Borders Group has extended for another year, to April 1, 2010, its $42.5 million senior secured term loan with Pershing Square Capital Management, its single-largest shareholder. The loan carries an interest rate of 9.8%, which the company called "substantially below market for comparable financing." In addition, Borders has reset the strike price on Pershing Square's 14.7 million warrants to 65 cents a share, more in line with Borders's current stock price. Many of the warrants had been set at $7 a share.

The "put" option to sell Borders's Paperchase gift and stationery business to Pershing Square is being allowed to expire.

In a statement, CEO Ron Marshall said, "The extension of the loan gives us some necessary breathing room, which is important in the current economic environment. We are also pleased to retain Paperchase, which is a successful and important business throughout the U.K. and other markets as well as in our Borders superstores throughout the U.S."

According to the Wall Street Journal, Pershing Square currently owns 10.6 million shares of Borders stock, about 18% of the company. If it executes the warrants, Pershing would own 25.3 million shares, about 33.6% of the shares outstanding.

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The Daily Texan, the student newspaper of the University of Texas at Austin, offers a eulogy for Follett's Intellectual Property bookstore, which closed this month. "A sad truth has finally come to pass--there is no mainstream bookstore within walking distance of campus."

Opened in 2006, the store aimed to fill a space on "the Drag," where a Barnes & Noble had shut down several years beforehand. The store was a subsidized joint venture of Follett, the University and the University Co-op, which sold textbooks in its campus location.

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Congratulations to Michele Filgate, events coordinator of RiverRun Bookstore, Portsmouth, N.H., who has won the Isaac Epstein Scholarship, sponsored by the New England Independent Booksellers Association and honoring the late owner of Huntington's Bookstore, Hartford, Conn., and past treasurer of NEIBA. Filgate receives $1,000 to use toward professional development.

In her application, Filgate wrote: "I left a career working at the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric back in October of 2007 to follow my heart and pursue my lifelong passion of bookselling. I started working at RiverRun Bookstore while I was in college, and missed it every minute while working in NYC. It's funny; I was just watching some old family videos the other day and even when I was six years old in practically every clip of me on the videos, I'm reading. I'm interested in the award so that I could attend Winter Institute next year. I went to Wi3 in Louisville and found it to be an invaluable resource. Since attending Wi3, I have completely transformed our events calendar. We now host over 100 authors a year, and we have a blog and Twitter account. I feel that a large part of my enthusiasm and ideas came from being able to meet with other booksellers and brainstorm. I also want to be able to meet with the Emerging Leaders on a national level. I have a ton of ideas to advance indie bookstores collectively."

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In our piece yesterday on digital initiatives and strategy by college publishers, we mentioned that "only 38.1% of college stores are selling digital materials." We have since been taught that that figure does not include contract managed stores such as Follett and Barnes & Noble College. If those stores were included, the percentage of college stores selling digital materials would be much higher than that amount.

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Todd McGarity has joined Hachette Book Group as v-p, distribution sales and services. Besides overseeing existing distribution services clients and expanding those services, he is responsible for market research, opportunity evaluation, selling and promotion and client integration. He was most recently director of client development for Random House.

More than 20 booksellers met last week at Watchung Booksellers, Montclair, N.J., for a NAIBAhood Gathering, and happily for organizers, the event drew some people from New Jersey and Pennsylvania who don't often participate in bookseller events.

Watchung owner Margot Sage-EL gave a tour of the store, which she bought nearly 14 years ago and moved in 2001 from a second-story location to its present 1,100-sq.-ft. spot on the same Watchung Plaza square. The old store had some attractions--it was like "a private club," but "old people, babies and teens wouldn't come up the steep stairs." The store moved two weeks before the September 11 attacks, and "I think we wouldn't have survived if we had still been up there," she said.

Sage-EL called the location "a tight space to deal with. We're constantly struggling with the space. How do we keep enough books in here? How do we keep it clean?" The staff recently reconfigured some sections so that fiction is in the front of the store. Watchung also has reduced its gift area, but "needs gifts to help keep margins up." Cards used to be by the front windows, but as staff member Carolyn Anbar pointed out after attending a design workshop, the store's front windows are "an asset." Now cards are displayed near the center of the long, narrow store, and the windows are unblocked by card spinners.

The store also has expanded the travel section. "Despite the economy," Sage-EL said, "people are traveling." The section mixes travel writing with guides.

