"In 1797, Thomas Cadell made one of the greatest mistakes in publishing history. A Hampshire clergyman had written to him, offering a three-volume novel for publication by a first-time author. Without a word of encouragement, Cadell declined the book, manuscript unseen, by return of post. Unfortunately for Cadell, the clergyman was the Revd George Austen, soliciting publication on his daughter Jane's behalf, and the novel in question was an early version of Pride and Prejudice, recently voted the one book that the British nation can't do without."--From Mark Bostridge's review of Jane's Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World by Claire Herman in the Literary Review.

The Lost Symbol, Dan Brown's long-anticipated follow-up to The Da Vinci Code, will be published September 15 by Knopf Doubleday. A first printing of five million copies is planned for the book. The New York Times noted that "fans and the publisher have been waiting a long time for Mr. Brown to finish the new book. It was originally scheduled for a 2005 delivery. The Lost Symbol will again feature Robert Langdon, the protagonist of The Da Vinci Code."

In a statement, Brown called the writing of the book "a strange and wonderful journey" and said he had spent five years on research for the book. "Robert Langdon's life clearly moves a lot faster than mine."

Lost Opportunity?

Already the price slashing has started. For orders in advance, Amazon is offering a 46% discount on the $28.95 title while Barnes & Noble has the book available at 40% off--and at 46% for its members. Gayle Shanks of Changing Hands bookstore, Tempe, Ariz., and president of the ABA told the Wall Street Journal she expects to sell only 50 copies of The Lost Symbol during the first two weeks it's on sale because of the heavy discounting by chains, warehouse clubs, online retailers and others.

The Lost Symbol is likely, too, to cause other publishers to shift publication dates of some fall titles.

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PubWest offers a detailed outline of the Google settlement, written by PubWest members--and attorneys--Jon Tandler and Lloyd Rich. Scan it here.

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In a Fast Company magazine piece about Seattle and why "so many creative, influential minds--both native and transplanted, from Quincy Jones to Bill and Melinda Gates, Cameron Crowe to Sir Mix-a-Lot--who have contributed so much to the world, love this city and call it home," Garth Stein, whose most recent is The Art of Racing in the Rain, quoted our own "energetic" publisher, Jenn Risko, who said, among other things, "You know one of the cool things about Seattle? The person standing next to you doesn't hate your guts because of how successful you are." [Editor's note: "energetic" doesn't quite describe that energy.]

Incidentally the same issue of Fast Company has a profile of HarperStudio editor Julia Cheiffetz. Part of what she said: "Dynamic e-books may incorporate video or narrative asterisks, in the same way that you'd go into a museum, put on headphones, and listen to an explanation of the art on the wall. With each project, we think about what kind of experimentation is appropriate. We don't want to sprinkle Cheetos on top of foie gras."

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A noteworthy event occurred last week at the new Boswell Book Company, Milwaukee, Wis. On his Boswell and Books blog, Daniel Goldin wrote that The Four Day Diet by Ian K. Smith became "the first officially shoplifted title" from the store.

"Shoplifting and theft is an issue I've been thinking out since the store opened," Goldin observed. "Well no, I've been thinking about it for years. How do you balance a comfortable space with one that doesn't become an easy target?"

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Joseph-Beth Booksellers, Cincinnati, Ohio, partnered with Wiley Events to host
its first SKYPE-based author event last Thursday when Mark White, editor/author of Watchmen and Philosophy "appeared" in front of an audience at the bookstore while speaking from his home in New Jersey. The live webcam event was co-sponsored and co-promoted with Clifton Comics and Games, a local comic bookstore in Cincinnati.

"We were very happy with the event and the level of discourse between the author and the audience. While the event was in progress, curiosity got the better of people who stopped by to join in," said Michael Link, publisher relations and events manager for Joseph-Beth.

"We've been planning this event for months and are delighted that it went off without a hitch", said P.J. Campbell, Wiley's director of events.

"It was great to connect with fans from the comfort of my home, as if I were in the Joseph-Beth Booksellers' store," added White.

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In the Wall Street Journal, author Steven Johnson offered a detailed examination of the e-book phenomenon, noting, "There is great promise and opportunity in the digital-books revolution. The question is: Will we recognize the book itself when that revolution has run its course?"

