In the second quarter ended July 31, total revenues at Hastings Entertainment rose 1.7%, to $119.1 million. Sales at store open at least a year rose 4.5%. The net loss was $100,000, compared to $400,000 in the same period last year.

Book sales at stores open at least a year fell 1.8%, "primarily due to decreased sales of new trade paperbacks, which to some degree is attributable to the increasing popularity of electronic book readers, partially offset by increased sales of new hardbacks along with increased sales of used trade paperbacks and hardbacks."

Hastings CEO and chairman John H. Marmaduke noted that the company has "continued to expand our new and used comics category during the quarter, bringing a positive response from our customers. We currently have eighty stores [out of 147] with an expanded comics section."

Marmaduke said that Hastings is "optimistic about the next six months, especially with the dramatic change in the competitive landscape where we have seen over ninety competitors close in our markets during the first half of fiscal 2010."

 

 

From the set of The Lincoln Lawyer, which is shooting in Los Angeles and is in the docket for a March 18 release: (r.) Michael Connelly, author of the 2005 novel on which the movie is based, with Matthew McConaughey, who plays Mickey Haller. The movie also stars Marisa Tomei, William H. Macy, John Leguizamo and country singer Trace Adkins.

 

The Government Printing Office has opened its newly redesigned bookstore, a renovation done entirely by federal employees, Federal News Radio reported. The GPO bookstore sells only federal documents, which it has done since 1895--and in its own retail space since 1921.

The new store has exhibit space to educate customers about the history of printing and the GPO's role in producing government documents, according to Davita Vance-Cooks, the GPO's managing director of publication and information sales.

The new store includes GPO's first-ever comic book, Squeaks and the History of Printing, written and illustrated by agency employees. (Squeaks, the mouse, helps children to understand the history of printing.) The bookstore also sells online.

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Since 1977, Pinocchio's Children's Bookstore, Memphis, Tenn., "has resided in the same yellow house, filled with reminders that children have always craved good stories," the Commercial Appeal wrote, noting that co-owners Miriam Epstein and Judy Korones "both taught children for years before opening their store."

"We hope that people recognize the worth of having an independent bookstore," said Epstein. "There's a caring environment that is the whole nature of the independent store. It's a gift."

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Laura Hansen, owner of Bookin' It bookstore, Little Falls, Minn., was selected the Great River Arts Association (GRAA) artist of the month for August for her work as a writer and poet, the Morrison County Record reported.

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The arrival last month of Books & Books in Westhampton Beach, N.Y., has divided book lovers in the Hamptons town, where Open Book has been in business since 1999, the New York Times wrote. "Several storeowners nearby have ordered their staffs not to shop [at the new store]. Indignant older women have marched inside the bookstore to yell at employees. And someone, or perhaps several someones, may have sneakily placed used chewing gum between the pages of new books."

Fans of the Open Book fear it will close. The store moved earlier this year from the site that became Books & Books to a spot on a side street with less foot traffic, but still only "about a dozen storefronts away."

Books & Books owner Jack McKeown told the Times his research shows there is room for another bookstore in Westhampton Beach. Open Book owner Terry Lucas said McKeown offered to hire her as a consultant.

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Book trailer of the day: Nature's Secret Messages: Hidden in Plain Sight by Elaine Wilkes (Hay House), a trailer that cost $20 to make.

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Karl Marlantes, author of Matterhorn, selected his top 10 war stories for the Guardian: "It seems to me that a great war book must speak the truth about war; that it is mostly tedious, numbing, confusing, occasionally thrilling, filled with love for your comrades, and ultimately leaves you sad. Then, of course, there is the constant authorial challenge to keep the reader turning the pages--a challenge fully met by all of these tales."

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In a post on the Bookshop Blog titled "Starting a U.K. Bookstore, Laura Jenkinson chronicled her journey from filling out bookshop employment applications years ago to her current dream of opening Blackboard Fiction, which "will be an English language and Literature educational bookshop in West London."  