The store has reduced inventory, which has allowed for more faceouts. Still, there are books everywhere. In the front of the store, revolving displays currently highlight women's history, organic gardening, the town read for nearby Caldwell and a pairing of classics and contemporary related titles.

Sage-EL said she was embarrassed to say the store had just started a staff picks shelf. The long wait came mainly because "we hesitated to make a statement." But then she and the staff realized "we'd been making statements all along." Besides, customers look to the staff to make recommendations.

In the children's section, Carolyn Anbar said, "It's a huge challenge to keep everything looking fun and exciting and fit in and have as much faceout without looking insane." Faceout display makes all the difference. "We can have a book on the shelves for two years, but when we put it faceout, it sells immediately," she said. In the children's section, the store tries to emphasize books that are "unusual and hard to find--not Barnes & Noble books."

The store has reduced chick lit, which was "huge for a while," as well as children's gifts and toys, but has become "a little more focused on gifts that sell," Anbar said.

Montclair is a diverse town with "lots of savvy people who go into New York and work on the Net," Sage-EL said. "We're constantly fighting to get them into the store." She noted that some people who never come to events comment on how "cool" it is that the store has so many things going on.

The store has noticed a change in reading habits as newcomers arrive in the New York City suburb. "We are losing the older, avid, experimental reader and getting new younger readers who think Montclair is cute but don't realize that you have to keep the stores to keep the town cute," Sage-EL said.

The store works with many schools, including nursery schools and public schools, and does a lot of community outreach. Watchung Booksellers hosts "in-store book fair" fundraisers, donating 20% of pretax sales of what members and friends buy on a particular night. For four years, the store has done one event in early December for a middle school that last time resulted in $8,000 in business. Sage-EL said that sometimes such events draw up to 100 new people into the store.

Montclair is "blessed" with more than 60 published authors, Sage-EL continued. "We feel it's our responsibility that our authors should shine in our town through our store." Authors in town are very supportive.

The store is also "pumping up" its newsletters, trying to send once a week, with certain themes, including one issue with all events, another with staff picks, another with children's titles.

The store has no loyalty program but gives a 10% discount on most purchases, a policy Sage-EL inherited when she bought the store.

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As an extra treat at the NAIBAhood Gathering, two authors spoke briefly. Mary Elizabeth Williams said that her new book, Gimme Shelter (Shelf Awareness, March 3, 2009), about her three-year search to buy a house or apartment in New York City at the height of the housing market, is a story about "community and friends and neighbors," which fit the mood of the evening exactly. She stated, too, that Watchung Booksellers, at 1,100 square feet, is "bigger than my apartment and has considerably more books." Noting that some people have suggested the timing of the recession was good for her book, she said sarcastically, "I'm really psyched about this global economic meltdown!"

Alan Katz, author of Karate Pig, "a pig who chops things in half," said that "so much of what I do is silly and poop-related." He gave booksellers special thanks for promoting his books, saying "handselling is one thing. Handselling something with poop in it is another."

But then his discourse rose high out of the gutter: he recalled that when asked by a child once about his favorite book, he replied, "A blank book is my favorite because I can't wait to see what I'm going to write in it."--John Mutter (Montclair resident and major Watchung Booksellers fan)

• Shaun Robinson, author of Exactly As I Am: Celebrated Women Share Candid Advice with Today's Girls on What It Takes to Believe in Yourself (Ballantine, $18, 9780345511959/0345511956)
• Charlie Trotter, author of Home Cooking with Charlie Trotter (Ten Speed Press, $25, 9781580089340/1580089348)
• Joy Bauer, author of Joy's Life Diet: Four Steps to Thin Forever (Morrow, $25.99, 9780061665745/0061665746)

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Tomorrow morning on Good Morning America: 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 the Diane Rehm Show: Helen Benedict, author of The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq (Beacon, $25.95, 9780807061473/0807061476).

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Tomorrow on Oprah: Valerie Bertinelli, author of Losing It: And Gaining My Life Back One Pound at a Time (Free Press, $15, 9781416569688/1416569685).

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Tomorrow night on the Colbert Report: Dambisa Moyo, author of Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $24, 9780374139568/0374139563).

Selected new titles appearing next Tuesday, April 7:

The Deen Family Cookbook by Paula Deen and Melissa Clark (Simon & Schuster, $26, 9780743278133/0743278135) includes more than 140 new recipes.

Might As Well Laugh About It Now by Marie Osmond and Marcia Wilkie (NAL, $24.95, 9780451226389/0451226380) chronicles the career of the actress from ABC's Donny and Marie.

