"Digital content is fragile. The secure retention, therefore, of physical books safe from electronic meddlers, predators, and the hazards of electronic storage is essential.... The huge, worldwide market for digital content, however, is not a fantasy. It will be very large, very diverse, and very surprising: its cultural impact cannot be imagined. E-books will be a significant factor in this uncertain future, but actual books printed and bound will continue to be the irreplaceable repository of our collective wisdom."--Jason Epstein, from his essay "Publishing: The Revolutionary Future" in the New York Review of Books.

 

The New York Times offered a primer on Macmillan's new DynamicBooks software, which allows college professors to edit and thus customize digital editions of textbooks. Previously instructors had been able to reorder chapters and add material but not rewrite texts.

In August, Macmillan plans to sell 100 titles under the program and is considering letting other publishers sell texts with DynamicBooks software. The e-textbooks will be available from a variety of sources and be cheaper than printed textbooks.

Instructors who have tested DynamicBooks have liked it although other publishers expressed some wariness about the approach. One astronomy textbook author noted that he is happy that other professors can revise his material but would "absolutely, positively be livid" if an instructor rewrote material about the origins of the universe to reflect a religious perspective.

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The parts of The Last Train from Hiroshima by Charles Pellegrino, published by Holt in January, that concern supposed technical problems with the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 are based on fraudulent testimony by a serviceman who claimed untruthfully that he had been on the plane that dropped the bomb, the New York Times reported.

Pellegrino told the Times he will rewrite sections of the book for the paperback and foreign editions of the book.

The late Joseph Fuoco stated that he was a last-minute substitute for another flight engineer on the Enola Gay, that an accident with the bomb had killed a young scientist and that the bomb had been damaged so much that its destructive power was cut in half--all claims that have been widely refuted.

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Shutter Island, directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, took in an estimated $40.2 million over the weekend, making it the No. 1 movie for the period, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Shutter Island is based on the novel by Dennis Lehane (Harper, $7.99, 9780061703256/0061703257). Last month Lehane and Christian de Metter published a graphic novel version of the book (Morrow, $21.99, 9780061968570/0061968579).

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The University of Delaware wants to move its bookstore, managed by Barnes & Noble, from its campus to downtown Newark, Del., "the first time in recent memory that UD has had a retail presence along the city's main drag," the News Journal reported.

As envisioned by the university, the store would include a coffee shop and lounge and sell "current bestsellers, fiction and nonfiction, but also textbooks." Some retailers in the main business district are wary about the plan.

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Book trailer of the day: Prison Ship by Michael Bowers (Ace).

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"I don't know if there's been a time we haven't seen ourselves as being in crisis," Michael Tucker, president of the American Booksellers Association and co-owner of Books Inc., which has 11 bookstores, most in and near San Francisco, Calif., said in a Chronicle profile. The story showcased the bookseller's "formula for success," which includes avoiding mall locations, keeping to a smaller "footprint" and being careful about costs.

"We're careful about everything--about returns, payroll, payroll hours allotted to each store," said Margie Scott Tucker. "Instead of buying everything, we buy for each individual store, seeing each store as a reflection of its community.... Integrating with the community will become more important as progress marches on."

Hut Landon, executive director of the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association, called this "the Books Inc. model" of success and observed that the company has taken a leadership role in the "shop local" movement.

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Debbie Meighan and June Cagle will open Gotta Luv Books, Yuba City, Calif., March 1 and are "determined not to let the struggling economy hold them back," the Appeal-Democrat reported.

"You don't want to look back on life and say, 'I could have, would have, should have--why didn't I?' " Meighan said. "So we said, 'Let's go for it!' "

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Imix Bookstore, Los Angeles, Calif., held a fundraiser last Friday "in hopes of raising the money it needs to keep the business open," Southern California Public Radio reported.

"We're not just a bookstore and we're not just a community space," said owner Elisa Garcia of the store, whose name, appropriately enough, is a Mayan word for regeneration. "We're a hybrid of something new and different and I liked that as a name for a store."

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Be careful what you wish for. FOX-TV's Glenn Beck recently called The Coming Insurrection--an anarchist revolution manual by a collective of French authors called the Invisible Committee--"quite possibly the most evil thing I've ever read."

Beck's anti-endorsement of the book, which was published in the U.S. by Semiotext(e) last August with an initial print run of just 3,000, "has apparently led to it hovering around the top 10 of Amazon's U.S. bestseller charts for the last week, alongside more recognizable titles by the likes of Stieg Larsson and Rick Riordan," the Guardian reported.

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In other agenda-driven book news, The Los Angeles Times Jacket Copy blog reported that when conservative Rob Port toured the White House recently, he was scandalized by some of titles on the library's bookshelves.

He blogged about his discovery in a post headlined: "Photo Evidence: Michelle Obama Keeps Socialist Books in the White House Library." The only problem is the books he objected to were acquired by a previous First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy.

