Robert T. Mize, owner of Hidden Secrets Book Covers, Albuquerque, N.M., offers an unusual perspective on e-books:

Hidden Secrets Book Covers manufactures cloth covers for paperback and hardcover books and for the Sony Reader II and Kindle I. I have been a vendor at the regional independent booksellers association trade shows, several Romantic Times conventions and the international sci-fi convention last August. Three years ago only a few people at the Romantic Times convention mentioned e-books. The next year there were maybe a dozen. Last year dozens were interested, and there was incredible interest at the sci-fi convention. All of the interest was in Kindle covers. I have yet to sell a Sony cover.

I do not agree with the comparison of e-books to the music business. I suspect that e-books will take around 15% of the new book market in the next two years, but I doubt that it will have taken 50% in 10 years.

Readers express interest in e-books for several specific reasons:

Commuters and frequent fliers like the compact nature of the e-reader. They don't have to fuss with folding a newspaper or magazine. If they finish reading something, they can quickly download something else with a Kindle.

People who read a book a day or more like the ability to store multiple books in a tiny space. These are the people who go on vacation with one suitcase that has 35 lbs. of books. They also don't have to worry about what to do with all of the books after they read them. If they want to keep a book for reference, they can store it on an e-book memory card.

For readers with medical problems like arthritis, M/S, carpal tunnel syndrome, lost limbs, and neck and back problems, the e-book is a godsend. The changeable font sizes can help many readers with vision problems.
 
Techno-junkies love new gadgets like e-books.
 
Textbooks are where e-books should dominate the market. In school, what would you have given for the ability to search any keyword in the textbook and be able find all passages immediately and be able to highlight sections and find them immediately? Purchasing one e-reader in elementary school that will work through high school is not unreasonable, and e-textbook packages could be put together and sold for various courses without the school or professor being locked in to a single textbook for several years.
 
Far more readers love curling up with a book. They also don't want to risk ruining an e-reader poolside, boating, at the beach, in the bathtub or anywhere else around water. They love sharing a great book with friends, and giving books as a gift.

Bookstores are very different from music stores. At music stores, you went to get what you had already heard or your favorite artist's newest album. At bookstores, you go to see what is available by both your favorite writers and other writers whom you have never heard of and to see books of local interest. A well-informed staff is of little use in a music store and rarely available at corporate chains. The well-informed staff is the greatest competitive advantage that independent bookstores have. Those bookstores who capitalize on handselling are the ones who will survive.

Anderson News has laid off at least 110 employees and has effectively shut down, according to the Knoxville News Sentinel. Some booksellers report that shipments of magazines and books from the wholesaler, whose headquarters are in Knoxville, Tenn., have stopped.

On February 1, Anderson News and Source Interlink, which together account for about half of the magazine wholesaling market, began charging publishers seven cents more per copy, a move most publishers balked at, leading them to stop shipments, the News Sentinel reported. Anderson had also sought to shift other costs to publishers.

It is unclear whether or how much Source Interlink is shipping to customers. The Bonita Springs, Fla., wholesaler has filed an antitrust suit against publishers and said that it had received a temporary restraining order. Folio reported that News Group and Hudson News, two other magazine wholesalers, are expanding coverage to take over some of the business lost by the closing of Anderson News and the disruption at Source Interlink.

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In a Wall Street Journal article about employee theft, Karin Wilson, co-owner and president of Page and Palette, Fairhope, Ala., explains the measures she's taken since she discovered late last year that a bookkeeper had embezzled more than $150,000 (Shelf Awareness, January 7, 2009).

Among the changes: "The stamp bearing her signature went in the garbage. Bank-account statements arrive at her home, instead of the business. Employees no longer have access to company credit cards--all charges go through Ms. Wilson."

Besides the missing cash, Wilson estimated that the store lost 20% in potential sales during the holiday season because of a lack of resources to order books.

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From the "booksellers can make you feel better" department, we submit yesterday's post by Jessica Stockton Bagnulo at her blog, the Written Nerd. Jessica, who is the events coordinator at McNally Jackson Books, New York, N.Y., and a Shelf Awareness contributor, titled her post: "Serendipity in Bookland, Or, It Just So Happened: Why I Love Being A Bookseller In New York (to the tune of 'Lullaby of Birdland')."