In Praise of Stay-at-Home Moms by Laura Schlessinger (Harper, $25.99, 9780061690297/0061690295) advocates the role of women as unemployed mothers.

Just Take My Heart: A Novel by Mary Higgins Clark (Simon & Schuster, $25.95, 9781416570868/1416570861) follows a Broadway star who inadvertently reveals her former roommate's murderer.

Cursed by Carol Higgins Clark (Scribner, $25, 9781416562177/1416562176) is the 12th mystery with New York private investigator Regan Reilly.

Fatally Flaky: A Novel by Diane Mott Davidson (Morrow, $25.99, 9780061348136/0061348139) is the 15th culinary mystery with caterer Goldy Schulz.

Turn Coat by Jim Butcher (Roc Hardcover, $25.95, 9780451462565/0451462564) is the 11th entry in the supernatural Dresden Files series.

Now in paperback:

Unaccustomed Earth: Stories by Jhumpa Lahiri (Vintage, $15, 9780307278258/0307278255).

Comfort Food by Kate Jacobs (Berkley, $15, 9780425226209/0425226204).

From the Midwest Booksellers Association, a recent Midwest Connections pick. Under this marketing program, the association and member stores promote booksellers' handselling favorites that have a strong Midwest regional appeal:

Safer by Sean Doolittle (Delacorte Press, $24, 9780385338981/0385338988)

Jennifer Wills Geraedts, manager of Beagle Books in Park Rapids, Minn., commeted: "Safer, a new thriller by Sean Doolittle, is one great read! My laundry and dishes kept piling while I ignored them to read Safer, but not for long because I read it in 2+ sittings. I love that the 'sleuth' is an English Lit prof, but not the stuffy sort. The story is wonderfully complex, but the author takes the reader by the hand without making us feel like we're being led by the hand. (I love the tool of explanations to the imaginary class.) I think this book will have a lot of appeal to a wide group of people--East Coast readers, Midwesterners, academics who need an intelligent, enjoyable read, and of course thriller fans! Best of all, Doolittle avoids the annoying habit of so many thriller writers these days, who feel they must use ridiculous metaphors. I can't wait to handsell this!"

A self-confessed cake addict, Leslie Miller blends memoir, lore and journalism in her humorous and peripatetic exploration of the sweet (and frosted) stuff that so many find irresistible. Structuring the book in "tiers," Miller begins with an abbreviated look at cake's origins and offers up assorted cake trivia ("eatymology" as she calls it) such as who really uttered "let them eat cake" and where expressions such as "takes the cake" and "cakewalk" have their roots. However, it is Miller's examination of her own history and obsession with cake that forms the real base layer of her narrative. Here she relates her childhood memories of eating Duncan Hines frosting straight from the can (albeit shared with her mother and sister) and acknowledges her subsequent powerlessness over cake's allure no matter what form or flavor. She attributes part of this weakness to a congenital sweet tooth and part to her grandmother, whose delicious confections (recipes included here) were produced in a kitchen Miller describes with rapturous nostalgia. Miller's own attempts at baking, which she details in a series of amusing vignettes, are less consistent and often frenzied as she quickly runs out of patience, time and supplies in her quest to create the object of her desire.
 
Miller readily admits that she'd rather eat cake than make it and so, propelled by the need to sample her research, she visits a variety of bakeries, interviews bakers and investigates the ingredients that go into cake decorating (many of which, sadly, seem to straddle the line between food and plastic). Unsurprisingly, only one mass-producer, Maryland's Gourmet Bakery, allowed Miller access to its facility (a visit she describes in rich detail), leaving readers to guess at what might go on behind the scenes at the Hostess factory. Although she interviews several high profile bakers, Miller spends the most time with rock 'n' roll baker Duff Goldman, the Food Network's highly popular "Ace of Cakes," whose bakery is located in her home town of Baltimore, Md. Though she acknowledges both his skill and candor, Miller's portrait of Goldman--and his cakes--is oddly unflattering. Yet Miller, who buzzes through her own book as if on an extended sugar high, never gets overly critical nor does she venture too deeply into what she calls "the moist white underbelly" of the cake world. This is a good thing. Cake, the centerpiece of all manner of celebrations, deserves a light, sweet and ultimately satisfying homage; exactly what Miller gives it.--Debra Ginsberg
 
Shelf Talker: A light, sweet, and entertaining tribute to all things cake: satisfaction without the calories.