Amazon.com is closing distribution centers in three states and will lay off or transfer some 210 employees, according to the Wall Street Journal. The three DCs are in Munster, Ind., Red Rock, Nev., and Chambersburg, Pa. Amazon plans to add 300,000 square feet to its DC in Phoenix, Ariz., later this year, to process large items, including patio furniture and televisions. An Amazon spokesman said, "We continue to evaluate the network and all parts of the business to make sure we are positioning ourselves for future growth."

The Munster DC was opened a year and a half ago. Last year, Amazon added three million square feet of warehouse space, bringing the total in North America to 12 million.

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"Enabled in part by e-book technology and fueled by a convergence of spectacularly dramatic news events, publishers are hitting the fast-forward button," leading "more books on current events [to come] out faster than ever before," today's New York Times wrote.

There was some difference of opinion about the trend. On one hand, Amy Neidlinger, associate publisher of FT Press, said, "People can't wait a year to get timely information on critical subjects. Especially today it's dated 10 minutes after you've just received the first installment."

Jamie Raab, publisher of Grand Central, said that only a book with "instant media appeal" is worth publishing quickly.

And Ann Godoff, president and publisher of the Penguin Press, said, "What we need to do on the book side is to do the most thorough, the best and most contextualized" work.

Among interesting notes: Dumb Money: How Our Greatest Financial Minds Bankrupted the Nation by Daniel Gross, a Newsweek writer, was published as an e-book last month, three weeks after Gross submitted the manuscript. The e-book has sold "a couple thousand" copies, according to Free Press publisher Martha Levin. A paperback edition of Dumb Money appears in April.

And Kathryn Popoff, v-p for the trade division at Borders, said that "quick-turnaround books represent only about 5% of all titles," the Times wrote.

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March metaphor madness. This morning Dave Rosenthal, Sunday editor of the Baltimore Sun, is posting a quiz on the paper's blog asking readers "to imagine Raymond Chandler writing today by completing descriptions like these: 1. as ____ as a Dick Cheney sneer. 2. as ____ as an A.I.G. exec asking for a bonus." There are 10 in all.

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Observing that even in tough economic times, "there always will be those who want to own what they read," the Denver Post featured "a sampling of some favorite bibliophile haunts, where book dealers are happy to feed your literary addiction." Recommended destinations in the region included West Side Books, Murder by the Book, the Bookies, Hearthfire Books of Evergreen, the Hermitage Bookshop, the Bookworm, Park Hill Community Bookstore, Boulder Bookstore and the Tattered Cover.

"Put a bookstore in a neighborhood, and you really feel the roots of a community growing," said Lois Harvey, owner of West Side Books.

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Cool idea of the day: Patti McFarland, owner of Encinitas Book Tales, Encinitas, Calif., will soon launch "The Literary Walking Companions," a daily book club for walkers. The North County Times reported that "unlike many book clubs in which a book is assigned and then everyone comes prepared to analyze it . . . Literary Walking Companions will allow participants to chat about whatever books, authors, plot lines, characters or writing styles they're in the mood to discuss."
 
"Book lovers love to read, but they have to get off their butts, too," she said. "I'm 65. I need to walk. . . . It's about trying to be a little more healthy. Everybody is outside doing things because the weather is good. Why not start something like this?"

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On Friday, in his Book Brahmin, Robert Goolrick wrote that the book he had faked reading was Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne, adding, "I don't think anyone in college actually ever read that novel."

In response, mystery writer Sharon Wildwind wrote: "I read Tristram Shandy, all the way through. I also read every word of The Origin of Consciousness on the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. For those two things alone, I figured I earned my degree."

 

 

The Association of Booksellers for Children and the American Booksellers Association are forming a joint task force to explore the possibility of a merger and, if the partnership seems viable, to make "some preliminary recommendations for possible structures, staffing scenarios, and programming solutions," according to a statement by the ABC board.

