Au revoir et bienvenue. As of later today, editor-in-chief John Mutter is leaving for the south of France to tag along on a painting tour group with his watercoloring wife. He hopes to stay in touch via promised hotel and café Internet wi-fi service. In his absence, which will last until Harry Potter Day, and with long-distance assistance, Robert Gray will do many of the day-to-day tasks needed for sending out Shelf Awareness. If you have any story ideas, updates, media mentions and more, send them to both John and Robert. Thank you and thank you, Robert!

 

The recent indication that Dutton's Brentwood Books will likely remain in its current location inspired both a supportive Los Angeles Times editorial, "Culture wins one," as well as a provocative response from reader Robert S. Kirsner: "The report that Charles T. Munger will preserve Dutton's Bookstore gives hope to all book people. The next step would be to resurrect the branch of Dutton's on Cañon Drive in Beverly Hills, a victim of high rents. Ever since January, Beverly Hills has been that place in L.A. where you can get Botox but not a book."

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Borders Group will distribute sample chapters of upcoming books to customers' cell phones, according to Marketing Week, which added that the bookstore chain "will promote 30 new titles each month through the downloads."

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The Book Crossing, Brunswick, Md., was one of several Frederick County businesses featured in a Frederick News Post report on the increasing importance of an Internet presence for local companies that "find themselves expanding beyond their cozy storefronts and plunging right into the big, crazy world of the web."

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We're happy to report that Bridget Kinsella, our former colleague at Publishers Weekly, is appearing tomorrow morning on the Today Show to promote her book, Visiting Life: Women Doing Time on the Outside (Harmony, $24, 9780307338365/0307338363). Congratulations! 

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In November, Barnes & Noble plans to open a store in Greenwood, Ind., near Indianapolis. It will be in the Greenwood Park Mall at U.S. 31, County Line Road, Madison Avenue and Fry Road.

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Steven Wallace has joined Unbridled Books as sales director. Formerly he worked for Random House, where for eight years he covered parts of the Southeast and for more than 10 years, was divisional director for field sales, responsible for the Central region.

He will work from Atlanta, Ga., and can be reached at 888-READ-UBB (888-732-3822), ext. 105, and via e-mail at swallace@unbridledbooks.com.

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"Only 8% of British adults have listened to an audiobook in the past year; most people think of them as 'talking books' for the blind, children or the elderly," according to the London Guardian's report on research conducted by the Audiobook Publishing Association (APA).

According to the Guardian, "The APA also found that two-thirds of listeners prefer CDs to tapes or downloads, while 70% listen to fiction."

Jo Forshaw, chair of the APA, appeared unfazed by the competition from ebooks, saying, "Ebooks? Do me a favour. Audio will be the real success of the digital world. If retailers and publishers can invest as much practically as they have verbally, we'll double the market in three years."

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Could the customer be right after all?

"Nobody knows anything. But everybody, it turns out, may know something," James Surowiecki concluded in his Financial Page column for the New Yorker. Citing Simon & Schuster's decision to partner with Media Predict to "use the collective judgment of readers to evaluate book proposals," Surowiecki examined the current state of publishing in relation to other media businesses.

"The deal drew scorn from many," he wrote, "who saw it as evidence that publishers, in an era of stagnant sales, had so lost confidence in their own judgment that they were reduced to the methods of 'American Idol.' Asking readers to weigh in on a book's commercial prospects was a recipe for mediocrity, and the experiment was 'doomed to fail.'"

Surowiecki acknowledged, however, that "even the idea's critics recognized that it was a response to a real problem: most books today are not economically successful, which means that much of the time and money that publishers invest in projects is wasted." He also suggested it might be more sensible to seek consumer feedback to anticipate how books will sell rather than "predict which manuscript will get a book deal, which requires predicting the decisions of a small number of editors."