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Under a four-year joint operating agreement, Biblio.com and Biliopolis are building a new e-commerce site for the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America. Biblio.com is providing the search engine and e-commerce technology, and Bibliopolis is creating the design and user interfaces.

The association includes 450 antiquarian book dealers from the U.S., and it umbrella organization, the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers, has a membership of more than 2,200 book dealers, including the ABAA members. The ABAA has had an e-commerce site since 2000.

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Jackie Hickman has opened Novel Idea, a used bookstore in Hoopeston, Ill., the Danville Commercial-News reported. "So many ideas were going through my head," noted Hickman, "and I said 'Jackie, come up with a novel idea' and that’s how I came up with the name."

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Ben "Stone" Stomberg hopes to open an indie bookstore in Galesburg, Ill., according to the Register-Mail, which reported, "Working with Cat Garza, manager of the Entrepreneurship Center, and the city’s economic development director, Cesar Suarez, Stone Alley Books & Collectables is on its way to becoming a reality."

Stomberg is scouting locations and "found a couple of possibilities. The big problem is overhead. There’s not a large profit margin." The Register-Mail noted that Stomberg "hopes to carry about 15,000 used books, with 700-1,000 new hardbacks and trade paperbacks."

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For $149 a night, fans of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series "can stroll along the beaches where Bella and friends explored tide pools, or for the ultimate firsthand fan experience, visit locales that Bella and Edward frequented--like scenic Forks High School and the Forks Community Hospital," Variety reported. The Kalaloch Lodge in Forks, Wash., where the novels are set, "is offering 'Twilight' and 'Bella' packages by which Twilighters can 'view the sites that mark the milestones in Bella and Edward's romance.'"

"We wanted to capture all of the publicity surrounding Twilight, " said Beth Showalter, the lodge's director of sales and marketing. "During the summer last year, Forks was reporting 500 to 600 visitors a day because of the books."

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With all the excitement surrounding the Pulitzer Prize announcements yesterday (see below), NPR's All Things Considered chose to remind us how fleeting success can be with a piece titled, "And the Pulitzer tor Forgotten Fiction Goes to . . ."

ATC's "Unscientific List Of Least-Known Fiction Winners" included:

• His Family by Ernest Poole (1918)
• Early Autumn by Louis Bromfield (1927)
• Scarlet Sister Mary by Julia Peterkin (1929)
• Laughing Boy by Oliver Lafarge (1930)
• Years of Grace by Margaret Ayer Barnes (1931)
• The Store by T.S. Stribling (1933)
• Lamb in His Bosom by Caroline Miller (1934)
• Now in November by Josephine Winslow Johnson (1935)
• Honey in the Horn by Harold L. Davis (1936)
• In This Our Life by Ellen Glasgow (1942)
• Journey in the Dark by Martin Flavin (1944)
• Guard of Honor by James Gould Cozzens (1949)
• The Way West by A.B. Guthrie (1950)
• The Town by Conrad Richter (1951)
• The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters by Robert Lewis Taylor (1959)
• The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O'Connor (1962)
• Elbow Room by James Alan McPherson (1978)

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The New York Times explored a "heretofore unknown capacity for speed-reading," as Americans not only propelled Eduardo Galeano’s Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent to instant bestseller status after Hugo Chávez gave a copy to President Obama (Shelf Awareness, April 20, 2009), but also inspired hundreds of "readers" to review the book on Amazon almost instantly.

"Who would have believed that so many people could order the book, get it delivered, and read it overnight! Who says Americans have become a nation of illiterates?!?" the Times noted, suggesting "it just might be that some of the people flooding Amazon with negative evaluations of the book saved time by not actually reading it before speed-writing their responses to it."

Independent booksellers acquired a new marketing tool with the launch yesterday of the IndieBound app for iPhone, which "spotlights three of IndieBound.org's most popular features: bookseller recommendations, book search, and the Indie Store Finder," Bookselling this Week reported. The app is available as a free download to any iPhone or iPod Touch through Apple's App Store.

"The IndieBound iPhone app puts independent booksellers' vast handselling knowledge directly into the hands of an enormous audience," said ABA COO Oren Teicher. "We're tremendously excited to be able to call attention to the expertise of independent booksellers in this new way."

"Developing the app had been a fun side-project of mine for months," added ABA's Matt Supko. "I love my iPhone, and I'm probably the first person who wanted to see an app for indie booksellers there. My goals were to make an app that was fast and fun to use, and to lay the groundwork for future growth."