ABC president Becky Anderson and the board indicated that at the moment the organization is "healthy and vibrant" and is "very happy with the work our current executive director is doing for us." Still, "because ABC has always run very close to the bone--with about 80% of annual revenue being funneled directly into annual programming--it has never built a large reserve, staff, or capital assets. It relies heavily on income from publishers to fund critical programs like the catalog, educational workshops, and BEA programming."

The board continued: "Possible options would include becoming a division of ABA, a department of ABA, or another configuration that we haven't determined yet. This would have the advantage of giving ABC the resources of a larger organization while expanding the programming available to all ABA members."

In the meantime, the ABC board will be "surveying members about their thoughts and ideas about a possible ABC/ABA merger, as well as what parts of the ABC programming members find most valuable." It will hold a town hall meeting on the topic at BEA, and after the conference, the task force will begin formal meetings with the aim of creating a report for both boards before this coming January. The full text of the board's message (plus a list of questions and answers regarding a possible merger) appears on the ABC Web site.

Two longtime, favorite customers of the Harry W. Schwartz store in Mequon, Wis., brought in this cake on the store's last day of business to thank the staff--and to wish them luck as the store reopens as Next Chapter Bookshop. The pair made the cake, with butter cream frosting, from scratch by hand. Lanora Hurley, owner of Next Chapter, commented: "Yummm!"

Next Chapter will open on Wednesday at 10 a.m. and already has several author events scheduled, including appearances by Stefan Merrill Block, author of The Story of Forgetting, and Jennifer Chiaverini, author of The Lost Quilter. The store will hold a grand opening celebration at the end of May.

Hurley called owning a bookstore a longtime dream and traced her love of books to helping out in her grandmother's shop, ABC Bookstore, where she opened boxes of new shipments, among other things.

A native of Cedarburg, Wis., Hurley has been a bookseller for 14 years, first as manager of Politics and Prose in Washington, D.C., and then at Schwartz, which included managing the Mequon store the last two and a half years.

Besides making the store "a place where book lovers will want to spend their time," she aims to have a strong web presence via its website, e-mail newsletter, Facebook page and on Twitter.

Next Chapter is located at 10976 No. Port Washington Rd., Mequon, Wis. 53092; 262-241-6220; nextchapterbookshop.com.

 

This morning on Good Morning America:

• Tom Avery, author of To the End of the Earth: Our Epic Journey to the North Pole and the Legend of Peary and Henson (St. Martin's, $26.95, 9780312551865/031255186X)
• Mary Tyler Moore, author of Growing Up Again: Life, Loves, and Oh Yeah, Diabetes (St. Martin's, $24.95, 9780312376314/0312376316)
• Victoria Osteen, author of Love Your Life: Living Happy, Healthy, and Whole (Free Press, $15, 9780743296984/0743296982). She also appears today on the Sean Hannity Show and Fox Radio's Alan Colmes Show.

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This morning on the Today Show: Alyssa Milano, author of Safe at Home: Confessions of a Baseball Fanatic (Morrow, $22.99, 9780061625107/0061625108). She's also in the View's lineup tomorrow.

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Today on the Diane Rehm Show: Jehan Sadat, author of My Hope for Peace (Free Press, $25, 9781416592198/1416592199).

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Tomorrow morning on the Today Show: Jimmy Roberts, author of Breaking the Slump: How Great Players Survived Their Darkest Moments in Golf--and What You Can Learn from Them (Collins, $24.99, 9780061685996/0061685992).

Also appearing on Today: Tom Colicchio, author of Wichcraft: Craft a Sandwich into a Meal--and a Meal into a Sandwich (Clarkson Potter, $27.50, 9780609610510/0609610511).

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Tomorrow morning on Good Morning America: Michael Rozen and Mehmet Oz, authors of YOU: The Smart Patient: An Insider's Handbook for Getting the Best Treatment (Free Press, $14.95, 9780743293013/0743293010).