"The thing that keeps me going on past the paralyzing doubt is that everyone--and I mean everyone--that I have told about my plans has spread a wide, slow grin over their face and said 'That’s a brilliant idea,' 'That’s perfect for you,' and, the best, 'Can I come and work with you please?,' " wrote Jenkinson. "Despite the constant terror that it’ll all go wrong, that I’ll never get it off the ground, and that I’m making a long and costly error that could ruin my life, I simultaneously seem to be 'living the dream,' if as an ex-English teacher I can be allowed such a hackneyed phrase. Bookshops, especially ones like my prospective teeny little community-hearted one and mysteriously decorated one, are dearly missed from most high streets it seems, and over here in the U.K. there are constant articles in the media repeating this idea. Even despite the current trend for being poor whilst also believing everything should be digitalized and instant, people still love books. I’m really, really looking forward to being a part of that again. I’ll let you know how it goes."

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Thriving in the digital era for dummies. Macleans magazine reported that the For Dummies series has adapted nicely to the changing landscape for publishers: "In some ways, the books were like the Internet before most knew what the Web was. After all, a Dummies book is somewhat akin to a Wikipedia entry on steroids, and their non-linear format, irreverent tone and page layout share much in common with what the Internet eventually came to look like."

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"Librarians Save the Day!" The Huffington Post showcased 11 movies "that give librarians the center stage."

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Effective immediately, Ingram Publisher Services is distributing Fox Chapel Publishing and Vantage Press.

Founded in 1991, Fox Chapel Publishing specializes in woodworking, woodcarving, craft and how-to books and magazines. The house has more than 350 titles in print and has doubled the list in the last two years.

The company will soon release a list of e-books and digital products, which was a reason for signing with Ingram, said Fox Chapel president and publisher Alan Giagnocavo.

Founded in 1949, Vantage Press is one of the country's main self-publishing companies and has done more than 20,000 titles. Next spring the house will start its Vantage*Point imprint, which will publish in all genres.

David Lamb, president of Vantage Press, commented: "We can now offer our authors any range of services, including marketing and sales, and combine that with Ingram's massive distribution reach."

 

Rooney Mara has been chosen to play Lisbeth Salander in the English-language adaptation of Stieg Larsson's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Sony Pictures Entertainment and director David Fincher selected Mara after "one of the most drawn out and closely watched casting searches for an actress in years," Deadline.com reported, noting that Mara, who recently worked with Fincher in The Social Network, had been considered to be the director's first choice.

Deadline.com called Mara "a strong match: she is the right age and looks like Salander." Fans of both Stieg Larsson and professional football may be interested to know that Mara great-granddaughter of New York Giants football team founder Wellington Mara and Pittsburgh Steelers founder Art Rooney.

 

Tomorrow morning on Fox and Friends: Manal Omar, author of Barefoot in Baghdad: A Story of Identity--My Own and What It Means to Be a Woman in Chaos (Sourcebooks, $14.99, 9781402237218/1402237219).

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Tomorrow on a repeat of Oprah: Wes Moore, author of The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates (Spiegel & Grau, $25, 9780385528191/0385528191).

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Tomorrow night on the Daily Show: Edward Kohn, author of Hot Time in the Old Town: The Great Heat Wave of 1896 and the Making of Theodore Roosevelt (Basic Books, $27.95, 9780465013364/0465013368).

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Tomorrow night on the Colbert Report: Thomas French, author of Zoo Story: Life in the Garden of Captives (Hyperion, $24.99, 9781401323464/1401323462).

 

Three authors have been named to the shortlist for the inaugural Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel, which honors the best crime, mystery or thriller novel written by a New Zealand citizen or resident and published in New Zealand during 2009, the Book Trade News reported. The winner will be honored at the Press Christchurch Writers' Festival in September. The Ngaio Marsh finalists are Cut & Run by Alix Bosco, Burial by Neil Cross and Containment by Vanda Symon.

 

Selected new titles appearing next Tuesday, August 24:

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins (Scholastic Press, $17.99, 9780439023511/0439023513) is the final entry in the Hunger Games trilogy.