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At BookMasters Group:

Robert J. Kasher has joined the company as business development manager for integrated solutions. He formerly worked Macmillan Publishing Services, ICC and Talonbooks and has more than 30 years of experience with digital content management.

Ellen Lerner has joined the company as sales executive to the New York City and regional printing market, with a focus on BookMasters's offset and digital printing divisions. She has neary 30 years of experience and has worked at Simon & Schuster, Crown Publications and St. Martin's.

Book sales fell 0.2%, to $1.5 billion, in December but were up 4.1%, to $11.2 billion for the year, as reported by 86 publishers to the Association of American Publishers. The results mirror those of bookstore sales as reported by the Census Bureau (Shelf Awareness, February 15, 2010).

Once again, e-books were the star performer on a percentage basis.

Results by category for the month:

E-books jumped 119.7% to $19.1 million.
El-hi basal and supplementary K-12 climbed 46.8% to $200 million.
Audiobooks rose 13% to $16.4 million.
Adult hardcover rose 9.7% to $119.9 million.
University press paperback rose 9.7% to $9.2 million.
Higher education rose 8.5% to $910.4 million.
University press hardcover rose 6.4% to $6.053356.
Religious books inched up 0.6% to $52.7 million.
Professional and scholarly was flat at $112.6 million.

Adult paperback fell 10.3% to $119 million.
Children's/YA paperback fell 14.1% to $46.8 million.
Adult mass market tumbled 29.6% to $51.9 million.
Children's/YA hardcover plummeted 49.5% to $58.8 million.


Results by category for all of 2009:

E-books jumped 176.6% to $169.5 million.
Higher education rose 12.9% to $4.2 billion.
Adult hardcover rose 6.9% to $1.6 billion.
Children's/YA paperback rose 2.2% to $577.7 million.

University press paperback was down 0.1% to $61.8 million.
Professional and scholarly slipped 2.9% to $766.4 million.
University press hardcover dropped 3% to $58.2 million
Adult mass market dipped 4% to $775.6 million.
Children's/YA hardcover fell 5% to $765.1 million.
Adult paperback dropped 5.2% to $1.4 billion.
Religious books fell 9% to $588.7 million.
Audiobooks dropped 12.9% to $177.2 million.
El-Hi basal and supplementary K-12 fell 13.8% to $3.5 billion.


The AAP also released figures showing actual sales for e-books going back to 2002, measured both by sales and as a percentage of industry book sales:

Year	Sales	Percent of Industry Sales
2002	$2.1 million	0.05%
2003	$6 million	0.16%
2004	$9.3 million	0.25%
2005	$16 million	0.32%
2006	$25.2 million	0.5%
2007	$31.7 million	0.58%
2008	$61.3 million	1.19%
2009	$169.5 million	3.31%

Last Wednesday, Third Place Books, Lake Forest Park, Wash., hosted an event at which 2010 PNBA Award–winning authors met readers and signed books. From l.: Tim Egan, author of The Big Burn (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt); Jack Nisbet, author of The Collector (Sasquatch); Cheryl McKeon, Third Place Books; Mary Harris, Parkplace Books; Cherie Priest, author of Boneshaker (Tor); Naseem Rakha, author of The Crying Tree (Broadway); and Steve Winter, Third Place Books.

 

This morning on Imus in the Morning: Tommy James, author of Me, the Mob, and the Music: One Helluva Ride with Tommy James & the Shondells (Scribner, $25, 9781439128657/1439128650). James is also on Jim Bohannon Show tomorrow.

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Today on the Wendy Williams Show: Lauren Conrad, author of Sweet Little Lies: An L.A. Candy Novel (HarperCollins, $17.99, 9780061767609/0061767603). She will also appear today on the Bonnie Hunt Show.

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Today on E!'s Chelsea Lately: Kelly Cutrone, author of If You Have to Cry, Go Outside: And Other Things Your Mother Never Told You (HarperOne, $22.99, 9780061930935/0061930938). The new season of MTV's The City, featuring Cutrone, airs in early April.

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Today on NPR's Fresh Air: Gerald Imber, author of Genius on the Edge: The Bizarre Double Life of Dr. William Stewart Halsted (Kaplan Publishing, $25.95, 9781607146278/1607146274).

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Today on the Laura Ingraham Show: Matt Labash, author of Fly Fishing with Darth Vader: And Other Adventures with Evangelical Wrestlers, Political Hitmen, and Jewish Cowboys (Simon & Schuster, $25.99, 9781439159972/1439159971).

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Today on NPR's All Things Considered: Salman Ahmad, author of Rock & Roll Jihad: A Muslim Rock Star's Revolution (Free Press, $24.99, 9781416597674/1416597670).

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Today on Countdown with Keith Olbermann: Jeff Garlin, author of My Footprint: Carrying the Weight of the World (Simon Spotlight, $25, 9781439150108/1439150109). Garlin is also on the Daily Show and ABC's 20/20 tomorrow.