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Tomorrow on the Diane Rehm Show: Beryl Satter, author of Family Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America (Metropolitan Books, $30, 9780805076769/080507676X).

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Tomorrow on Fresh Air: Michael Schaffer, author of One Nation Under Dog: Adventures in the New World of Prozac-Popping Puppies, Dog-Park Politics, and Organic Pet Food (Holt, $24, 9780805087116/0805087117).

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Tomorrow on Oprah: Michael J. Fox, author of Always Looking Up: The Adventures of an Incurable Optimist (Hyperion, $25.99, 9781401303389/1401303382).

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Tomorrow on CNN's Glenn Beck Show: Harlan Coben, author of Long Lost (Dutton, $27.95, 9780525951056/0525951059). He will also appear today on the Sean Hannity Show.

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Tomorrow night on CBS' Evening News: Lucinda Roy, author of No Right to Remain Silent: The Tragedy at Virginia Tech (Harmony, $25, 9780307409638/0307409635).


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Tomorrow night on the Colbert Report: David Plotz, author of Good Book: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous, and Inspiring Things I Learned When I Read Every Single Word of the Bible (Harper, $26.99, 9780061374241/0061374245).

 

Matthew McConaughey will play "low-level criminal defense attorney Mickey Haller" in the film adaptation of Michael Connelly's bestselling novel, The Lincoln Lawyer, according to Variety. Lakeshore Entertainment "snapped up bigscreen rights to the tome six months before Lincoln Lawyer hit shelves [in 2005] in what was dubbed a seven-figure deal."

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Variety also reported that Weinstein Co. has named David O. Russell to direct a film adaptation of Matthew Quick's debut novel, The Silver Linings Playbook.

 

Trespass: Living at the Edge of the Promised Land by Amy Irvine (North Point Press) has won the 2008 Orion Book Award, sponsored by the Orion Society's Orion magazine and honoring "a book that deepens our connection to the natural world, presents new ideas about our relationship with nature, and achieves excellence in writing."

Selection committee chairperson Donna Seaman of Trespass commented: "Amy Irvine composes a staggering litany of trespasses great and small in Utah's red rock country. As she braids together threads of Mormon history, family stories, and tales about her work for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance in her elegiac memoir of dissent, Irvine unveils the interconnectivity of life; the fact that everything matters: every cow and every coyote, every blade of invasive cheat grass, every human being, every dam, every hole drilled into the desert, every betrayal. For Irvine--passionate, imaginative, furious and visionary--language is a ladder out of the silencing cave of despair."

Irvine receives a $3,000 prize.

Finalists, each of whom receives $500, were:

• The Wild Places by Robert Macfarlane (Penguin Books)
• The Bridge at the Edge of the World by James Gustave Speth (Yale University Press)
• Inventing Niagara: Beauty, Lies, & Power by Ginger Strand (Simon & Schuster)
• Finding Beauty in a Broken World by Terry Tempest Williams (Pantheon)

 

 

From last week's Indie bestseller lists, available at IndieBound.org, here are the recommended titles, which are also Indie Next picks:

Hardcover

The Miracles of Prato: A Novel by Laurie Albanese and Laura Morowitz (Morrow, $24.99, 9780061558344/0061558346). "Based on the true story of Fra Filippo Lippi's love for a young nun (whom he immortalized as the Madonna in many of his greatest works), this novel is beautifully evocative of Renaissance Italy, and I found the descriptions of the process of Lippi's artistry to be insightful and enlightening. A wonderful book to take on a journey to Tuscany."--Jennie Turner-Collins, Joseph-Beth Booksellers, Cincinnati, Ohio. [Editor's note: We agree entirely--and then some! See our story here.]