The Twilight of the Bombs: Recent Challenges, New Dangers, and the Prospects for a World Without Nuclear Weapons by Richard Rhodes (Knopf, $27.95, 9780307267542/0307267547) explores the role of nuclear weapons since the end of the Cold War and efforts to eradicate them.

The Good Daughters: A Novel by Joyce Maynard (Morrow, $24.99, 9780061994319/0061994316) follows the lives of two girls born on the same day in the same hospital in New Hampshire.

Spider Bones: A Novel by Kathy Reichs (Scribner, $26.99, 9781439102398/1439102392) is the 13th novel starring forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.

Juliet by Anne Fortier (Ballantine, $25, 9780345516107/0345516109) is about an American woman who travels to Italy in search of her ancestry--and discovers ties to the Giulietta whose love for Romeo inspired Shakespeare.

The Sonderberg Case by Elie Wiesel, translated by Catherine Temerson (Knopf, $25, 9780307272201/0307272206) is a novel about a New York theater critic whose parents are Holocaust survivors and children are Americans living in Israel.



Now in paperback:

True Blue by David Baldacci (Vision, $9.99, 9780446561976/0446561975).

Going Rogue: An American Life by Sarah Palin (Harper, $15.99, 9780061939907/0061939900).

Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem (Vintage, $15.95, 9780307277527/0307277526).

A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore (Vintage, $15, 9780375708466/0375708464).

 

This fall, the  "Smart Chicks"--a group of YA paranormal authors--will be visiting bookstores from September 13-25, 2010, on a tour that they conceived, organized and financed themselves. The main architects behind the tour: Melissa Marr (the Wicked Lovely series, HarperCollins), Holly Black (White Cat, S&S), Cassandra Clare (The Clockwork Angel, S&S), Jennifer Lynn Barnes (Raised by Wolves, Egmont), Kelley Armstrong (the Darkest Powers series, HarperCollins), Jeri Smith-Ready (Shade, S&S); and Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl (co-authors of Beautiful Creatures, Little, Brown).

The Smart Chicks will kick off at BookPeople in Austin, Tex., on Sept. 13, and end on September 25 with a bang at Indigo's Teen Read Awards (Shelf Awareness, June 24) at the Indigo Chapters location in Brampton, Ontario; Garcia and Stohl, Black, Clare, Armstrong, Melissa de la Cruz and Allyson Noel are nominees.

The brainchild of Melissa Marr, the tour grew out of separate conversations she had with Holly Black at a joint book signing at BEA in 2009; with Jennifer Lynn Barnes as they strolled to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, immediately following that same BEA; and with Kelley Armstrong, who had met Marr during a ComicCon signing in 2009, arranged by their mutual publisher HarperCollins. They all enjoyed group tours more than solo tours and liked the idea of planning their own schedule and pooling their relationships with bookstores. As Marr put it, "What we do, we do at home alone. A lot of us have shy streaks. I do better talking about their books than I do talking about mine."

The more established writers also welcomed the chance to introduce their readers to newer writers they admire. "That was part of Melissa's initial pitch, which was very good--she could totally have another career in marketing," said Clare. "She wanted to have established authors and some who were just starting. The more kids are reading, the better it is for all of us. Keeping them looking forward to new books the way they do new movies is good for us." Marr, looking around the group (which gathered at ALA earlier this summer), said, "You're doing more of a ghost thing [referring to Smith-Ready], I've got fairies, you've [Barnes] got werewolves, Holly's got curseworkers. We're each others' read-alikes. If we're going to pimp books, we're going to pimp books we like. We're helping our readers wade through the chaos."

Many of the YA authors also attract adult crossover fans. Clare estimates that roughly 40% of her fans are over 25; and Marr said that about 70% of the people who showed up for her Wicked Lovely series tour were adults. Smith-Ready and Armstrong both started as adult fiction writers, and in Armstrong's case, her Darkest Powers books are also set in the same world. Both Armstrong and Smith-Ready note a difference between the two readerships. "Teens as an audience are very involved," Armstrong said. "It becomes a social thing where they can discuss books, make online sites, create videos and trailers. They're quick to tell you when they like something and very quick to tell you when they don't." Smith-Ready also noticed a difference between her teen and adult readers. "[Teens] think for a living. They're taught to analyze books," she said. "Adults in general are reading for escape; they're not less critical, but they're less analytical." Armstrong also likes seeing mother and daughter, or aunt and niece at a signing, and discovering they're both reading the series. "As a mother of a teenager I know how important that is," said Armstrong, "and how hard it is to talk to your teen."

