More than two million users downloaded Lexcycle's Stanza e-book reader app for iPhone and iPod touch during its first year. A statement released by Amazon, which acquired Lexcycle in April (Shelf Awareness, April 28, 2009), noted that Stanza's popularity "has led to more than 12 million book downloads."
"These milestones highlight that many people are quite comfortable reading full length books via Stanza on their iPhones and iPod touch," said Neelan Choksi, CEO of Lexcycle.
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University Book Store, Mill Creek, Wash., began offering a new enticement to patrons July 1, when Seattle's Top Pot Doughnuts café "quietly made its debut" at the bookshop. The Daily Herald reported that "this is the sixth location for Top Pot and the company's only cafe outside King County."
"We're just really happy to be in Mill Creek," said co-founder Mark Klebeck. The Daily Herald noted that the new operation "wasn't just slapped together from remnants of the store's former cafe. Shelves had to be built to the right specifications, and a special bakery case was on its way late last week. The founders of the doughnut company have long had a business relationship with the University Book Store, and Klebeck said it's not entirely a coincidence that Top Pot's chief executive officer lives in Mill Creek."
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In its final report on Australia's parallel importation rules--most new books retain Australian copyright only if published in Australia within 30 or 90 days--the Australian government's Productivity Commission recommended that the parallel import restrictions for books be repealed eventually and that the government "review the current subsidies aimed at encouraging Australian writing and publishing, with a view to better targeting of cultural externalities," Bookseller & Publisher Magazine's Weekly Book Newsletter reported.
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Roland A. Vierra "is still attempting to secure financing" to purchase Willow Glen Books, San Jose, Calif., after a previous attempt to strike a deal with former owner Cathy Adkins didn't work out. Adkins had "decided to sell her 17-year-old shop a year earlier than originally planned because of decreasing sales and having to grapple with health issues," according to the Business Journal.
"I am so close to my childhood dream of owning a book store," he said. "This is something I have always wanted to do. I have gotten great support from the bookselling community and the Willow Glen community is willing to support a local, independent book store. It has a great reputation throughout Santa Clara County."
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In addition to a planned initial print run of 1.5 million copies of Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s True Compass later this year, Twelve "is planning to issue 1,000 copies of a leather-bound, electronically signed edition" of the memoir, at $1,000 a copy, and "sell the books through the website of the Hachette Book Group, the parent company of Grand Central," the New York Times reported.
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Margaret Atwood will use video conferencing technology as well as her LongPen booksigning device to launch her next novel, The Year of the Flood, later this year. The Globe & Mail reported that Atwood "is set to attend the Word on the Street festival in Toronto on September 27, but will simultaneously appear at sister events in Vancouver and Halifax via interactive video conferencing. . . . [She] will use the video-conference technology to speak with fans and answer questions. She will also use her LongPen device to sign books long distance."
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NPR's All Things Considered featured a report on the Librarian Book Cart Drill Championships held recently at the American Library Association's convention in Chicago: "Five teams of librarians--dressed in costumes ranging from Vikings to Elvis Presley--competed for the coveted gold book cart. They marched in drill-team formation, equipped with metal book carts."
"Our carts at home don't do wheelies as well as the models we use here. These are full-competition models," said Gretchen Roltgen of Baraboo, Wis. "Absolutely, they're built for this type of rigorous competition."
Children's authors Mo Willems and Jon Scieszka served as emcees. "There's a stereotype that librarians are boring. And I think they want to change that stereotype to 'librarians are crazy,'" said Willems.
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Tomorrow Quirk Books is revealing the follow-up to its surprise bestseller Pride & Prejudice and Zombies. Find the news at quirkclassics.com or Youtube.com/irreference tomorrow.
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Forget about autumn foliage season as the first harbinger of winter. On Twitter, Katherine Fergason (@KatherineBoG) of Bunch of Grapes Bookstore, Vineyard Haven, Mass., reported: "We've probably already sold about 50 2010 calendars."
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Obituary note. Charles N. Brown, publisher, editor, and co-founder of Locus, died Monday. He was 72. A post on the magazine's website recalled that "Brown co-founded Locus with Ed Meskys and Dave Vanderwerf as a one-sheet news fanzine in 1968, originally created to help the Boston Science Fiction Group win its Worldcon bid. Brown enjoyed editing Locus so much that he continued the magazine far beyond its original planned one-year run. Locus was nominated for its first Hugo Award in 1970, and Brown was a best fan writer nominee the same year. Locus won the first of its 29 Hugos in 1971."
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Earlier this year, Vox Pop bookstore and café, Brooklyn, N. Y., faced serious economic challenges (Shelf Awareness, March 16, 2009), but CNN's Allan Chernoff reported that the situation has begun to change for the better thanks to a plan to sell stock to customers.
CNN also reported on the strange and as yet unsolved theft and mutilation of a Statue of Liberty replica, which was stolen from in front of Vox Pop.
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Changing fashions. While bookshops struggle to stay in fashion, "New Look, the young value fashion giant, is to take five stores from ailing bookseller Borders U.K., including its massive flagship store on Oxford Street," the Independent reported.
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Home for the summer holidays? You can take some consolation from the fact that staycation is one of 100 new words that have been added to Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. Also making the list were waterboarding, vlog, carbon footprint, flash mob, frenemy, locavore and webisode.
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Beware the "invasion of the sequels." Boing Boing showcased a study by Valentin D. Ivanov in Strange Horizons that "scraped Locus magazine's 'Notable Books' column going back to May 1998 and built a 10+ year dataset of genre popularity in science fiction, fantasy and horror."
According to Ivanov, "If you have ever browsed the infinite shelves of books by Robert Jordan, you have surely asked yourself when the tide of fantasy will completely overwhelm the bookstores. And if you are a fan of Jordan or Le Guin, you have probably worried about the invasion of the space opera, represented by Peter F. Hamilton, Alastair Reynolds, and Iain M. Banks.
"Is there a basis for such fears? What is going on with the demography of the subgenres? Do we get more and more sequels every year, recycling the same old ideas? Is interest in the speculative fiction genre as a whole increasing or decreasing?"
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Sold! If you had your heart set on buying the Cornish beach and lighthouse that inspired Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse (Shelf Awareness, July 13, 2009), you've missed your chance. "A private buyer from London who originally hails from Cornwall" purchased the property at auction for £80,000 (US$130,632), according to the Independent.
