Writers using Amazon's Author Central service can now view Nielsen BookScan's weekly geographic sales data for their print books. Author Central has also added a feature that shows past history on Amazon's ranking for their books.
The new "Sales by Geography" feature displays a map of the continental U.S., highlighting areas where copies of an author's books have been sold. A "Sales by Week" feature displays a bar chart of an author's sales recorded over the trailing four weeks. Authors can also see how many copies of each title were sold by print-edition type, e.g. hardcover or paperback. Digital book sales are not included in BookScan data.
The Los Angeles Times Jacket Copy blog noted that writers were responding to the news "with both enthusiasm and trepidation."
"Get the Xanax ready," tweeted David MacInnis Gill, author of Black Hole Sun, then added in an e-mail: "Authors worry. We worry about writing. Worry about our editors, our agents, our reviews, and our readers. We worry about everything, including all forms of social media including blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and personal websites. The one thing we haven't been able to obsess about is real-time sales numbers."
Dani Shapiro, author of Devotion: A Memoir, observed: "In order for writers to get our work done, we need to tune out the noise--and sales figures, while obviously important, are very very noisy.... There's a time and a place for the business of writing, but now that business is available with a keystroke--most of us work on computers and so the instrument on which we write is also a constant, and constantly tempting window into the outside world. I've begun to write by hand in notebooks when I can."
"Will having access to the BookScan data serve any useful purpose?" asked Ellen F. Brown, co-author of Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind: A Bestseller's Odyssey from Atlanta to Hollywood--which will be released in February. "I like to think I will put the information to good use. Time will tell."
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Shares of online retailer Dangdang, often referred to as the Amazon of China, rose 86.9% in its New York Stock Exchange debut Wednesday, according to DailyFinance, which noted that the company "sold 17 million American Depository Receipts (ADRs) on the U.S. market and saw those shares explode upward in trading." The stock closed at $29.91 on the NYSE Wednesday, up dramatically from its IPO price of $16.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Dangdang's owners "are aiming to follow Amazon's model and broaden their inventory beyond books, a process they began last year." Peggy Yu, Dangdang's co-founder and chairwoman, has an MBA from New York University and worked in the U.S. "We want to duplicate that shopping experience," she said. "Right now, there's nothing to bring that kind of assortment of products together in one place and make it available to consumers in China."
Yu also told Investor's Business Daily that she began building Dangdang in 1999, when she returned to China "after spending a number of years in the States. And I really wanted a good bookstore that I could visit. I lived in the Upper West Side of New York, and there are quite a few really good bookstores here.... Also, when I was in the States I began to notice the rise of e-commerce--AOL and many other things. So my husband, a publisher, and myself decided to do a bookstore online. That's our initial vision."
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Today on NPR's Morning Edition, indie booksellers Daniel Goldin of Boswell Book Company, Milwaukee, Wis.; Lucia Silva of Portrait of a Bookstore, Studio City, Calif.; and Rona Brinlee of the BookMark, Atlantic Beach, Fla., named their favorite reads for 2010.
"Every year, when we present these holiday book choices, I'm struck by how idiosyncratic the picks are," said host Susan Stamberg. "I suppose it's because of that immense world of books out there (we're talking hardcover here--independent sellers know about e-books, but their passion is for pages and print). These sellers have the chance to read publisher's lists, to see what will come out in a given season, and then to order, on the basis of what they know about the readers in their communities. It's such a personal process, so full of good and considerate connections. It's almost as nice as sitting down in the most comfortable chair in the place, and getting lost in a fine story."
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Yesterday on NPR's Fresh Air, critic Maureen Corrigan unveiled her Best Books of the Year list, and closed the segment with a touching tribute to the late David Thompson, who ran Murder by the Book, Houston, Tex., and Busted Flush Press: 
"I want to end this list by doffing my hat not to a book, but to an independent bookseller and small press publisher. David Thompson was known throughout the mystery world; he died suddenly this year at 38. David introduced me to the wonders of noir writers like Reed Farrel Coleman, Daniel Woodrell and Martin Limon. His legacy is a reminder to all of us who love books that, as someone once said about the late critic Irving Howe, enthusiasm is not the enemy of the intellect."