To underwrite the cost of the tour, the Smart Chicks authors (plus a few others whom Marr hopes to get involved in a 2011 tour) will each contribute a short story to an anthology (yet to be named), to be published by HarperCollins. They've also established a Café Press store with tour swag.

The tour (and its attendees) benefit from the collective experience of the authors' road trips.

A Smart Chicks Kick It poster. A pdf of the poster will go out to bookstores, so people planning to attend the event can print it out and collect the autographs of all the authors, even if they don't purchase all the books. Marr said this will help teens on a budget and also allow all of the authors to participate, no matter whose fans show up.

A raffle to win a character named after you. At each event, attendees will be invited to enter their name in a raffle, and the winner's name will be a character included in one of the stories in the Smart Chicks' anthology.

Raffle to win an autographed book. An autographed book will be raffled off at each stop on the tour. In addition, Justine magazine and Romantic Times magazine (published by Romance Writers of America) will be running a raffle for a collection of autographed copies of books from everyone involved in the tour.

Indeed, spreading the wealth seems to be the theme of this tour. As Stohl, a 10-year video game industry veteran put it, "We were adopted, mentored and welcomed in such a profound way from day one. The readers are a community, the bloggers are a community, and what I love about this tour is the writers are a community."--Jennifer M. Brown

 

Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History by Yunte Huang (Norton, $26.95, 9780393069624/0393069621, August 30, 2010)

Opening lines of a book we want to read:

In the spring of 2002, I was scheduled to give a talk on my new book, Transpacific Displacement, followed by that rite of passage most authors come both to anticipate and to dread, the book signing. Without my knowledge, an amiable secretary in the English Department at Harvard, where I was then teaching, made a flyer for the event at the Harvard Book Store in Cambridge. Her concoction was--how shall we say it--an intriguing collage. My name and the book title were highlighted in bold, with a map of the Pacific Rim fading out in the background. A silhouette of Warner Oland, the Swedish actor playing Charlie Chan, peered menacingly in the direction of North America, placed atop the sprawl of a vast Asian continent. The secretary told me that she, a Caucasian woman in her late fifties, had grown up watching Charlie Chan movies. My inveterate wisecracking--which I was not shy to dispense around the department--had reminded her of her favorite, aphorism-spouting Chinese detective. Given my affection for her and my own sense of civility, I did not dare question her creative enterprise, informing her that this image of a bellicose Chan would be offensive to most Asian Americans. I did not initiate that conversation because I knew it would take a book’s worth of pages to explain the tortured legacy of Charlie Chan in America, even to myself. Instead, I thanked her in my polite Chinese manner for her sprightly design. And now I have written this book about Charlie Chan, in part to carry on my imaginary dialogue with this well-meaning lady.

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The first story, of course, is the man himself, beginning with Chang Apana, the bullwhip-toting Cantonese detective in Honolulu. Then there is E. D. Biggers's story, unwinding from the cornfields of small-town Ohio to the old-boy parlors of Harvard Yard, followed by Chan’s reinvention on the silver screen, a legend annealed in Hollywood and America's racial tensions. And, finally, there is Chan's haunting presence during the era of postmodern politics and ethnic pride in contemporary America. Each of these streams is a story in itself, a slice of bona fide Americana. Together, they form the biography of Charlie Chan, the honorable detective whose labyrinthine matrix we have only now begun to fathom.--Selected by Marilyn Dahl

 

Glance at the Village Books, Bellingham, Wash., bestseller lists for the week ended last Tuesday, August 10, and the words liberal, green, spiritual and fiercely local come to mind.