Online sales on Monday--aka Cyber Monday--rose 21% to $733 million, according to comScore, as quoted by the Wall Street Journal. This was a record for online sales on any one day. Some 60% of dollars spent came from people using computers at work, and the number of buyers rose 38% while money spent per consumer dropped 12%--a drop explained possibly by the many discounts offered this Cyber Monday.

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The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission expressed concerns that some book prices would rise if Pacific Equity Partners, owner of Angus & Robertson and Whitcoulls, buys Borders stores in Australia, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

The merged entity could end discounts and customer loyalty programs and demand better terms from publishers and distributors, the Commission noted.

Borders is divesting its stores in Australia and New Zealand as part of its new strategic plan announced earlier this year.

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We are the chancellors . . .

Tim Waterstone, founder of Waterstone's Books, and Brian May, guitarist for the rock band Queen, have been named chancellors of Edinburgh's Napier University and Liverpool John Moore University, respectively. According to Student, Waterstone "plans to take on the role of figurehead with the same enthusiasm and passion witnessed in his business dealings," and "May, 60, balances his career as a rock star with a passion for astrophysics, having recently earnt a Ph.D. from Imperial college London."

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The late Norman Mailer has won this year's Bad Sex in Fiction Award "for the most awkward description of an intimate encounter." The BBC reported that he is "the first author to win the award posthumously." Excerpts from the winner as well as the nominees can be found at the Guardian.

"We are sure he would have taken the prize in good humour," said the judges. 

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Perhaps this qualifies only tangentially as book news (though James Bond is, after all, a product of Ian Fleming's novels), but Reuters reported that Mr. Bond has given the "British Secret Intelligence Service a recruitment headache--too many cranks want to join MI6." The head of MI6 recruitment said the Bond myth "does tend to turn up quite a lot of thrill seekers and fantasists and we're really not interested in them. We don't have a license to kill--we don't carry Berettas--that's simply not true."

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Following his recent announcement that Egmont U.K. will open a U.S. office (Shelf Awareness, November 15), Douglas Pocock, executive v-p of Egmont U.S.A., has named Elizabeth Law as v-p and publisher of Egmont U.S.A. Law was formerly v-p and associate publisher of Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers. Pocock also confirmed that Random House will handle U.S. sales and distribution.

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Effective December 11, Karen Forster is joining the Book Industry Study Group as associate director. She was formerly director of U.S. operations (publishing) at SPi and earlier worked at Butterworth-Heinemann and Elsevier.

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Harry Potter + Joe College = Joe Quidditch?

The first intercollegiate Quidditch match was held at Middlebury College this month, and USA Today was there, reporting that at the "Intercollegiate Quidditch World Cup Fall Festival, there were banners, team processions worthy of Olympic opening ceremonies, halftime entertainment and 12 seven-person coed Middlebury teams vying for the chance to play the visiting team from Vassar College."

Despite calling this earthbound version of Quidditch a "mongrel offspring of rugby, dodge ball and soccer," the reporter conceded that somehow it all worked. Middlebury's Mollywobbles defeated Vassar for the championship.

"Of all the things I've done in my four years at Middlebury, this is by far the best," said Ellie Molyneux, who played for the Bad Ass Muggle Flyers. "I won a Jell-O wrestling contest one year, but this is far better."

Sales at Books-A-Million in the third quarter ended November 3 rose 6.3% to $117.7 million and the company's net loss grew to $555,000, compared to a net loss of $201,000 in the same period in 2006. Sales at stores open at least a year rose 2.1%.

In a prepared statement, BAM president and CEO Sandra B. Cochran commented: "We were very pleased with our sales results for the quarter; however, operating costs for the period, driven primarily by an increase in health care expense, exceeded our plan. Looking forward, our fourth quarter bestseller lineup is solid, and we are focused on executing our merchandising and marketing plans for the holiday season."

This morning on the Today Show: Rachel Vassel, author of Daughters of Men: Portraits of African-American Women and Their Fathers (Amisted, $27.95, 9780061350351/0061350354).

Also on Today: Alek Wek, author of Alek: From Sudanese Refugee to International Supermodel (Amistad, $24.95, 9780061243318/0061243310).