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CNN called it "a project of biblical proportions: 31,173 verses, 90 cities, one Word" in a report on Zondervan's Bible Across America tour to create "a handwritten edition of the New International Version of the Bible--America's NIV--to celebrate the translation's 30th anniversary."

More than 15,000 people have contributed so far by copying one verse of Scripture each. "We're basically halfway there," said Tara Powers, a spokeswoman for the publisher. "The youngest child has been 4, and there have been people in their late 80s. We had a blind person who someone guided their hand as they wrote the verse."

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Next Tuesday, February 24, at 6:30 p.m., in New York City, Bob Miller, founder of HarperStudio, and Jason Epstein, among other things, co-founder of the New York Review of Books, editorial director of Random House, creator of Anchor Books and currently head of Espresso Book Machine, will speak about "The Next Publishing Frontier." Their discussion is part of the Labor, Landmarks, and Literature series at the New York Center for Independent Publishers at 20 W. 44th St.

Dan Simon, founder and publisher of Seven Stories Press, and Peter B. Kaufman, president of Intelligent Television, will join Miller and Epstein during the lecture.

Tickets are $15 for non-members, $10 for members and $5 for students. To register, visit generalsociety.org or call 212-764-7021.

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Via the Book Industry Study Group, Baker & Taylor noted services for Jean Srnecz that will be held near Buffalo, N.Y.:
 
On Saturday, February 21, and Sunday, February 22, 2 p.m.-4 p.m. and 7 p.m.-9 p.m., at the Wood Funeral Home, 784 Main St., East Aurora, N.Y.
 
A funeral mass will be held on Monday, February 23, at 11 a.m. at St. Cecelia's Roman Catholic Church, 991 Centerline Rd., Sheldon, N.Y.
 
A memorial service will be held eventually in New Jersey.
 
Memorial contributions may be made in Srnecz's name to the following organizations:

• Susan G. Komen for the Cure, 5005 LBJ Freeway, Suite 250, Dallas, Tex. 75244
• Mortel Family Charitable Foundation, P.O. Box 405, Hershey, Pa. 17033

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Laurie Graham has joined the National Association of Independent Publishers Representatives as director, publisher services. In this new position, she will receive and manage seasonal submissions for Frontlist Plus Universal, the latest version of NAIPR's data-entry service for industry buyers (Shelf Awareness, December 15, 2008), which already has some 300 active imprints.

Graham has more than 20 years of experience with WordStock, where she was responsible for data interchange with clients and for the management and dissemination of new-title data for both two-season and three-season book publishers.

In a statement, Paul C. Williams, NAIPR's executive director, said that Graham had "done an outstanding job over the years in providing her customers, including NAIPR, with friendly and efficient service when it comes to the management and transmission of new-title data for delivery to our valued buyers."

Graham may be reached at 27 Grove St., Belmont, Mass. 02478; 617-489-6483; iamlaurieg@yahoo.com.

 

Today on the Diane Rehm Show: Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, author of The Third Chapter: Passion, Risk, and Adventure in the 25 Years After 50 (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $25, 9780374275495/0374275491).

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Tonight on Larry King Live: Ann Coulter, author of Guilty: Liberal 'Victims' and Their Assault on America (Crown Forum, $27.95, 9780307353467/030735346X).

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WETA's Author, Author! has posted an interview with James Mathews, author of Last Known Position (University of North Texas Press, $12.95, 9781574412529/1574412523).

Ang Lee "is in talks to direct Life of Pi, the Fox 2000 adaptation of Yann Martel's coming-of-age survival tale," Variety reported. "The project has been through several incarnations, first with scribe Dean Georgaris, then M. Night Shyamalan. Lee will supervise a new script. Studio will hire a writer shortly."

Lee's most recent project is an adaptation of Tom Monte's Taking Woodstock, which is scheduled for release in August.

Book TV airs on C-Span 2 this week 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, February 21

8 a.m. Alexandra Avakian, author of Windows of the Soul: My Journeys in the Muslim World (Focal Point, $40, 9781426203206/1426203209), talks about her photographs depicting war, political figures and daily life in the Muslim world. (Re-airs Sunday at 12 a.m. and 1 p.m.)
     