Future versions of IndieBound for iPhone will include ebook functionality, the ability to set a favorite indie store for repeat purchases, and integration with a user's IndieBound.org Wish List, BTW added.

Today on Fresh Air: Craig Yoe, author of Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman's Co-creator Joe Shuster (Abrams ComicArts, $24.95, 9780810996342/0810996340).

Also on Fresh Air: a past interview with the late J.G. Ballard.

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Tonight a Food Network episode called Bobble Head Bakery includes the baking of a cake based on the main character of The Mice of Bistrot des Sept Frères by Marie Letourneau (Tanglewood, $15.95, 9780974930367/0974930369). Named Petite Michelle, she stirs a big pot of cheese soup, which is central to the story.

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Tomorrow morning on the Early Show: Concetta Bertoldi, author of Do Dead People Walk Their Dogs?: Questions You'd Ask a Medium If You Had the Chance (Harper, $13.99, 9780061706080/0061706086).

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Tomorrow morning on the Today Show: Brooke Shields, whose new children's book is It's the Best Day Ever, Dad! (HarperCollins, $17.99, 9780061724459/0061724459). She will also appear tomorrow on Live with Regis and Kelly.

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Tomorrow the Diane Rehm Show's Readers' Review segment focuses on The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, translated by Alison Anderson (Europa Editions, $15, 9781933372600/1933372605).

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Tomorrow on PBS's Tavis Smiley: Kristin Chenoweth, author of A Little Bit Wicked: Life, Love, and Faith in Stages (Touchstone, $25, 9781416580553/1416580557). She will also appear tomorrow night on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson.

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Tomorrow night on the CBS Evening News with Kate Couric: Rupert Isaacson, author of The Horse Boy: A Father's Quest to Heal His Son (Little, Brown, $24.99, 9780316008235/0316008230).

Film director Peter Jackson spoke with USA Today about his work on The Lovely Bones, which was adapted from Alice Sebold's bestselling novel and will be released December 11. A sampling:

You've got a track record of adapting novels. What about that appeals to you?

In each case, when I've adapted a book for the screen, it's been about the personal appeal the story has had for me. When I finish a great novel, like this one, I can't help but think in movie terms. I have imagined the world of the novel visually, but also being emotionally affected by the experience. I can't help but feel excited about the challenge of putting all these feelings into a movie.

In the case of The Lovely Bones, I felt that it was subject matter not often dealt with in film, and with a tone that is also rare. Losing loved ones is something we all have to deal with, and when that story is partly told from the loved one's point of view, it becomes quite interesting--especially with Susie's sense of humor. Add to that the fact that Susie is killed by a man living just down the street, and it now becomes a very unique thriller. It was a challenge--probably the hardest film I've ever made.

Book-related winners and finalists for the Pulitzer Prize were announced yesterday. The winners are:

• Fiction: Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (Random House)
• Drama: Ruined by Lynn Nottage (Theatre Communications Group; not yet published)
• History: The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family by Annette Gordon-Reed (Norton)
• Biography: American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham (Random House)
• Poetry: The Shadow of Sirius by W. S. Merwin (Copper Canyon Press)
• General Nonfiction: Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas A. Blackmon (Doubleday),

Finalists in each category included The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich and All Souls by Christine Schutt (fiction); Becky Shaw by Gina Gionfriddo and In the Heights by Lin-Manuel Miranda & Quiara Alegría Hudes (drama); This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust and The Liberal Hour: Washington and the Politics of Change in the 1960s by G. Calvin Mackenzie & Robert Weisbrot (history); Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt by H.W. Brands and The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century by Steve Coll (biography); Watching the Spring Festival by Frank Bidart and What Love Comes to: New & Selected Poems by Ruth Stone (poetry); Gandhi and Churchill: The Epic Rivalry That Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age by Arthur Herman and The Bitter Road to Freedom: A New History of the Liberation of Europe by William I. Hitchcock (general nonfiction).

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The shortlist for this year's £30,000 (US$43,701) Orange Prize for Fiction has been named and chair of judges Fi Glover said, "We were right down to the wire on several of the books and choosing just six was far harder than I had imagined, but we all left the judging room proud of the list we have chosen. We have stretched our heads getting to this shortlist," the Guardian reported.