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This morning on Good Morning America: Steve Martin, author of Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life (Scribner, $25, 9781416553649/1416553649).

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This morning's Book Report, the weekly AM radio book-related show organized by Windows a bookshop, Monroe, La., features two interviews that have aired earlier:

• Erik Larson, author of Thunderstruck (Three Rivers Press, $14.95, 9781400080670/1400080673)
• Nathaniel Philbrick, author of Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War (Penguin, $16, 9780143111979/0143111973)

The show airs at 8 a.m. Central Time and can be heard live at thebookreport.net; the archived edition will be posted this afternoon.

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This morning on Fox TV's Morning Show with Mike & Juliet: Danine Manette, author of Ultimate Betrayal: Recognizing, Uncovering and Dealing With Infidelity (Square One, $12.95, 9780757002816/0757002811).

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Today on the Diane Rehm Show: Paula Deen, author of Christmas with Paula Deen: Recipes and Stories from My Favorite Holiday (S&S, $23, 9780743292863/0743292863).

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Today on Talk of the Nation: Francis Wheen, author of Marx's Das Kapital: A Biography (Atlantic Monthly, $19.95, 9780871139702/0871139707), part of the Books That Changed the World series.

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Today on the Martha Stewart Show: Lidia Matticchio Bastianich, author of Lidia's Italy: 140 Simple and Delicious Recipes from the Ten Places in Italy Lidia Loves Most (Knopf, $35, 9781400040360/1400040361).

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Today on Oprah: Bob Greene, author of The Best Life Diet (S&S, $15, 9781416540694/1416540695).
 

The National Book Critics Circle is creating a monthly Best Recommended List based on a poll of its 800 members and the finalists and winners of its books prizes about which books they have read that they love. The aim is to come up with a list that reflects not which books have sold best but which books have been read and enjoyed most.

To start the list, NBCC polled members about the books published in 2007 that they read and loved. Monthly lists start in January. For more information about the voters and titles, see NBCC's Critical Mass blog. Winners are:

Fiction

1. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (Riverhead)
2. Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson (FSG)
3. The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon (HarperCollins)
4. Exit Ghost by Philip Roth (Houghton Mifflin)
5. Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson (Graywolf)
 
Nonfiction
   
1. Brother, I'm Dying by Edwidge Danticat (Knopf)
2. The World Without Us by Alan Weisman (St. Martin's)
3. The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein (Metropolitan)
4. Schulz and the Peanuts by David Michaelis (HarperCollins)
5. Legacy of Ashes by Tim Weiner (Doubleday)

Poetry

1. Time and Materials: Poems 1997-2005 by Robert Hass (Ecco)
1. Collected Poems: 1956-1998 by Zbigniew Herbert (Ecco)
1. Gulf Music by Robert Pinsky (FSG)
4. Next Life by Rae Armantrout (Wesleyan)
5. Elegy by Mary Jo Bang (Graywolf)

Broadway may be dark (due to a stagehands' strike), but that didn't stop four award-winning authors from lighting up the stage with a standing-room-only performance last week. As part of the NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) conference held at New York City's Javits Center, children's book authors Avi, Sarah Weeks, Katherine Paterson and Brian Selznick demonstrated the power of dramatizing literature with their Authors Readers Theatre.

ART is the brainchild of Avi Wortis, who opened and closed the presentation with a quotation from Robert Frost, "The ear is the best reader." For the intervening hour, the quartet of authors proved that they were gifted dramatists as well as writers, reading a scene from each of their works, which they have adapted for performance. Their goal: to model the form, so that teachers and librarians will take it back to students in their schools and encourage them to create their own theatrical adaptations. The authors read from Paterson's Bridge to Terabithia; Avi's The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle; Weeks's Oggie Cooder (forthcoming in February 2008) and Selznick's The Invention of Hugo Cabret, among others.