Waiting for the Apocalypse by Veronica Chater (Norton, $23.95, 9780393066036/0393066037). "Veronica Chater's father, believing that Vatican II has corrupted the Roman Catholic Church, drags his family--six children and a wife--off to Portugal to live near Fatima and find a traditional parish and mass in Latin. Waiting for the Apocalypse is a story of monomania inflicted on loved ones, but Chater speaks of her coming of age with honesty, wit, and grace."--Helen Sinoradzki, Annie Bloom's Books, Portland, Ore. [Another editor's note: see our review here.]

Paperback

Patient Zero by Jonathan Maberry (St. Martin's Griffin, $14.95, 9780312382858/0312382855). "The ultimate terrorist biological weapon is about to be unleashed on U.S. soil, and our only hope is Joe Ledger. Filled with zombies, terrorists, and some of the best action in years, Patient Zero, an electric thriller, will warm up those cold March nights with pure terror."--Katie Glasgow, Mitchell Books, Fort Wayne, Ind.

For Teen Readers

Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side by Beth Fantaskey (Houghton Mifflin, $17, 9780152063849/0152063846). "Things change for Jessica when Lucius Vladescu arrives from Romania claiming he's a vampire prince, destined to marry her to bring peace between two vampire clans. But just as Jessica starts to believe Lucius, he changes his mind--how confusing is that? Will she fight for him? Can she stop a vampire war? The many twists along the way keep you guessing right to the end."--Angela Mann, Kepler's Books & Magazine, Menlo Park, Calif.

[Many thanks to IndieBound and the ABA!]

 

Ensuring that college stores are a key supplier of digital course materials and other digital content to students and their campuses has become a major focus for the National Association of College Stores, whose annual convention and trade show, CAMEX, took place earlier this month in Anaheim, Calif.

The association launched a strategic planning process a year and a half ago because "we had too many goals and objectives to remain focused," CEO Brian Cartier said during NACS's annual meeting. The process led the association to identify four new priorities. The most significant of the four is the digital initiative: NACS Media Solutions, which aims to be "a service aggregator to give college stores access to digital content 24/7" and allow stores to offer digital material "with ease and at an affordable price for students." The association is putting its e-dollars where its e-mouth is: it has made a $1 million investment into digital research and development for the unit.

NACS Media Solutions has run a pilot program of kiosks in stores that offered a variety of electronic media. The pilot has "not worked well," Cartier said, so it is switching to a web-based model this spring. The goal is to have 75 stores "up and running" by this summer. The pilot program focused on entertainment content, but the emphasis is shifting to include digital educational material in time for the fall rush.

NACS Media Solutions is headed by NACS deputy CEO Ed Schlichenmayer. Staff includes Mark Nelson, v-p of strategy and development, who is also NACS's digital content strategist, as well as Elizabeth Looney, newly hired as a digital analyst. Like some other parts of the association--including NACSCORP, the wholesaling operation, and NACS Foundation--NACS Media Solutions has its own board. It's also a for-profit operation.

Speaking later at a session on digital issues, Nelson said that NACS Media Solutions wants to enable a college store to deliver in whatever form a student might want course materials whether in print or in digital form or both. This would include digital learning object, audio and video content formats. The unit is working to set up POD systems, in some cases on a regional basis, so that material would be available within 48 hours or less. Besides course material, it wants to provide audiobooks, trade books, movies, course packs, and all kinds of entertainment material for computers, mobile devices, e-readers and more. "Any solution has to work for everyone," Nelson continued.

The idea is to "reduce costs and improve both choices and convenience for college stores and their customers. We have to make it easy for students to get access to content any hour any day because that's where our competition is going."

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In digital matters generally, Nelson said that "change often comes from very unexpected places and can happen very quickly." He believes, he said, that in terms of digital material, "we are headed for a change." Already there are signs of major shifts. While the paper book is just a device with "certain pros and cons," so e-readers are also a device with pros and cons. Most people who try e-readers "actually like them," Nelson said. (Interestingly "the No. 1 place people read e-books on the iPhone is in bed," he said.)