11 a.m. For an event hosted by Politics & Prose bookstore, Washington, D.C., Ted Widmer, author of Ark of the Liberties: America and the World (Hill and Wang, $25, 9780809027354/0809027356), contends that the U.S. has been the greatest advocate of freedom. (Re-airs Sunday at 2 a.m.)
     
4 p.m. For an event hosted by Hearthside Books, Juneau, Alaska, William Iggiagruk Hensley, author of Fifty Miles from Tomorrow: A Memoir of Alaska and the Real People (FSG, $24, 9780374154844/374154848), talks about his childhood and his work as a state representative and senator. (Re-airs Sunday at 2:45 a.m. and 6 p.m.)
     
5 p.m. Norman Bussel, author of My Private War: Liberated Body, Captive Mind--A World War II POW's Journey (Pegasus Books, $24.95, 9781605980157/1605980153), discusses his experiences and offers advice to current veterans. (Re-airs Saturday at 11 p.m.)
     
10 p.m. After Words. Armstrong Williams interviews Roger Simon, author of Blacklisting Myself: Memoir of a Hollywood Apostate in the Age of Terror (Encounter Books, $25.95, 9781594032479/1594032475). Simon documents his political journey from left-wing writer to post-9/11 friend of conservatives. (Re-airs Sunday at 9 p.m., Monday at 12 a.m. and 3 a.m., and Sunday, March 1, at 12 p.m.)

Sunday, February 22

6 a.m. Dean Baker, author of Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy (Polipoint Press, $15.95, 9780981576992/0981576990), offers suggestions for avoiding further damage to the economy. (Re-airs Sunday at 2 p.m. and Monday at 4 a.m.)

7 p.m. McNally Jackson Books, New York, N.Y., hosts a panel discussion on the books and authors that inspired President Barack Obama. Panelists include Eric Alterman, Christopher Jackson, Susan Jacoby, Laura Miller, David Samuels and Colm Toibin. (Re-airs Monday at 1 a.m. and Saturday, March 7, at 8 a.m.)

Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson (Viking, $17.99, 9780670011100/067001110X, 288 pp., ages 12-up)

On the 10th anniversary of the publication of her book Speak, Anderson presents a tale every bit as haunting and immediate as her debut novel. In many ways, 18-year-old Lia Marrigan Overbrook is as silent as Melinda Sordino in Speak--at least concerning the things that really matter. In the opening scene, Lia's stepmother, Jennifer, tells her that her former best friend, Cassandra Jane Parrish, is dead, "found in a motel room, alone." Lia will not or cannot talk about the nonstop voices in her head ("body found in a motel room, alone") or the fact that, after six months of the silent treatment, Cassie left 33 messages on Lia's cell phone the night before her death. Once again, Anderson uses her heroine's internal dialogue to stunning effect, allowing readers to follow Lia's diseased thinking, the toxic chanting inside her head ("::Stupid/ugly/stupid/bitch/stupid/fat/stupid/baby/stupid/loser/stupid/lost::") and the constant calorie-counting ("I eat in my car: diet soda (0) + lettuce (15) + 8 tablespoons salsa (40) + hard-boiled egg white (16) = Lunch (71)").
 
As she tries to cope with the present, Lia reflects on her past with Cassie, who moved in across the street in the winter of third grade. Lia first discovered Cassie puking at age 11, and soon after Lia's parents divorced, when she was 12, Lia started cutting ("Cassie became the roller coaster in the theme park of middle school. I was the merry-go-round horse frozen in one position, eyes painted open, paint chipping off my eyes . . . "). Anderson, keenly aware of the life-or-death tightrope Lia walks, counterbalances the gravity of the situation with Lia's loving friendship with her eight-year-old stepsister, Emma, and also the zinging wit of the heroine's rebelliousness. Lia's internal monologue retains the kind of poetry that results from a well-read, highly intelligent person detached from her own reality. Her heightened senses pick up the aromas of gingerbread and cinnamon, the frigid temperatures that her defenseless body experiences and every subtle nuance in her parents' words and actions. Crossed out words in the narrative reveal the thoughts that come naturally to Lia that she compulsively represses ("The doughnutsbagels smell heavenly plus sugar and I know what one taste I have to eat a little of something or she'll go nuts . . . "); these usually follow intense feelings ("Across the street, Mrs. Parrish is walking through a daughterless house, a Cassieless kitchen"). As Cassie's ghost begins to haunt Lia ever more aggressively, readers also see how much the adults around Lia are trying to protect her from herself. But no one can save Lia except Lia, and readers will be rooting for this heroine to fight for her life.--Jennifer M. Brown
 

