Starbucks Entertainment has chosen Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey through His Son's Addiction by David Sheff (Houghton Mifflin, $24, 9780618683352/0618683356) as the next title in its book program. The book, which Starbucks described as "a compelling true story examining addiction, trust, and renewal told by the parent of a meth addicted teenager," goes on sale at more than 6,500 Starbucks in the U.S. on February 26. Houghton's onsale date for Beautiful Boy is February 26.
Sheff has written three other books and his work appears regularly in various newspapers and magazines. Beautiful Boy is the expansion of an article that originally appeared in the New York Times Magazine.
Nic Sheff, the beautiful boy of the title, has also written a memoir, Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines (Ginee Seo/S&S, $16.99, 9781416913627/1416913629), geared to younger readers. Tweak
goes on sale in February, too. Father and son will tour together and
are already booked for the Today Show, Fresh Air and other shows.
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Elizabeth Hardwick, critic, essayist, fiction writer and co-founder of the New York Review of Books, died this past Sunday in New York City at age 91. The New York Times has a long obituary.
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The Fair Use Project of Stanford Law School's Center for
Internet and Society will act as co-counsel for RDR Books, which is
being sued by J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros. (owner of film rights to
the Harry Potter books). The plaintiffs are seeking to block
publication of RDR's The Harry Potter Lexicon, an unofficial reference guide, and have obtained a temporary restraining order. The book is based on a popular website.
"The public has long enjoyed the right to create reference guides that
discuss literary works, comment on them, and make them more
accessible," Anthony Falzone, executive director of the Fair Use
Project, said in a statement. "J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros. are
threatening that right. We intend to demonstrate that the fair use
doctrine protects the Harry Potter Lexicon."
A preliminary injunction hearing is set for February 6, 2008.
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On the occasion of the arrival of Amazon's Kindle, the AP
surveys e-book use and finds that "e-books are already a success in a
few niches, where they are giving rise to new ways of doing business.
The standout example is role-playing games, but buyers of college
textbooks and even romance novels are warming to e-books."
Role-players "buy lots of books, which contain rules for their games or
expand on the imaginary worlds in which they are set," the AP wrote.
"It's fiction, but it's more like reference material than the kind of
long narratives you'd find in novels. Industry insiders see that as a
big reason PDFs work for role-players."
In an interesting observation, Gareth-Michael Skarka of Adamant
Entertainment said, "The more we treat a PDF like a book, the less
likely people are to get it. You price it low enough that the consumer
thinks of it as disposable."
Although e-book sales are less than 1% of Harlequin Enterprises's
sales, all 120-140 offerings per month are sold as e-books, too, and
the company is selling short stories exclusively as e-books at 89 cents
each.
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Holiday gift book suggestion update:
With characteristic ESPN
'tude, the sports network's golf book picks included "eight
publications that were absolutely, positively, undeniably on my
bookshelf when I decided to write this piece."
In compiling a "best travel books for Christmas," the Guardian observed that "British travel writers turned their backs on the foreign and went walkabout in their backyard."
The Christian Science Monitor featured its "annual guide to books."
"A
brief roundup of some noteworthy titles, by both new and established
writers, that may have slipped past you in 2007" was offered by the Village Voice.
CMT.com featured "Country Music Books for the Holidays."
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Effective January 7, Joseph Monti will become director of paperbacks at
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers and will oversee the publication
of all middle grade and young adult paperback reissues as well as
acquire and edit select titles.
Monti was a buyer at Barnes & Noble for 18 years, managing the
middle reader and series section, before joining Houghton Mifflin's
children's trade division in 2006 as manager of national accounts.
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Ron T. Lippock has joined Eagle
Publishing as v-p and group publisher, responsible for the Conservative
Book Club and the company's "rapidly growing direct-to-consumer
geopolitical publications," which include the club, Human Events,
HumanEvents.com, RedState.com and newsletters.
Lippock was formerly director of the CQ Press Division at Congressional
Quarterly and earlier had marketing and editorial jobs at Energy Argus,
Telecommunications Reports and Oxbridge Communications.