 

 

Ethan Hawke and Kristin Scott Thomas will co-star in a screen adaptation of Douglas Kennedy's The Woman in the Fifth, a thriller that "revolves around an American who has fled to Paris in the wake of a scandal that cost him his job as a film lecturer at a small university. He takes up with a widow who might be involved in a series of murders," Variety wrote. Pawel Pawlikowski will direct, and shooting is scheduled to start in Paris in March.

 

Active members of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America have begun voting on finalists for the Nebula Awards, which will be announced at the Nebula Awards banquet May 15. Nominees may be seen here.

 

From last week's Indie bestseller lists, available at IndieBound.org, here are the recommended titles, which are also Indie Next Great Reads:
 
Hardcover
 
The Kingdom of Ohio: A Novel by Matthew Flaming (Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam, $24.95, 9780399155604/0399155600). "Peter Force is in New York City in the early 1900s working underground to dig subway tunnels. When he meets a beautiful woman with a fantastic story--and through her meets J.P. Morgan, Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla--he begins a quest to discover if travel to another world is possible. Get ready to be transported through time yourself as you read this book."--Beth Carpenter, the Country Bookshop, Southern Pines, N.C.
 
To Hell on a Fast Horse: Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett, and the Epic Chase to Justice in the Old West by Mark Lee Gardner (Morrow, $26.99, 9780061368271/006136827X). "If you want to take a fantastic trip back to the chaotic Wild West, Mark Gardner's historical narrative delivers in spades. This rollicking book presents the tribulations of Sheriff Pat Garrett and his quest to capture the notorious Billy the Kid, and Gardner's superb writing and references makes this tale truly come alive."--Jerry Fieldsted, Windows on the World Books & Art, Mariposa, Calif.
 
Paperback
 
Once Were Cops: A Novel by Ken Bruen (Minotaur, $14.99, 9780312540173/0312540175). "If you haven't read any Bruen yet, this gritty noir tale of a wild Irish cop on the loose in the NYPD is a great introduction. There are twists and turns aplenty in this riveting read."--Rich Chasse, the Kennebunk Book Port, Kennebunkport, Maine
 
For Ages 9 to 12
 
109 Forgotten American Heroes by Chris Ying and Brian McMullen (DK Publishing, $19.99, 9780756654054/075665405X). "The editors of McSweeney's literary magazine and DK Publishing bring us 109 Forgotten American Heroes. This is a fun, zany presentation of history targeted for kids 11 and older, but I think you'll find your whole family reading bits aloud to each other."--Jennifer Wills Geraedts, Beagle Books, Park Rapids, Minn.
 
[Many thanks to IndieBound and the ABA!]
 

Rainy days in dark, musty museums gawking at the species on display loom large in everyone's childhood. Melissa Milgrom's book conjures up memories of the mystery and horror we all felt when we stood face to face in those rooms with a stuffed leopard, walrus or ferret. We quivered in marvel, we inhaled odd aromas, we were sublimely grossed out--and we happened to learn, for, as Milgrom notes, "From 1890 to 1940, dioramas were the primary way American museums educated the public about the ecological interdependence of species and their habitats."

Realizing there was more going on with these exhibits than any child could imagine, Milgrom revisits her museum memories, digs into what lay behind the dioramas (not to mention the fox stole with its weird eyes in Granny's attic) and makes taxidermy (the arrangement of skins on a sculpted form) come alive. She visits, among other places, a New Jersey shop with a macerating bison head for all to smell and a World Taxidermy Championships convention in a Crowne Plaza hotel in Springfield, Ill. In the course of her adventures, she learns who did the work of collecting the species (sometimes the safari equivalent of hired killers), who skinned and tanned the skins (yes, step one is, and has always been, skinning a specimen), and who paid the bills for the great shows. Names are named.

Milgrom meets many, many taxidermists on her travels, and she falls under the spell of their passion, craftsmanship and dark senses of humor. As one would expect from anyone accustomed to arriving at a hotel with a stuffed snow leopard on a luggage cart, taxidermists also turn out to be excellent storytellers. Milgrom was especially enthralled by Ken Walker, who was re-creating the extinct Irish elk (Megaloceros giganteus) in his Alberta Beach workshop. His tales are certain to transport enchanted readers to a time 10,000 years ago when the beast's 12-foot-wide antlers drew a crowd of admiring females.

Walker aims, in his work, to create the illusion of life as it was lived, but Milgrom is equally fascinated by England's feisty Emily Mayer, who comes at her obsession from the opposite end of the spectrum. Mayer says, "Taxidermists are all about the beauty of the animal. But I find beauty in death." It takes all kinds, even in taxidermy, and Milgrom celebrates a thriving herd of irresistible characters working "to freeze nature in its most glorious moments for a public that yearns for it yet is watching it disappear" in our time.--John McFarland

Shelf Talker: A delightful, illuminating journey through a passionate subculture that prizes the natural world (even if nature's inhabitants are dead when taxidermists work their magic on them).