All those headlines declaring the book is dead and readers are an endangered species seemed to have little effect on the 8,000 writers, give or take a few hundred, who inundated the Hilton Chicago last week for the Association of Writers & Writing Programs annual conference.

Registration lines were longer than one hotel staff member said he had ever seen for any event there. AWP's Bookfair--showcasing small and university presses as well as an array of lit journals--played host to erudite throngs. From Thursday through Saturday, as many as 20 separate panels and readings were taking place simultaneously in conference rooms all day long; countless off-site events were held; hotel restaurants, lobbies, hallways and even staircases were jammed with the published and the unpublished.

Did I mention the elevators? Not only were they consistently defying maximum legal capacity limits, but the Poetry Foundation's Poetry Everywhere video series had taken over, as if by literary coup, the small elevator TVs, which normally show CNN. How can we quote William Carlos Williams ("It is difficult / to get the news from poems," etc.) when verse supplants headlines?

Was everyone attending the conference carrying a manuscript in their back pocket? Probably. Was the possibility high that few of those books would ever see the light of publication? No doubt. Did it matter? Not so much, at least not last week.

At a panel called "Big House/Small House," author Rilla Askew said her experience with university press publishing had taught her many things, including patience with the longer process and the fact that she has "begun to become grateful for one reader at a time. My work is still long-term in ambition, but I'm grateful for readers who are looking for what I'm doing."

"Any discussion of large and small press publishing needs to be held in the context of our expectations," said Tracy Daugherty. "Every individual publishing adventure is unique. Books may be sold like canned goods, but they are not produced that way."

Daugherty suggested that writers have a realistic view of the process: "When we write books of poetry or literary prose, knowing what the market is, what do we think we're doing?" He cited Kurt Vonnegut's poem, "Joe Heller," in which Vonnegut asks how Heller feels knowing that the billionaire host of a party they're attending makes more money in a day than he has in Catch-22's history. Heller replies that he has something more valuable--"The knowledge that I've got enough."

"I know many writers, and so do you, for whom enough is never enough," Daugherty continued. "So, it's enough to know we've touched our core. In deciding what will be enough, my expectation of a small press is that I have a stimulating engagement with a reader [editor] I trust. You really need to be honest with yourself and judge your expectations candidly."

Molly Giles advised writers to consider small presses a legitimate publishing opportunity and "to support them by buying their books." Daugherty agreed, recommending that writers assume a "literary citizenship . . . Look at this conference. There are 8,000 writers here, and if we don't support each other . . ."

The lone bookseller at the conference was Barbara's Bookstore. Saturday afternoon, I checked in with general manager David Schwartz, who said that in addition to a display table at the Bookfair, he had been selling books at author events in other parts of the hotel and off-site. Although he'd begun with "high expectations," the conference "wasn't quite what I expected, but I'm certainly not disappointed. It's a unique conference in that most people are trying to sell their books rather than buy books."

That may be one reason why Saturday, when the Bookfair opened to the general public, there was a sales spike. "We sold twice as many books as the previous two days," said Schwartz, who expressed approval for the idea of offering a similar option--citing ComicCon as a successful example--at shows like BEA. "I think it's a great idea," he said, noting that AWP "put a relatively high price tag on this," which limited the final day crowd to serious browsers and buyers.

Supply and demand. What struck me initially at AWP was that the Hilton Chicago is also the site of CIROBE in November. As a former remainder buyer who attended for six years, I couldn't help but consider the fact that a place I normally associate with the end of a book's life (yes, I know, bargain book aficionados believe in reincarnation) was for a few days so thoroughly concentrated upon conception and birth. Also, perhaps, on responsibility. "The onus is on us," said LeAnne Howe, "to be good stewards of each other's work."--Robert Gray (column archives available at Fresh Eyes Now)