The Independent Book Publishers Association board has five new members for the 2010-2012 term:
Shelf Awareness's own John Mutter, who founded the company with Jenn Risko five years ago. Earlier he worked at Publishers Weekly for more than 20 years, for much of the time as executive editor, bookselling.
Davida Breier, manager for Hopkins Fulfillment Services, the distribution division at Johns Hopkins University Press. Earlier she worked for National Book Network, where she was marketing director and oversaw NBN Fusion. Before that, she was sales and marketing director for Biblio Distribution. She is also a board member for the non-profit publisher No Voice Unheard and is a contributing writer and photographer for its book Ninety-Five: Meeting America's Farmed Animals in Stories and Photographs. She’s been involved with small and independent publishers since 1994 and is actively involved in the "zine" community.
Roy M. Carlisle is marketing and sales director at the Independent Institute. He has been senior editor at HarperOne, West Coast senior editor at the Crossroad Publishing Company, co-owner and editorial director at Circulus Publishing Group and general manager of the Fuller Seminary Bookstore. He has also been a founding board member and former chairman of the board at New College Berkeley and founder and former executive director of the Academy of Christian Editors.
Poet, publisher, editor and educator Haki R. Madhubuti has published more than 28 books, mostly poetry and nonfiction. He founded Third World Press in 1967, was a founder of the Institute of Positive Education/New Concept School and a co-founder of the Betty Shabazz International Charter School, the Barbara A. Sizemore Middle School and the DuSable Leadership Academy, all of which are in Chicago. He has taught at Columbia College of Chicago, Cornell University, the University of Illinois at Chicago, Howard University, Morgan State University, the University of Iowa and Chicago State University. Currently he is the incoming Ida B. Wells Barnett University Professor at DePaul University.
Robert Rosenwald helped his wife, Barbara Peters, found the Poisoned Pen bookstore in Scottsdale, Ariz., in 1989. Jointly they started Poisoned Pen Press in 1997 in response to the loss of backlist titles and shrinking number of midlist authors as a result of consolidation of large publishers.
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In a statement, B&N said, "We are not surprised Mr. Burkle cannot accept defeat in the baseless litigation he brought against Barnes & Noble and that he would now force the company to incur further legal costs to advance his self-serving agenda of gaining control of Barnes & Noble without paying a control premium to shareholders."
According to Reuters, Burkle's Yucaipa Companies, which filed the appeal "because of Riggio's decision in August to exercise options to buy Barnes & Noble shares, argued that the lower Delaware court had made its ruling on the premise that Riggio would not exercise any of those options."
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Gulf Coast booksellers are generally optimistic about the fall season despite the harsh impact of the BP oil spill disaster on lives and businesses this summer. Bookselling This Week reported that "six weeks after the capping of the BP oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, booksellers along the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama reported varying effects on their businesses, but all said they were looking forward to the fall season."For Kay Gough of Bay Books, Bay Saint Louis, Miss., the combination of BP grant money to promote tourism in the area and new books examining another regional disaster have helped keep her business ahead of last year: "One thing that has really benefitted business in the last two months were sales of books that came out to coincide with the fifth anniversary of Katrina."
Anticipating the fall season, Gough said, "Our beaches are in good shape. People are feeling more confident about the seafood. We have something to look forward to now, instead of dreading waking up every morning and listening to the news."
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Kobo will provide the e-book store for Samsung's Galaxy tablet computer, Bloomberg reported, adding that the Galaxy Tab "will be sold in Europe in October and the company is in talks with mobile phone service providers to bring it to the U.S." "This partnership is an industry first for Kobo and Samsung, offering the first e-reading experience on an Android tablet to readers worldwide," said Kobo's CEO Michael Serbinis.
PCWorld suggested that the Kobo announcement "is potentially its biggest victory yet" because, as the engine behind the "Readers Hub" e-book reading app, "Kobo software will be pre-loaded on Galaxy Tabs globally, and will give customers wireless access to the entire Borders and Kobo bookstore, with over 2.2 million titles--over a million of which Kobo claims can be downloaded free. The Readers Hub syncs reading across devices, supports ePub and PDF titles, and has simple navigation through the Tab's touch screen."
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Earlier this month, Mark Bierley resigned from his position as Borders COO and CFO "to pursue another employment opportunity" (Shelf Awareness, August 24, 2010). Yesterday, Reuters reported that Bierly will replace Frank Paci as CFO for convenience store operator Pantry Inc., which "is buying 47 stores from privately held Presto Convenience Stores LLC to expand its geographic footprint."
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Obituary note: Steve Eddy, the longtime owner of Book King bookstore, Rutland, Vt., and "one of downtown's most vocal and active supporters," died Tuesday, the Rutland Herald reported. He was 70. He had sold the bookshop last year to former part-time employee Elizabeth Dulli after nearly 40 years in business. Michael Coppinger, executive director of the Downtown Rutland Partnership, called Eddy a renaissance man and observed that he "was an astute businessman. As other stores came and went, the Book King became one of the retail anchors, navigating the ups and downs of the economy."
In a 2009 interview, Eddy said that the "way you do compete with the big box stores and with Amazon, you know your community and you know the wants of your community and you establish ties with your community and people appreciate that." A celebration of life service will be held today at 11 a.m., at the Paramount Theatre on Center Street.
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Novelist Vance Bourjaily, "whose literary career, like those of Norman Mailer and James Jones, emerged out of World War II and whose ambitious novels explored American themes for decades afterward," died on Tuesday, the New York Times reported. He was 87.
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Let the debate begin. Flavorwire showcased its top 10 bookstores in the U.S. while offering the sound advice that people should head to one "and buy something fer chrissakes."
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Miami New Times profiled A&M Comics, "one of the oldest comic book stores in the country. When you walk into A&M Comics on Bird Road, you might think that you've walked into a taping of A&E's Hoarders. It's stocked from ceiling to floor with comic books, collectible figures, T-shirts, and posters. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to the array of comic book paraphernalia, and even the owner admits that there is no kind of inventory taken, per se."But customers can talk with owner Jorge Perez "about any kind of comic from any time period and from any publisher. He knows the biggies like Marvel and DC, but he's also familiar with indie publishers like Dark Horse and Image. With so many years in the biz, he's seen it all."
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$#*! the f@#&ing New York Times doesn't say. The New Yorker's Book Bench blog cited Andrew Gottlieb's parody Drink, Play, F@#k as exhibit A while considering Blake Eskin's recent scolding of the Times "for its conservative language policy... I noticed that Black Cat Press had opted to 'bleep out' the final word of the title on the book's cover, and in all subsequent mentions. (That 'f@#k' is spelled out in condoms on the cover shows that there was a limit to the publisher’s high-mindedness.)"
Book Bench featured a book cover slide show exploring "how some other publishers have chosen to deal with the offending word."
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Book trailer of the day: Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Gross Junior Edition by David Borgenicht and Nathaniel Marunas (Chronicle), which will be released September 21. Cheers! Quirk Books publisher Borgenicht toasts the end of summer with the winning recipe in Chronicle's BEA contest for the grossest smoothie, submitted by Patti Pattee of the Watermark Book Company, Anacortes, Wash.
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Effective today, Continental Sales is now U.S. and Canadian distributor for h.f. ullmann, the Tandem Verlag imprint, and former Könemann titles. Distribution had been handled by Langenscheidt Publishing Group. All returns should now be sent to Innovative Logistics.