 

Julia Flynn Siler, a Wall Street Journal contributing writer, offers a wine tasting group/reading group guide for her new book, The House of Mondavi (Gotham, $28, 9781592402595/1592402593), that suggests "organizing a tasting of some of the wines featured in The House of Mondavi as part of your event. You can discuss the colorful personalities in the book while sampling their wines."

Siler can participate either in person or via speakerphone and discuss what "surprising news" led her to write the book about the famous California winemaking dynasty, what forced the Mondavi family to give up control of its company, her favorite wines and more. Siler also has a list of pertinent wines at a range of prices; they include Mondavi vintages, wines by former Mondavi winemakers and a wine first produced under a joint venture between Chile's Chadwick family and Robert Mondavi.

The last word is "scar." Or maybe it isn't. J.K. Rowling told BBC talk show host Jonathan Ross that rumors about the final word in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows had been, but no longer were, true. "Scar? It was so for ages, and now it's not," she said. "Scar is quite near the end, but it's not the last word."

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In Australia, a Sydney Morning Herald article included the following tongue-in-cheek (we think) opinion: "This Harry Potter ending is as grave a secret as any matter of national security. It's more important than, say, the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame. (And I'm sure the U.S. President, George Bush, and Scooter Libby would agree.) Revealing the ending of Deathly Hallows is as unforgivable as using the 'cruciatus' curse and must be stopped by the strongest measures. So I was disappointed to discover that [New South Wales] abolished the death penalty in 1985. Until that date, you could still be put to death for treason and piracy, and selling leaked copies of Deathly Hallows would surely count for both."

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The Boston Globe kept the HP7 reading frenzy in perspective by citing a continuing overall decline in adolescent reading habits. According to the Globe, "a report on children's reading by the National Endowment for the Arts, due to be released in the fall, finds that reading among adolescent children is in trouble."

NEA chairman Dana Gioia said, "God bless Harry Potter, and please send us many more. But one book or series of books is not strong enough to counterbalance the trends."

The HP7 price wars were also addressed, with one bookseller who had been at the forefront of Pottermania since the first volume feeling left behind. "For us, it's a sad thing," said Terri Schmitz, owner of Children's Book Shop in Brookline, Mass., who hosted J.K. Rowling for a reading in 1999. "With each book, we have sold fewer copies because there are so many places to get it steeply discounted. If I bought it from Barnes & Noble, I'd be paying less than I pay Scholastic."

Kristen McLean, executive director of the Association of Booksellers for Children, added, "The independents broke this book in the first place, when the chains were hardly even buying it. Now the independents are getting shafted. They have to stock it, but they can't be competitive."

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Discounts were also on the minds of Indian booksellers, according to the Hindu, which reported that Penguin India "is selling it to retailers at 35 per cent discount . . . Even then, the book sellers in Mumbai have been forced to offer it at low prices as there is a heavy rush for pre-booking."

P. M. Shenvi, manager of Strand Book Stall, Mumbai, which has reportedly sold almost 3,500 of its nearly 5,000-copy order in advance, said, "We are offering a 30 per cent discount on the Indian price of Rs 975 ($24.15 U.S.), which leaves us with very less margin for profit. However, we are counting on high volumes of sales, which should make up for it."

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"Tens of thousands copies of the seventh and last installment in the Harry Potter series were flown to Israel Sunday night, wrapped in black nylon," according to Ynetnews. "The English-language books are being stored under tight security at the Steimatzky book chain's storage depot and will be unwrapped an hour before their official international release on July 21. "

Ynetnews also reported that "Israeli publishers, Yedioth Books and Aliyat Gag, are getting ready to start translating the book, hoping to publish the Hebrew edition in December. The Hebrew translator of the Harry Potter series, Gili Bar-Hillel, will fly to London ahead of the book's launch, purchase a copy and read it on the plane back to Israel. From that point on, Bar-Hillel, will be under a strict work schedule aimed at setting a record time of translating a book in less than a year."

