"It's really hard, but the product is amazing."

The Swiss Institute's new building on St. Marks will include Printed Matter.

Printed Matter, the bookstore in Chelsea in New York City that specializes in artists' books, will open a second store, in the Swiss Institute's new space on St. Marks Place and Second Avenue, on June 21, ARTnews reported.

Called Printed Matter/St. Mark's, the new store will carry "artists' books, prints, posters, and the like, as well as offerings from the Swiss Institute's publishing imprint," ARTnews wrote. Printed Matter executive director Max Schumann said the new store "presents an amazing opportunity to bring the creative, experimental, and critical work being done in the field of artists' publications to a broader audience, which is at the heart of Printed Matter's mission."

Founded in 1976, Printed Matter is a nonprofit organization "dedicated to the dissemination and appreciation of artists' books." It offers talks, workshops and other events, which it plans to do in the new location as well.

The Swiss Institute's new 7,500-square-foot building includes space for exhibitions, projects and public programs, a library, the Printed Matter bookstore and a rooftop garden.

Founded in 2014, Prairie Path Books, Wheaton, Ill., is opening a second store, in September in downtown Wheaton, according to mysuburbanlife.com. The branch, to be called Prairie Path Books Annex, is in space currently occupied by a boutique.

Sandy Koropp, who owns the store with Jenny Riddle, said she hopes to see new customers. "Right now, people are driving over to find me," she explained. "I don't have a lot of people just walking in and browsing. So I have kind of a devoted readership that comes over looking for a particular book or looking to be inspired by the literature we really are strong on. So I'm looking forward to learning what foot traffic is like and what the folks will want to read. We will certainly start with our bestsellers and our favorite new reads."

The current store, a 1,500-square-foot space located in Toms-Price Home Furnishings, hosts many events, a tradition the store aims to continue in the Annex.

In addition to new books, the Annex will offer gift items, including reading glasses, mugs, loungewear, candles, blankets, jewelry inspired by quotations and coffee. Koropp observed: "We feature items that are particularly appealing to readers, but they fall into the lifestyle category. It's basically gift items, but with a focus on how readers live."

Keith Lewis, owner of Bookie's New and Used Books in Chicago's Beverly neighborhood, has signed a lease for a second store at 2015 Ridge Road, Homewood-Flossmoor Chronicle reported, adding that depending on how the build-out goes, he hopes for a summer opening.

In 2015, Lewis purchased Bookie's, which opened in 1989, and then moved to a new, larger location in 2017 "because he needed more space to provide a place for the kind of events book lovers love: book clubs, readings, book signings and similar gatherings," the Chronicle. "His goal with the Homewood store is to use what he learned about building community at the Beverly store and enhance it, creating a place designed to host events."

"I have a feeling events will be even bigger in Homewood," said Lewis, who has earlier family ties to the neighborhood that were rekindled by a conversation with a customer from Homewood who couldn't find what he wanted in the Beverly store.

"I  said, 'Wow, Homewood. If I could open another store, there are two places I would think about doing it, and one of them is Homewood,' " Lewis observed. "Literally the next day, (Homewood) Mayor Hofeld walked into the store and introduced himself.... That's too much of a coincidence to ignore," he said. "It's a little bit of a destiny kind of thing. I wasn't really looking to expand, I was just thinking 'Wouldn't it be nice.' "

Homewood Economic Development Director Angela Mesaros subsequently invited Lewis to attend the village's biennial economic development breakfast, where he talked with local businesspeople about available locations, including the one that will house Bookie's, and went on a tour with village officials.

"I was impressed with the kind of businesses that were popping up there, and I could kind of see how a bookstore would fit in," he said, adding: "I think there's probably a need. A bookstore brings a lot to a community."

Last Thursday, the American Booksellers Association's e-newsletter edition of the Indie Next List for May was delivered to nearly half a million of the country's best book readers. The newsletter was sent to customers of 125 independent bookstores, with a combined total of 483,685 subscribers.

The e-newsletter, powered by Shelf Awareness, features all of the month's Indie Next List titles, with bookseller quotes and "buy now" buttons that lead directly to the purchase page for the title on the sending store's website. The newsletter, which is branded with each store's logo, also includes an interview (from Bookselling This Week) with the author whose book was chosen by booksellers as the number-one Indie Next List pick for the month, in this case A Lucky Man: Stories by Jamel Brinkley (Graywolf Press/A Public Space Books).