The four actor/authors dressed in black and assumed the roles of different characters, but they also took turns narrating--often within a single work. Several memorable moments emphasized the impact made possible by this unusual form of creative collaboration. For instance, at the point in Paterson's story when Jess and Leslie are about to name their magical world, all four authors whisper in unison, "Terabithia." In another example, and perhaps the most challenging adaptation, audience members watched a screen as images of a full moon melted into an evening cityscape of Paris, then scenes of the Gare Saint-Lazare in the highly visual presentation of Hugo Cabret. All the while, the authors' voices provided a soundtrack: Weeks hummed "(If It Takes Forever) I Will Wait for You," while Paterson simulated the tick-tock of a clock, Avi made the sound of young Hugo panting as he runs through the train station and Selznick created the soft chug-chug of the train's arrival.

Launched in September 2006, the original Authors Readers Theatre consisted of Avi, Sarah Weeks, Walter Dean Myers and Sharon Creech. Since then, other writers have joined the traveling troupe (which has aimed the presentation at teachers and librarians primarily, though readers age 9-up have also been in attendance). Their Web site, authorsreaderstheatre.com, provides plentiful resources and guidelines for creating such a theatre in the classroom, library or bookstore, including a list of the authors' paperback editions that include scripts in the back. The authors' next performance will be held at Harding University in Searcy, Ark., on December 1. The ART Web site offers a complete list of performances scheduled at conferences and literary festivals through spring 2008, as well as information on how to go about hosting one.--Jennifer M. Brown

This is the kind of story about people in the business with multiple roles that we like especially at Shelf Awareness: in this case, it's about a rep who is president of the main rep association who is also a publisher who is also repping his newest title.

More simply put, the rep/publisher is Eric Miller, partner and co-owner of Miller Trade Book Marketing, the Midwest rep group. (Miller is also president of the National Association of Independent Publishers Representatives.) In 2002, he set up Wicker Park Press, which has published three titles with Academy Chicago. In December, on his own, he publishes Water Tanks of Chicago: A Vanishing Urban Legacy by Larry W. Green ($19.95, 9780978967604/0978967607), a paperback that chronicles a sometimes unnoticed aspect of the Windy City's skylines: water tanks, some of which date back to the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, that have "a lot of cultural significance" and have been nominated for landmark status. "This is book is part of a push to preserve these towers," Miller told Shelf Awareness. (Partners Book Distributors is acting as wholesaler for the book.)

The slim book has photographs and paintings of many of the tanks by Green as well as a foreword by Anthony Jones, president of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, who praises Green for portraying the water tanks as "dynamic incidents in what is clearly a Chicago landscape."

For Miller, Water Tanks of Chicago is a labor of love, for several reasons. "I'm doing this because I think it's a great book," Miller said. He has known Green for many years, and the timing of the landmark preservation drive was right. In addition, Miller wanted to grow his own publishing business and help "put the company on the map," something he thought he could do better by doing the selling, shipping and publicity himself.

So far, Miller's efforts appear to be paying off. "People react on an emotional level," Miller said. "There is no other book about the water tanks--and they're distinctive compared to water towers in other cities," which usually have scaffolds on them.

Already the book has received publicity in ForeWord; the Midwest Book Review (its review called the book "a superb presentation"); and Pioneer Press, which publishes newspapers in the Chicago suburbs. Next month Green is doing a signing at the Beverly branch of the Chicago Public Library (the event is sponsored by Reading on Walden Bookstore, an online store), and in February he is making an appearance at the Centuries & Sleuths bookstore in Forest Park, Ill.

As of mid-November, Miller, who is repping Water Tanks of Chicago while doing his job at Miller Trade Book Marketing, had shipped 550 copies out of 3,200 printed. Among the best customers so far: the Book Table in Oak Park, Ill.; the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Mo., where the title is being marketed as a gift item; the Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops in Milwaukee, Wis.; the Kansas Union bookstore in Lawrence, Kan.; Left Bank Books, St. Louis, Mo.; and Sandmeyer's Bookstore in Printer's Row in Chicago. "Some are my loyal accounts," Miller said.

Amusingly the book "breaks a few of my own rules," Miller said with a little bit of awe. For one, it's a $19.95 paperback. Besides breaking pricing and format rules, Miller has learned at least one rule, which has to do with successful publicity--and perhaps applies elsewhere in life: "the harder I push, the more good things happen," as he put it, adding, "There's a lull, but then something else happens."

Such as stories like these.--John Mutter