One example of a shift: Stanza, the leading e-reader app for the iPhone, is only seven months old and has 1.3 million users globally who have downloaded more than five million books. Stanza is in the top 10 of the most downloaded iPhone apps and has "three times sales growth week over week since December."

Some predict that within 18 months 2%-3% of all households in the U.S. will own e-readers, while in four or five years, there will "double-digit percentage e-reader penetration."

Nelson predicted that the most popular future e-book reader will be a mobile device.

There are other indications of digital popularity. In 2008, for the first time, sales of e-books were 10% of unit sales at Taylor & Francis, and the company's direct sales to consumers are at a 50/50 ratio of print to digital format. One large textbook publisher, Nelson continued, expects not to publish in traditional print form by 2012--any printed copies will come via POD.

Younger people, of course, have more familiarity with electronic devices than any previous generation. And these days, new technology in general is adopted more and more quickly than in the past, Nelson continued.

A recent NACS study showed that just under 6% of college courses have digital materials. The "median digital sell through" is about 2% of units sold, Nelson said. In some stores, 90%-100% of material in certain classes is digital.

"The greatest barrier to selling digital is that students don't want or aren't asking for it," Nelson said. But at first, "people don't often ask for a radically new technology." That can change quickly.

Many companies are entering the digital business. Usually "incumbents don't survive" because new entrants are the ones who improve initially poor technology and gain market share. By then, traditional players have lost market share.

As an industry, "we are hemorrhaging market share, and it's going to get worse," Nelson advised. The key thing is to provide market share in digital because "margins will return. It's the transition that's the tough time."

Unfortunately for college stores, new competitors include such behemoths as Apple, which may have an e-reader later this year, Google and Amazon, which plans to go into the textbook business on the Kindle. "They are sophisticated players with sophisticated marketing and technology," Nelson stated.

He stressed that college stores' choices are to do nothing; to develop plans but wait for the market to take off before aggressively marketing or selling products and services; or go full steam initiating new infrastructure and marketing. "Probably most stores doing something digital are in that midrange and are not really protecting market share," Nelson continued, adding with some concern that only 38.1% of college stores are selling digital materials.

For perspective, Nelson quoted Seth Godin's observation: "The new thing is never as good as the old thing, at least right now. Soon the new thing will be better than the old thing. But if you wait until then, it's going to be too late."

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In other NACS news, the association's strategic planning process identified three other areas of priority besides digital matters: providing products and services that enable college stores to pursue best practices in retailing; being a strong advocate for college stores and helping stores be more effective advocates for themselves in their own communities; and using technology to serve members better.

Book sales of NACSCORP, the association's wholesaling subsidiary, hit "record levels," Cartier said, and the unit was profitable for its sixth consecutive year.

PartnerShip, NACS's shipping and freight program, hit the $11 million mark in sales and is offering "competitive pricing, better tracking and consolidated billing." The service is launching a new website.

NACS's Washington, D.C., office has been "extremely busy," Cartier said, particularly with the economic stimulus package, which includes tax credits for textbooks, and the Higher Education Opportunity Act, which includes funding for textbook rental pilots.

NACS is developing materials that will help members position themselves as "course materials specialists," and its Collegiate Research Services unit is designed both to provide research about students both for members and on a fee basis for companies and others.

"With an eye to expansion," NACS bought a 7,500-sq.-ft. building near its headquarters in Oberlin, Ohio., closing early this month. Cartier characterized it as a "kind of distressed asset sale." The building has a tenant, and NACS will continue renting the space "for the foreseeable future."

CAMEX attendance was down between 15%-20%, but last year's show had the highest attendance in 11 years. Cartier recognized that in the current economy, it was "a tough decision" for many members to come to the show.

The association is in strong financial health and will generate a surplus this year, Cartier said, adding, "I think we're being fiscally responsible and prudent."--John Mutter