the writing was exceptionally good--it really transports the reader to India at the time of the Raj. The three central characters are beautifully drawn--really sympathetic and engaging."

The shortlist included Cecelia Ahern's Thanks for the Memories, Judith Lennox's Before the Storm, Susanna Kearsley's Sophia's Secret, Linda Gillard's Star Gazing and Lesley Downer's The Last Concubine. The prize for a shorter work of fiction was won India Grey for Mistress: Hired for the Billionaire's Pleasure. Judy Piatkus, founder of Piatkus Books, was given a lifetime achievement award.

Rwanda has adopted and aggressively promoted a policy of national reconciliation to recover from the horrors of the 1994 genocide during which gangs of Hutus hunted and killed their Tutsi neighbors. Re-education programs have been instituted to integrate the killers back into society after imprisonment; survivors have received training in dealing with post-traumatic stress; and villages hold old-style tribal judicial proceedings as forums for investigating offenses.

In his third book on the genocide, Jean Hatzfeld addresses the psychic wounds festering behind the façade of government-constructed peace. He asks hard questions that others dodge: How does a survivor come face-to-face with killers who slaughtered family members? What goes through the minds of Hutus who hunted Tutsis in forests and marshes to hack them to death with machetes?

"After a genocide, survivors and criminals alike usually keep quiet, reluctant to speak of their still-raw experience of human extermination," Hatzfeld writes. Having gained the confidence of both Hutus and Tutsis from his previous work, however, he is able to gather remarkable testimony on how things are really progressing for both sides. Wary Tutsis tell him, "Survivors are no longer masters of their memories and cannot rid themselves of painful recollections." Any appearance of a calm normality from a Tutsi is superficial at best, Hatzfeld believes.

Unlike most genocidal killers, Hutus were more than forthcoming with Hatzfeld when he interviewed them behind bars. After their release, however, some of them continued to speak with him with candor, but most didn't apologize to Tutsi survivors or detail their actions in village meetings. One leader of the hunts for Tutsis, Leopord Twagirayezu, was so haunted by his memories that he testified far and wide about the extreme cruelty of the hunts up until his assassination. If he thought his revelations would spur other Hutus to confront their culpability and speak out publicly, he was misguided: others speak about staggeringly efficient hunts (only 20 of 6,000 Tutsi who fled into the Kayumba Forest survived) with shocking casualness.

The natural response is for the Hutus and surviving Tutsis to avoid each other, but Hatzfeld views social mixing in towns, markets and cabarets as strained first steps toward reconciliation and a forgetting that may take generations to achieve. Readers of this painfully sad report from a scarred nation will feel the tenuous and anguished present in Rwanda by pondering the statement of one survivor: "Although I am relieved, I am never at peace."--John McFarland

Shelf Talker: Profoundly affecting and disturbing, the witness testimony of both Hutu killers and Tutsi survivors in The Antelope's Strategy portrays the tense recovery of a nation after genocide.

Chicagoland bestsellers for the week ending Sunday, February 9:

Hardcover Fiction
 
1. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
2. Miles from Nowhere by Nami Mun
3. Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
4. Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
5. The Piano Teacher by Janice Y.K. Lee
 
Hardcover Nonfiction
 
1. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
2. Are You There Vodka? It's Me Chelsea by Chelsea Handler
3. The Breakthrough by Gwen Ifill
4. American Lion by Jon Meacham
5. Angels and Ages by Adam Gopnik
 
Paperback Fiction

1. Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
2. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
3. The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
4. The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
5. The Commoner by John Burnham Schwartz
 
Paperback Nonfiction
 
1. Eat This Not That by David Zinczenko
2. Animal Vegetable Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver
3. Not for Tourists Guide to Chicago from Not for Tourists
4. Charlatan by Pope Brock
5. Sin in the Second City by Karen Abbott
 
Children's
 
1. Diary of Wimpy Kid: Last Straw by Jeff Kinney
2. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
3. Breaking Dawn by Stephanie Meyer
4. Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed by Mo Willems
5. Coraline by Neil Gaiman 

Reporting stores: Anderson's, Naperville and Downer's Grove; Read Between the Lynes, Woodstock; The Book Cellar, Lincoln Square; Lake Forest Books, Lake Forest; The Bookstall at Chestnut Court, Winnetka; 57th St. Books; Seminary Co-op; Unabridged Books; Women and Children First, Chicago.

Note: This list, which was developed recently by Carl Lennertz at HarperCollins with the help of Jim Dana at Great Lakes Independent Booksellers Association and Chicago area booksellers, fills a gap in reporting on bestselling titles in major U.S. cities. Shelf Awareness plans to run the weekly list regularly.