Notes: B&N Store Wi-Fi Now Free; Pynchon Party
Chris Anderson would approve.
Barnes & Noble is now making the AT&T wi-fi service that operates in its stores free to all customers, who, the company pointed out, will now be able freely to preview and download the more than 700,000 e-book titles being sold on its website.
In a statement, B&N CEO Steve Riggio said: "By providing no-fee Wi-Fi access, we are not only meeting our customers' needs, but extending the sense of community that has always been in our stores."
In an interview with the New York Times, Riggio indicated that "in general, the chain enjoyed a high conversion rate of people who walked into the stores to actual book buyers" and said he is "not concerned that consumers who came into Barnes & Noble stores looking to buy a book might be persuaded to switch from a more expensive hardcover to a cheaper e-book."
He told the Times: "We are not entering the e-book business to sell books unprofitably. Our commitment to the sale of digital books is significant and we believe that offering customers choice is something that we have to do."
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Cool idea of the day. Midnight literary madness will strike
A Cappella Books, Atlanta, Ga., next Tuesday, August 4, when the
bookstore celebrates publication of Thomas Pynchon's latest novel, Inherent Vice, with a midnight release party.
The Journal-Constitution
reported that the "bookstore tried a release party the last time
Pynchon wrote a novel in 2006 but did so with minimal planning." Owner
Frank Reiss has higher hopes this time.
"We're even going to
have a band," he said. "We're going to use social networking. We can
better touch base with people who have that particular obsession." The
band, Schwarzkommando, "cites Pynchon's works in its lyrics," the paper
wrote.
While Reiss is not anticipating Potter-like frenzy, he
observed that "people who become obsessed with books become obsessed
with Pynchon. His works are so demanding. You have to be a pretty
committed reader. It's a certain self-selectivity. There's also a
paranoia that comes through in his books. And bookish people tend to
have a soft spot for paranoia." Which, naturally, makes midnight the
perfect hour for a book release party.
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In an opinion piece, David Ulin, books editor of the Los Angeles Times, debated "Amazon's troubling reach" and concluded:
"Like all of us, I now live at the intersection of technology and language, ideas, 'content,' which I see as a place of possibility, where we have profound new tools to move the word forward.
"Still, for all that this excites me, something about its fluidity makes me wary, aware that such possibilities carry risks.
"Does Amazon.com, as its detractors claim, want to control, or even censor, certain types of literature? As long as there's money to be made, I can't see why it would. But economics is a slippery territory, defined by self-interest rather than the public good. And that, as Amazon.com continues to remind us, makes for its own kind of memory hole."
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In a list of "50 Authentic American Experiences," one for each state, Time Magazine cited a bookstore in Minneapolis as Minnesota's authentic experience:
"In this age of the world-devouring chains, an independent bookstore is as rare a sight as a first edition of Harry Potter. An independent bookstore devoted to science fiction is even rarer still. But since 1974, Uncle Hugo's in Minneapolis has been stocking its shelves with a huge variety of new and used sci-fi books and earning a national rep among fans of the genre. Don Blyly opened the store 34 years ago when he was in law school, and he runs it to this day. (Right next-door is Uncle Edgar's Mystery Bookstore, also owned by Blyly.) Drop by before a Barnes & Noble puts him out of business."
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Citizen Matters of Bangalore, India, offered a roundup of local bookstores and included many comments from customers. They like the stores for a variety of reasons, they said, including price, selection, used book buyback policies and staff knowledge. The "pavement" booksellers are very popular among some readers. One man noted: "I've picked up some unusual titles here like one of humour writer Dave Barry's earliest works, Babies and Other Hazards of Sex."
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John Groton has left his position as executive director of sales at Globe Pequot Press and may be reached at jgroton@gmail.com.
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Margot Schupf has been named to the new position of senior v-p, editorial director, digital publishing, for the Morrow/Avon/Eos group at HarperCollins. She will oversee e-book publishing as well as develop original e-book titles, create new opportunities from the backlist and work closely with the marketing team, IDG and the emerging technology group to build digital tools such as iPhone Apps, as well as other digital initiatives. She will also acquire nonfiction for Morrow, focusing on lifestyle, diet, and health.
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There's a lot of cleaning up to do in Sweeping Up Glass, Carolyn Wall's gritty, vitally alive first novel. It roars into life on the first page and never lets up. Someone is killing and mutilating wolves up on Cooper's Ridge, and bitter, scarred old Olivia is going to settle the score. As a child, Olivia adored living with her father, Tate Harker, a self-taught veterinarian who ran a small-time grocery store as well as a whiskey still on the side. Their property on Cooper's Ridge, at the end of Farm Road One, is in the little town of Aurora, Kentucky, just north of the Tennessee line.