The Orange Prize finalists are:

• Scottsboro by Ellen Feldman
• The Wilderness by Samantha Harvey
• The Invention of Everything Else by Samantha Hunt
• Molly Fox's Birthday by Deidre Madden
• Home by Marilynne Robinson
• Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie

The winner will be announced June 3.

Selected new titles appearing next Tuesday, April 28:

Home Safe: A Novel by Elizabeth Berg (Random House, $25, 9781400065110/1400065119) explores the deteriorating life and creative ability of a writer whose husband dies.

Mr. and Miss Anonymous by Fern Michaels (Kensington, $24, 9780758212726/0758212720) follows two poor college students who fall in love while waiting to donate sperm and eggs to a fertility clinic.

Rogue Forces by Dale Brown (Morrow, $26.99, 9780061560873/0061560871) is a novel that follows a military contractor assigned to defend Kurds in northern Iraq against invading Turks.

Lover Avenged by J.R. Ward (NAL, $24.95, 9780451225856/0451225856) is book seven in the Black Dagger Brotherhood vampire series.

Crystal Clear: The Inspiring Story of How an Olympic Athlete Lost His Legs Due to Crystal Meth and Found a Better Life by Eric Le Marque and Davin Seay (Delacorte Press, $24, 9780553807653/055380765X) tells the story of a professional hockey player who survived eight days in the frozen Sierra Nevada mountains and battled addiction to meth.

Promises I Made My Mother by Sam Haskell and David Rensin (Ballantine, $24, 9780345506559/0345506553) chronicles the motherly wisdom a Hollywood agent attributes to his success.

Now in paperback:

Vision in White (The Wedding Quartet, Book 1) by Nora Roberts (Berkley, $16, 9780425227510/0425227510).

Guinness World Records 2009 (Bantam, $7.99, 9780553592566/0553592564).

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan (Penguin, $15, 9780143114963/0143114964).

Belong to Me by Marisa de los Santos (Harper $14.99, 9780061240287/0061240281).

For those unfamiliar with the fine points of Islam, Tamim Ansary (West of Kabul, East of NewYork) makes a compelling case that "the history of the world" is seen quite differently through Islamic and Western eyes. Ansary begins that history with Mohammed the Prophet and his Hijra from Mecca to Medina in 622 CE; he recounts Mohammed's message from Allah and the rapid growth in the number of his followers; he then continues with the fascinating events in the years after Mohammed's death during which his successors (the first four khalifs) consolidated his teachings and articulated the founding narrative of Islam. By 661 CE (41 AH--After Hijra), Islam had established itself.

Ansary states that the emphasis in Islam is not on personal salvation of the isolated soul (as in Christianity) but on construction of the perfect community; Islam is something one does. In the mid-11th century Islam's scholars, philosophers and Sufi mystics were hard at work "to establish Islamic doctrine and law in full; to unravel the patterns and principle of the natural world; and to develop a technique for achieving personal union with God." Their efforts spread Islamic religion and culture so widely that Islam came to regard itself as the world, with all outside as irrelevant; Ansary writes that by 1600 any objective observer of the Muslim empires and their frontier territories would agree.

Ansary argues that Islam proceeded through time without being particularly aware of (or concerned about) the Western experience (and vice versa), until, that is, the Industrial Revolution in the West and the Age of Imperialism. But "by 1850, Europeans controlled every part of the world that had once called itself Dar-al-Islam." And so began the complex fall-out of the collision of perspectives that we continue to struggle to reconcile today: Islam seeing the West as invaders, occupiers and imperialists, and the West viewing itself as a savior bringing Islam all the benefits of an industrialized democratic world. Among examples of the distinctly different perspectives in play, Ansary reminds readers that when war broke out in Europe in 1914, the Muslim world considered it a European civil war while to the West, of course, it was the Great War, later dubbed World War I. There are even more widely divergent opinions concerning Israel, and Ansary cogently analyzes why a peaceful resolution on that question remains out of reach today. In covering events and conflicts we've witnessed in the past 30 years, Destiny Disrupted illuminates the cultural, historical and diplomatic challenges we face to promote greater understanding between Islam and the West.--John McFarland

Shelf Talker: A lively, thorough and accessible survey of the history of Islam (both the religion and its political dimension) that explores many of the disconnects between Islam and the West.