 

This morning on Good Morning America: Kristin Gore, daughter of former Vice President Al Gore and author of Sammy's House (Hyperion, $24.95, 9781401302641/1401302645). She also appears today on the Early Show.

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This morning on Fox & Friends: Jackie Collins, author of Drop Dead Beautiful (St. Martin's Press, $24.95, 9780312341794/0312341792).

Also on Fox & Friends, Alan Weisman will discuss his new book, The World Without Us (Thomas Dunne Books, $24.95, 9780312347291/0312347294).

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Today on Regis & Kelly: James Blake, author of Breaking Back: How I Lost Everything and Won Back My Life (HarperCollins, $25.95, 9780061343490/0061343498).

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Today on NPR's Here and Now: Rajaa Alsanea, author of Girls of Riyadh: A Novel (Penguin Press, $24.95, 9781594201219/1594201218).

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Today on the Diane Rehm Show: Anthony Cordesman, author of Salvaging American Defense: The Challenge of Strategic Overreach (CSIS Press, $29.95, 9780892064953/0892064951).

Selected hardcover fiction appearing next Tuesday, July 17:

Up Close and Dangerous: A Novel by Linda Howard (Ballantine, $25.95, 9780345486523/0345486528) is a romantic suspense tale of a woman and the pilot of her crashed plane who are attempting to escape the wilderness.

The Devil's Labyrinth: A Novel by John Saul (Ballantine, $25.95, 9780345487032/0345487036) is a religious thriller about an evil Catholic school and a plot to kill the pope.

The Water's Lovely by Ruth Rendell (Crown, $25.95, 9780307381361/0307381366) is a complex psychological suspense story centering on an old murder within a family and its effects on the family's present day dynamics.

The Tin Roof Blowdown by James Lee Burke (S&S, $26, 9781416548485/1416548483) is the 16th Dave Robicheaux novel--following 2006's Pegasus Descending. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, two looters are killed for sacking the home of a powerful mob boss. Robicheaux must track down the surviving looter before others do.

What Matters Most by Luanne Rice (Bantam, $24, 9780553805338/0553805339) follows two lovers as they search for a son they gave up 20 years ago. At the same time, the son is seeking the girl he loved while growing up in an orphanage.

The First Commandment: A Thriller by Brad Thor (Atria, $25.95, 9781416543794/1416543791) chronicles the efforts of a former navy SEAL turned Homeland Security agent to apprehend a terrorist despite the government's attempts to stop him.

Someone to Love by Jude Deveraux (Atria, $25.95, 9780743437165/0743437160) takes place three years after Jace Montgomery's fiancée Stacy committed suicide while vacationing. After discovering a letter she received just days before her death, Jace sets out to determine whether or not Stacy was murdered.

Wednesday, July 18:

Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter: Guilty Pleasures, Vol. 1 by Laurell K. Hamilton, Stacie M. Ritchie and Brett Booth (Marvel Comics, $19.99, 9780785127239/0785127232) is a graphic novel set in a world rife with vampires, zombies and werewolves.

Thursday, July 19:

Salt by Jeremy Page (Viking, $24.95, 9780670038688/0670038687) chronicles three generations of an oddball family living on the salt marshes of Norfolk, England.

Eye of the Beholder by David Ellis (Putnam, $24.95, 9780399154331/0399154337) follows Paul Riley, a successful attorney who sent the murderer of six young women to death row in 1989. Years later, a copycat killer seems to be sending Paul personal messages.

New hardcover nonfiction appearing Monday, July 16:

Sabotage: America's Enemies Within the CIA by Rowan Scarborough (Regnery, $27.95, 9781596985100/1596985100) claims that elements of the CIA have worked against Bush's War of Terror.

Thursday, July 19:

Parts per Million: The Poisoning of Beverly Hills High School by Joy Horowitz (Viking, $25.95, 9780670037988/0670037982) shows that profitable oil pumps next to a high school in Beverly Hills, Calif., correlate with a high number of horrific diseases in alumni.