For a sample of the May newsletter, see this one from Novel, Memphis, Tenn.

Last Saturday, Verso Books celebrated the 200th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx with a talk by Sven-Eric Liedman, author of the new biography, A World to Win: The Life and Works of Karl Marx, followed by a red velvet cake decorated by Verso staff.

"The full story revolves around government policy--in particular, Washington's leniency, under both parties, toward technology giants that have come to resemble monopolies," noted op-ed columnist David Leonhardt in an opinion piece titled "Save Barnes & Noble," published in the New York Times on Sunday.

Leonhardt writes that rather than the saga of Amazon vs. Barnes & Noble simply being one of digital disruption, it has much more to do with outdated government policy. In the 1970s, legal scholars like Robert Bork first began to suggest that monopolies might not be a problem so long as prices remained low, and in the decades since, that idea has largely become accepted as gospel by both parties.

But, he said, scholars are beginning to challenge that notion, and new evidence suggests that prices "are not a broad enough measure of well-being." He details how Amazon's "artificially low prices" are responsible for a plethora of problems facing the publishing industry, including fewer books being commercially viable, publishers becoming more and more reliant on blockbuster writers, the diminishing number of authors who can support themselves through writing, and the damage done to bricks-and-mortar retail. Leonhardt added that when the U.S. "emerges from the Trump presidency," he hopes we "will have a government that takes monopolies seriously."

Quoted in the piece, American Booksellers Association CEO Oren Teicher said: "It's in the interest of the book business for Barnes & Noble not just to survive but to thrive."

Thomas Guignard's photo of the Thomas J. Bata Library, Trent University, Peterborough, Ont., Canada

Swiss librarian and photographer Thomas Guignard "has photographed library buildings across the world, from his current hometown of Toronto to Oxford, U.K. via Detroit in the U.S. So far he's visited 35 libraries and has a bucket list of about 310 that he hopes to visit and photograph in the future," the Guardian reported, adding that he "combines his great loves in the Instagram account @concretelibraries."

"Libraries are the tangible, physical and often monumental representation of human knowledge," Guignard said. "They are built to share and make that knowledge accessible, to foster community, to encourage the sharing of ideas and invite everyone to contribute to that trove of knowledge.... As I visited those libraries, I took more and more pictures, and became more interested in those spaces for their unique aesthetics. I try to use symmetry and pay particular attention to how I align my shots to highlight the sacredness of these spaces."

Guignard sees libraries as symbols of "gathering places for communities.... They are participatory; they can't exist without users, a community--and, of course, librarians and library workers, who do so much more than just stamp out books."

Tracey Guest has been promoted to v-p, executive director of publicity at St. Martin's Press and its imprints. She joined the company in 2014 as v-p, director of publicity.

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Nicole De Jackmo has been promoted to v-p, publicity and marketing at Quirk Books. She was formerly director of publicity and marketing.

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Kayleigh George has been promoted to director of marketing for Plume. She continues as associate director of marketing for Dutton.

Paperback LA, Book 1: A Casual Anthology: Clothes, Coffee, Crushes, Crimes, edited by Susan LaTempa, with photographs by Robert Landau (Prospect Park Books).

Today:
NPR's Morning Edition: Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen, author and illustrator, respectively, of Square (Candlewick, $15.99, 9780763696078).

Fresh Air: Mark and Jay Duplass, authors of Like Brothers (Ballantine, $28, 9781101967713).

MSNBC's All In with Chris Hayes: Seth Hettena, author of Trump/Russia: A Definitive History (Melville House, $27.99, 9781612197395).

Tomorrow:
Wendy Williams: Lidia Matticchio Bastianich, author of My American Dream: A Life of Love, Family, and Food (Knopf, $28.95, 9781524731618).

The View: Jake Tapper, author of The Hellfire Club (Little, Brown, $27, 9780316472319).

The Talk: Gayle King, author of Note to Self: Inspiring Words from Inspiring People (Simon & Schuster, $20, 9781982102081). She will also appear on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

Daily Show: Diane Guerrero, author of My Family Divided: One Girl's Journey of Home, Loss, and Hope (Holt, $18.99, 9781250134868).

The Opposition with Jordan Klepper: Nell Scovell, author of Just the Funny Parts:... And a Few Hard Truths About Sneaking into the Hollywood Boys' Club (Dey Street, $27.99, 9780062473486).

