Notes: Sony E-mbraces ePub; Journal Wary of B&N Deal
Today Sony will announce that it will sell e-books only in the open ePub format and will scrap its proprietary anticopying software in lieu of Adobe software that restricts how often e-books may be copied, the New York Times reported. As a result, e-books bought for the Sony Reader will be readable on most other e-book readers, except for Amazon's Kindle, which operates on a proprietary format. Later this year, Sony will introduce a new e-reader that allows wireless downloads of e-books a la the Kindle.
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Today's Heard on the Street column in the Wall Street Journal gave Barnes & Noble low grades for its impending purchase of Barnes & Noble College from B&N chairman Len Riggio:
"Digital sales, now becoming a reality, arguably could cannibalize print sales of expensive college texts more than other books.
"True, college book sales are growing, unlike the broader market. But comparable-sales growth at the college chain dropped in the latest fiscal year to 1% from around 4.5% in each of the prior two years.
"As for earnings, Barnes & Noble has provided only numbers for the year to May with no history or projections. Shareholders deserve to know whether the college chain's earnings are declining. Barnes & Noble says it will disclose more when the deal closes, which is a little late.
"It doesn't help that Mr. Riggio is being paid partly in notes bearing an interest rate of 8% to 10%, even though Barnes & Noble has a cheaper revolving credit line available. Or that the head of Barnes & Noble's 'independent/non-affiliated' board committee reviewing the deal is a former Barnes & Noble executive."
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Effective August 13, Larry Norton, the former publishing sales executive, is joining Borders Group as senior v-p, merchandising and distribution, reporting to Anne Kubek, executive v-p, merchandising and marketing.
For the past two years, Norton has been president of Larry Norton & Associates. Before that, he was with Simon & Schuster for 13 years, most recently as president of the sales and distribution division. Earlier he worked at William Morrow for 12 years, where he began as a sales rep and was promoted to v-p, sales.
In a statement, Borders CEO Ron Marshall said, "Larry's depth of experience within publishing and supply chain management is critical to Borders as we address our strategic priorities, including re-engaging with customers as a serious bookseller and improving execution in our stores and throughout our entire organization."
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Mountain of controversy.
The Cartoons That Shook the World by Jytte Klausen, a September book about the 12 cartoons that appeared in a Danish newspaper in 2005 and led to protests around the world by many Muslims because they depicted Muhammad in a satirical way, will not include the drawings--or any other images of Prophet. According to the New York Times, after consultations with a variety of people who predicted that including the cartoons would cause more violent riots, publisher Yale University Press made the decision because the cartoons are available on the Internet and publishing them would be gratuitous, as director John Donatich told the paper.
The author "reluctantly" accepted the decision not to publish the cartoons but was "disturbed" that no other images of Muhammad will appear. A scholar in the field called it "idiotic" not to include the cartoons in "a definitive account of the entire controversy."
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The ugly protests against health care reform spilled over to a reading last night by Senator Barbara Boxer at Book Passage in Corte Madera, Calif., for her new novel, Blind Trust. According to the Contra Costa Times, while Boxer spoke inside the store there was a "swarm of dozens of protesters outside waving signs, shouting and banging on the windows, hoping to get Boxer's attention in the ongoing debate over healthcare reform."
People had to buy a copy of the book to be able to attend the event, and at least one protester did so, leading to this exchange between Boxer and James Urquhart of Santa Rosa, which "drew a round of laughter," according to the paper.
" 'Your book is going in the trash as soon as I get home,' Urquhart said.
" 'Well, I'm glad you bought it,' she retorted."
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An update on the closing of Powell's Bookstores' South Loop location (Shelf Awareness, August 10, 2009): The Chicago Tribune
reported that "co-owner Brad Jonas said he and his partner have bought
a new warehouse near Midway Airport. The contents of both the South
Loop location and another wholesale warehouse will be consolidated into
the new facility."
"We are very sad to leave Burnham Park, but
it's not because we got inappropriately pushed out," he said. "It's
that the market has moved along and for what we do, we can do it
cheaper at this building we're buying."
Jonas called business at
his stores "vibrant, even as brick-and-mortar booksellers across the
country grapple with the migration of sales to the Internet. Powell's
also has an e-commerce operation."
"We're selling a lot of books
on the Internet," he added. "We're happy to have those sales, but we
are also really sad to lose our customers whose faces we've gotten to
know."
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"Literature helped me emotionally," Olivia De Leon, owner of Nueva Libreria México, San Francisco, Calif., told Mission L@cal,
which reported that "De Leon doesn't mind whether her Latino community
reads tabloid magazines, classical novels, or sappy romances and in her
selection she also includes People en Español, El Secreto del Éxito: Donald Trump, Huevos Verdes con Jamón or Green Eggs and Ham."
"What's most important to me is that they read," she said.