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Cool idea of the day: WORD, Brooklyn N.Y., has launched WORD To Your Mailbox, a subscription service that sends customers one trade paperback original a month "plus extra goodies of various, secret types, and basically we are going to make you excited to get your mail once a month. I will probably decorate the envelopes by hand, as is my wont," wrote store manager Stephanie Anderson on her Bookavore blog. A children's version of WORD To Your Mailbox is also available.
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"Roller skates were involved, however subtly," in the latest video from Green Apple Books, San Francisco, Calif., in which booksellers offer "19 gift ideas from $2.49 to $1,750."
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Sad news: Chicklet Books in Princeton, N.J., is closing at the end of
the month. Owner Deb Hunter said that she has always had a lease in
which either party can give 30 days' notice. "A doctor's office has
rented the space and I have to leave by the end of the month," she
wrote.
Hunter has no plans to open elsewhere because "standard
rents are extremely out of my reach. I was only here in Princeton due to
the graciousness of my landlord, which I appreciate more than anyone
can know."
The 10,000-sq.-ft. store is in the Princeton Shopping
Center and includes a post office substation. Hunter moved into the spot
three years ago.
A group of Chicklet Books fans has begun a letter-writing campaign to
the mall owners and local newspapers. One of the letters is by Meg Cox
Leone, the former Wall Street Journal reporter who wrote
frequently about books and the industry. She wrote in part: "One of the
real joys for me, which makes [the shopping center] more than just a
place to shop, has been Chicklet Books, which has become a community
meeting center because of the special openess and generosity of
proprietor Deb Hunter. She helps local authors, gives discounts for book
groups and lets groups like my yoga class meet there free.
"I'm
not anti-business.... But I think there are multiple considerations in a
good business decision, and that creating a warm, welcoming place with a
community feel is something that WILL translate to your bottom line.
How hard would it be to work out a deal that would allow Deb and the
post office to occupy a smaller and VACANT site elsewhere in the
center?"
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Did Keith Richards recently crush his own dream of being a librarian? New York Press reported that shortly before giving a talk at the Cullman Center at the New York Public Library, "the Rolling Stone lit up a cigarette in deputy director Marie d'Origny's office. He then stubbed it out on a clay saucer he grabbed from underneath her precious orchid. Just to make sure the famously hard-to-care-for flower was really dead, he had someone open the office window to let in a breeze. It's all OK though, since Richards autographed the saucer when all was said and done."
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"In an age of immediacy, bookstores serve as a refuge where people can browse at their leisure and make thoughtful purchases. Although digital devices enable readers to have hundreds of books at their fingertips, independent bookstore owners have either embraced the technology or found ways to diversify," the Lodi, Calif., News-Sentinel wrote in its look at area bookshops, including the Book Lady, Tom's Used Books and Hooked on Books.
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Not everyone wants an e-book reader for Christmas this year. In the Wall Street Journal, Dan Newman wrote: "Print editions enable shared experiences in ways unavailable to electronic versions. I'm no snoop, but one of the first things I do when I enter a home is scan the bookshelves. As often as not, that sparks conversation about the interests of my hosts and about what they've read and hope to read. They invariably pull out other books, some inscribed, and hold them in their hands while we talk. That experience simply can't happen crouching over a hard-drive. Imagine entering a living room and saying: 'Hey! Mind if I scroll through your Kindle?'
"A book is more than a shell for words: It's a box whose magic starts at its real-world dimensions. No other common item so lacks a standardized size, and that makes individual books memorable. I could tell with my eyes closed if you've handed me a copy of The Great Gatsby that isn't mine."
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And the word champion is... Flavorwire explored Vivian Cook's All in a Word (Melville House) and was particularly intrigued by the the wordy inventiveness of Chaucer and Shakespeare: "While Cook notes in both instances that the famed writers probably didn’t invent the words listed, as much as make the first recorded use of the language around them, it’s interesting to see who’s responsible for what."
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What books are we giving for the holidays? The Huffington Post asked that question on Twitter and Facebook and compiled the responses into a slide show.
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Book trailer of the Day: Shazam! The Golden Age of the World's Mightiest Mortal by Chip Kidd, with photographs by Geoff Spear (Abrams ComicArts).