Ralph Fiennes (The Grand Budapest Hotel, The English Patient), Rebecca Hall (Professor Marston and the Wonder Women, Christine) Mark Strong (The Kingsman, The Imitation Game) and Said Taghmaoui (La Haine, Wonder Woman) are in talks to star in John Michael McDonagh's The Forgiven, an adaptation of the 2012 novel by Lawrence Osborne , the Hollywood Reporter wrote. 

In addition to directing the project, McDonagh (Calvary, The Guard) will produce along with Elizabeth Eves (who has produced all of McDonagh's feature-length films) for their production company House of Un-American Activities.

A shortlist has been announced for the £10,000 (about $13,560) Desmond Elliott Prize, which honors a first novel written in English and published in the U.K. This year's Desmond Elliott shortlisted titles are How to Be Human by Paula Cocozza, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman and We That Are Young by Preti Taneja. The winner will be revealed June 20.

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Jeanne Thornton and Mecca Jamilah Sullivan have won the 2018 Judith A. Markowitz Award for Emerging LGBTQ Writers, which has a prize of $1,000. Thornton and Sullivan will be honored as part of the 30th annual Lambda Literary Awards ceremony on June 4 in New York City.

Thornton is a publisher at Instar Books and has edited anthologies including Nerve Endings: The New Trans Erotic and We're Still Here: All-Trans Comics. She is also the author of The Black Emerald and The Dream of Doctor Bantam.

Sullivan teaches at UMass Amherst, writes regularly on sexuality, identity, and poetics in contemporary African Diaspora culture and is associate editor for arts & culture at The Feminist Wire. She is also the author of the short story collection Blue Talk and Love.

In the not-too-distant future of Brock Adam's Ember, the sun is fading, losing its light and heat. To rescue the earth from a slow freeze, world leaders hatch a plan to reignite the dying star. They let loose the world's arsenal of nuclear weapons toward the sun, then sit back and wait, as it will take three years for the missiles to reach their destination. Meanwhile, the earth grows ever colder, with temperatures below freezing the new norm in the southern states of the U.S. Regions farther north are encased in snow and ice year-round.

As the fateful, sun-rejuvenation day arrives, unhappily married couple Lisa and Guy and their faithful dog, Jemi, watch from a hillside, expecting to see a vast explosion and a resurgence of light and heat from the setting sun. But something goes awry and the earth is plunged into near darkness and chaos. In the days shortly after the nuclear fiasco, bald-headed militants violently take control, forcing millions, including Lisa and Guy, to become refugees as everyone searches for food, shelter, heat, guns and protection from the elements.

Winner of the 2016 South Carolina First Novel Competition, Adams takes a far future scenario of the sun's demise and brings it nearer, crafting a good guys-versus-bad guys apocalyptic maelstrom in which strangers must trust strangers to survive. Adams divides the world into the violent Minutemen--who exude a neo-Nazi, survivalist vibe--and the others like Lisa and Guy, who just want to keep living peacefully. Numerous violent and bloody mishaps provide contrast to bittersweet memories of life before the sun began to die.

Adams has adeptly put trust, love and faith to the test. In a believable yet unsurprising chain of events, Lisa, Guy and the source of their unhappiness, Heather, are forced to rely upon one another as they struggle to make sense of the New America that is unfolding around them. They must draw on hidden resources and strengths they didn't know they had as the mayhem unfolds. Although evil and cruelty are prevalent, the goodness inherent in most people also plays a major role, adding a nice, balanced quality to the storyline. With climate change a frequent theme in media, Ember offers a chilling scenario--and a quick, summer read for a hot day at the beach. --Lee E. Cart, freelance writer and book reviewer

Shelf Talker: When the sun begins to die and the Earth starts to freeze, chaos unfolds as militants seize control in the United States.

The bestselling self-published books last week as compiled by IndieReader.com:

1. Iron Princess by Meghan March
2. Wild in Love (The Maverick Billionaires Book 5) by Bella Andre and Jennifer Skully
3. My One and Only (Bewitched and Bewildered Book 10) by Alanea Alder
4. Twin Dragons' Destiny (Dragon Lords of Valdier Book 11) by S.E. Smith
5. Justin (The Kings of Guardian Book 10) by Kris Michaels
6. Come As You Are by Lauren Blakely
7. I Dare You by Ilsa Madden-Mills
8. Back River Quiver by Alexa Riley
9. The Hardest Fall by Ella Maise
10. Unbound by John Shors
 
[Many thanks to IndieReader.com!]