Mission
L@cal noted that "customers across the Bay Area visit her store for its
rare selection of Mexican and Latin American literature, but also the
other offerings."
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In a Hartford Advocate
piece headlined "Connecticut retreats from the madness," columnist Alan
Bisbort wrote about his addiction to a pair of used bookstores: "On
many Saturday mornings, I load the trunk of my car with whatever used
books are piling up in my basement and drive to Whitlock's in
Woodbridge or Niantic Book Barn in Niantic. Some of this is a holdover
from the days when I sold books at a flea market in Washington, D.C.,
and, before that, worked at a bookshop on Capitol Hill. Most of it,
however, results from my chronic case of bibliomania. I don't want cash
for the old books. I want to trade them for more books. I just can't
seem to ever have enough books."
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For Graham Fudger,
reading extracts in public from 11 of the 13 books on the Man Booker
Prize longlist "before giving copies of the books to members of the
public" was a great way to use his "his hour on Trafalgar Square's
fourth plinth," the BBC News reported.
Fudger was one of 2,400 people chosen to participate in Anthony Gormley's One & Other Project,
which asked "the people of the U.K. to occupy the empty Fourth Plinth
in Trafalgar Square in London, a space normally reserved for statues of
Kings and Generals. They will become an image of themselves, and a
representation of the whole of humanity," according to the project's website.
"I
was terrified, but I loved it," said Fudger of his hour upon the
plinth. "It's a great historical environment and the experience is
totally different to reading alone. You want to do justice to each of
the books, as you are interpreting other people's work. . . . I feel
the prize is important as it brings things you wouldn't normally hear
to the public's attention. It helps to put good writers from the
Commonwealth forward."
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Will Davis, author of My Side of the Story, chose his "top 10 literary teenagers" for the Guardian,
which noted: "Love 'em or hate 'em, the teenager is a popular character
in fiction--hey, we've all been there. But for writers, the teen is a
classic tool for exploring situations and issues from a neutral
viewpoint, one as yet unbiased by the rigidity of adult perception. One
thing's for sure: they aren't going away."
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At the 35th anniversary celebration in November of feminist bookstore Charis Books & More, Atlanta, Ga., guests will include bell hooks, Gloria Steinem, Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Alice Walker, Pearl Cleage and Indigo Girls, the Southern Voice reported.
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At a meeting of the Bookbinders' Guild of New York on Tuesday, September 8, Richard Sarnoff, co-chairman of Bertselmann and president of Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments, will speak on the future of Google Book Search. As chairman of the Association of American Publishers, Sarnoff was deeply involved in the Google settlement.
The meeting will be held at Random House, 1745 Broadway in New York. Beer, wine and hors d'oeuvres will be served beginning at 5:30 p.m.; the program starts at 6:30. Admission: $50 for members of the Bookbinders' Guild of New York and $60 for non-members. For admission and more information, go to bookbindersguild.org.
All the small moments connect to a larger shared experience, Scanlon's (A Sock Is a Pocket for Your Toes) words and Frazee's pictures seem to say. A conch shell on the book's title page places readers on the beach, and the scenes that follow (as with Frazee's A Couple of Boys Have the Best Week Ever) create the leisurely mood of nature's ebb and flow. "Body, shoulder, arm, hand/ A moat to dig," the book begins, as a boy and girl use pail and shovel, and vignette illustrations track their progress. In a slightly larger picture, opposite, the girl gives her mother "a shell to keep" as her father holds a towel nearby and the boy inspects their impressive sand castle. Then Frazee lets out all the stops, and a page turn reveals a full-bleed full-spread illustration of a rocky peninsula as the family drives away in a red pickup, with another family near a yellow house nestled in a cove, and ocean waves breaking against the shore: "All the world is wide and deep." In the background, on the right of that same illustration, white tents appear, and they become the destination for the next group of characters--beekeepers and farmers ("Hive, bee, wings, hum/ Husk, cob, corn, yum!/ Tomato blossom, fruit so red") who set up the fruits of their labors under the tents ("All the world's a garden bed"). The phrase "All the world is old and new" inspires a full-spread painting of an elderly gentleman playing with a pup and toting a seedling, while children play on an age-old majestic tree whose limbs seem to bend down to form a ladder; one can imagine that the elderly gentleman once climbed that tree. This yin and yang interplay continues, as the kitchen staff in a local cafe earn the same stage time as the patrons, and "All the world is cold and hot" suggests not only a reference to the menu's items, but also the restaurant as a cozy refuge from the rain outside. As the day winds to a close, the community gathers for music making (and "Babies [are] passed from neck to knee"). The children who made the sand castle snuggle with pillows in their PJs. "Hope and peace and love and trust/ All the world is all of us" appears with the closing image of the girl from the opening beach scene. She brings us full circle, her closed hands concealing that single shell that contains within it the sound of an ocean. Masterful.--