In contrast to his often enigmatic pronouncements while
chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan has been loud and clear
about his views in The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World (Penguin Press, $35, 9781594201318/1594201315), whose pub date is today.
Greenspan appeared last night on 60 Minutes, and his observations about
the Republican Party in the book made for front-page stories across the
country over the weekend. According to the AP (via the New York Times),
Greenspan, who calls himself a "libertarian Republican," faulted
President Bush's lax fiscal policy. ''My biggest frustration remained
the president's unwillingness to wield his veto against out-of-control
spending,'' Greenspan wrote.
Concerning the 2006 election, he took the view that "the Republicans in
Congress lost their way. They swapped principle for power. They ended
up with neither. They deserved to lose.''
As for Iraq, he wrote: "I am saddened that it is politically
inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is
largely about oil.''
---
Effective today, eMusic, which has some 10% of the music download
market (iTunes has 71%), begins to offer audiobooks for downloading,
too, according to the New York Times.
eMusic uses MP3 technology, which works on most any digital player but
doesn't provide copyright protection. As a result, some audiobook
publishers have shied away from participating. As Brian Downing,
publisher of Recorded Books, told the Times, "I think it's a mistake. I think our obligation to protect the files and protect the authors is a big one."
On the other hand, Penguin Audio is making available on eMusic all the
150 titles it has available on iTunes. Random House Audio will test the service by selling
some 500 titles through eMusic. Group publisher Madeline McIntosh
speculated that piracy will be less of an issue for audiobooks, and "if
we see that piracy of our products is increasing, we would stop."
---
As textbook prices rise, so does theft, and many
colleges, universities and even municipalities are taking measures to
track sellers of used books or make reselling textbooks by non-students
more difficult, according to USA Today.
The City Council of Madison, Wis., has gone so far as to pass an
ordinance "requiring bookstores that buy used textbooks to keep
detailed records on the sellers: physical descriptions and driver's
license, Social Security or state ID numbers." Sandi Torkildson, owner
of A Room of One's Own, told the paper that she objects to keeping the
personal data for six months and sharing it with police at their
request without search warrants. "It's an issue of readers' privacy."
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Congratulations to Broken Trail, which
won three Emmys last night, one for best mini-series. In addition,
Robert Duvall won best actor, mini-series or movie, and Thomas Haden
Church won best supporting actor, mini-series or movie. The mini-series
ran in June 2006 on AMC. Alan Geoffrion, the film's screenwriter, wrote
the book based on his screenplay--the first novel published by Fulcrum
Publishing ($14.95, 9781555916053/1555916058) (Shelf Awareness, June 19, 2006).
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Fensterman, Hermans, Juenemann . . .
The Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association's Emerging Leaders group will step out in a big way opening night of PNBA's tradeshow, which starts this Wednesday, in Bellevue, Wash. Via shuttle, the group will go to Third Place Books's Ravenna store in Seattle. At 8 p.m., "some light bookselling business" will include an introduction by Third Place's Wendy Manning as well as an appearance by BEA show director Lance Fensterman, who will talk briefly (and amusingly, we imagine) about BEA. At 9 p.m., the group will adjourn to the Pub in the basement, where the Hermans, a Missoula, Mont., band, will play and support its fall title, The Hermans: Stalking America: The Journal of an Unknown Rock and Roll Band (Running Press, $17.95, 9780762427727/0762427728). The event is free for "the tradeshow crowd and friends."
[Thanks to
Brian Juenemann, PNBA's marketing director, for bringing this to our
attention.]
---
Bookazine, Bayonne, N.J., is underwriting membership for the New
Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association in the American
Independent Business Alliance as well as presentations by AMIBA
to local business alliances and up to $500 for the first eight
NAIBA-member bookstore alliances that host an AMIBA orientation in
their towns.
"The survival of independent wholesalers is absolutely and irrevocably
linked to the survival of independent booksellers," Bookazine executive
v-p Richard Kallman said in a statement. "I am proud to support the
work that NAIBA has embarked upon in this important movement."
---
Authors who will be the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance show
September 28-30 in Atlanta, Ga., are guest blogging on SIBA's website
at Fat Show. So far, SIBA has posted messages from Tim Green, Carol
Marsh, Jennifer Moses and Louise Shaffer. More will come from Darnell
Arnoult, Allan Wolf, Joshilyn Jackson and others.
---
"What's Not Coming to a Bookstore Near You" was the headline for a Christianity Today report
on a dilemma for Christian publishers as they resist--or succumb
to--the temptation of paying large advances for potential bestsellers
at the expense of more serious theological titles. The piece linked to
an essay written by Tyndale House president Mark D. Taylor for the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association.
Taylor
described a classic agent-publisher negotiation scenario for a "can't
miss" manuscript: "So we get the deal. We pay the advance. The
manuscript comes in. We begin to wonder why we paid so much for this
average manuscript. We edit it and market it and sell it and process
the returns. And at the end of the day we take a huge write-off. If
we're lucky, the book earns a net contribution to overheads. But in
most of these scenarios, the book generates a loss even apart from
overheads. Competition (and perhaps some greed) has nearly killed us."
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"I want people to come and say, 'Wow, I've never seen that book before,' " Ben McNally told the Globe and Mail in an article about the opening of his new Toronto bookstore, Ben McNally Books.
A bookseller for 30 years, including the past 16 at Nicholas
Hoare Books, McNally will now oversee a 2,700-sq.-ft. bookshop
featuring dark wood fixtures and high ceilings, a pale-blue and
butter-yellow color scheme, and "an elegance and serenity that will be
familiar to Mr. McNally's former customers."
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BookExpo America and Miami Book Fair International have created the Translation Marketplace, a one-day educational forum
limited to members of the trade that will take place on November 8
during the fair and address issues of translation, foreign rights and
licensing for publishers, agents, scouts, translators, editors, right
managers and others.
Organizers hope that the Translation Market may expand in the future to
include a "commerce and business community area where buyers and
sellers may exhibit and view titles, as well as meet individually for
private business meetings."
BEA will produce podcasts of all events at the Translation Marketplace
and set up a website with networking and show planning abilities.
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Describing Russia as a "nation of readers," the Moscow News Weekly
featured a brief look at the "bookshop troika" of Moskva, Dom Knigi and
Biblio Globus, which were hailed as the city's "revered centers of
modern writing, where the best of new publications are disseminated and
assiduously promoted."
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Peter Clifton, most recently a senior v-p and president/CEO of several
Ingram Book Group companies, including Ingram International, Ingram
Library Services and Ingram Periodicals, has joined Parthenon
Publishing's board of advisors and will focus on business and growth
strategies. Clifton has more than 20 years of experience in printing
and digital publishing, Internet technologies and
distribution/wholesaling. Earlier he was founding CEO of PubEasy and
worked at Wiley, HarperCollins and SEGASoft.