Borders
Group has told publishers that it is close to securing refinancing from
GE Capital and others and has a plan to "reduce costs, improve
liquidity and expand marketing efforts, as well as sell some assets,"
according to the New York Times.
One publisher told the Times that the plan is not "a convincing strategy." Borders made good on one part of it: it cut 15 more managerial jobs yesterday.
At
the talks between Borders and publishers about Borders's debts, the
publishers are now represented by law firm Lowenstein Sandler and
consultant Alvarez & Marsal, the Times said. Borders had asked the publishers to designate a legal advisor.
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In
a related note, Diamond Book Distributors has ceased supplying Borders
with titles. Kuo-Yu Liang, Diamond's v-p of sales and marketing,
commented: "Borders has confirmed they have stopped making payments, so
we have put them on shipping hold until this is resolved."
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All those e-reading devices people received as gifts during the holidays continue to pay off in e-book sales. USA Today reported that last week "the e-book outsold the print version for 18 of the top 50 books on the newspaper's bestselling books list, including all three Stieg Larsson novels. The week before, 19 had higher e-book than print sales. That was the first time the top 50 list has had more than two titles in which the e-version outsold print."
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Stieg Larsson dominated USA Today's top 100 bestselling books list for 2010, occupying the first three spots. "Call it escapism or merely a fondness for good stories, but in the midst of a recession at home and wars abroad, fiction seized a record-high share" of last year's list, USA Today wrote, noting that 77% of the weekly bestsellers were novels, up from 76% in 2009 and the highest percentage since the list began in 1993.
Other highlights of the analysis:
Romance accounted for 12% of bestsellers, up from 10% in 2009. USA Today suggested that one contributing factor might be that "readers who wouldn't be caught dead with risqué covers in public enjoyed the privacy of reading romantic e-books."
Stephenie Meyer's popularity dipped, with only 4% of bestsellers the list tracked, down from 11% in 2009.
Among nonfiction books, George W. Bush's Decision Points finished fourth for the year, despite a fall release. Laura Bush's memoir, Spoken From the Heart, was number 62.
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Christine Pisera Naman's book Faces of Hope: Babies Born on 9/11, which was published in 2002 by HCI, has attracted renewed interest because nine-year-old Tucson shooting victim Christina Taylor Green was one of the children featured and President Obama mentioned the title in his speech Wednesday.
"This is all happening very fast," said Kim Weiss, a spokeswoman for the publisher. The Palm Beach Post reported that people have been buying the book--which previously had not sold out of its 10,000-copy first printing--since last Saturday and HCI "is working quickly to begin printing more."
"I did the book as an offering of hope," said Naman. "I wanted it to be a dedication to the people who were lost as well as their loved ones. Then I wanted it to be a little bit of inspiration to the babies born on that day to go out and do good."
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Why did Google acquire eBook Technologies (Shelf Awareness, January 13, 2011)? Mashable suggested that the acquisition is probably more about patents, personnel and technology than hardware or software: "Former eBook Technologies CEO John Rivlin and President Garth Convoy are the inventors of several e-book patents... Google would definitely have an interest in owning that technology and the people who invented it.... Rivlin and Convoy’s expertise in e-books and distribution will likely serve Google well in its quest to distribute its massive library of electronically scanned books to the masses. Couple that with its proprietary technology and it’s no wonder Google forked over the cash for this company."
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Edmonds Patch profiled Edmonds Bookshop, Edmonds, Wash., which was founded in 1972 and carries a mix of new and used titles.
The
store is a kind of family--and extended family--affair. Mary Kay
Sneeringer and her husband, David Brewster, bought the shop 10 years ago
from Susan and Barry Hildebrandt. Juliet Brewster, daughter of Mary Kay
and David, works in the store part-time, and former owner Susan
Hildebrandt continues to work three days a week. "They couldn't get rid
of me," she told the Patch.
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Congratulations to Lookout Books,
the new literary imprint of the Department of Creative Writing at the
University of North Carolina Wilmington: its first title, Binocular Vision: New & Selected Stories by Edith Pearlman, will be reviewed on the cover of the New York Times Book Review this Sunday! It will also be reviewed in the Los Angeles Times.
Edith Pearlman, who is in her 70s, has won three O. Henry Prizes, her stories have appeared in Best American Short Stories and The Pushcart Prize,
and she has published three previous collections. She has not achieved
widespread recognition, but in the view of Lookout Books, Binocular Vision may well lead to a new focus on Pearlman.
Founded
by Emily Louise Smith and Ben George, the press seeks "emerging and
historically underrepresented voices, as well as works by established
writers overlooked by commercial houses" and aims to be "a haven for
books that matter." Lookout is the joint effort of the Publishing
Laboratory, a teaching press where students of creative writing learn
the publishing process through apprenticeship, and Ecotone, the department's literary magazine. The press will employ interns pursuing MFA degrees.
Lookout publishes trade paperback originals. Its second title is Steve Almond's story collection, God Bless America, which will appear this fall.
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In a piece headlined "Blending Online and Bricks-and-Mortar Shopping," Bookselling This Week interviewed Pete Mulvihill of Green Apple Books, San Francisco, Calif.; and Matt Norcross, McLean & Eakin Booksellers, Petoskey, Mich., about their use of QR codes.
Both booksellers have "designed shelf-talkers featuring QR codes. Customers can scan the square codes with their smartphones and go directly to the featured titles on the store’s IndieCommerce website. Once there, they can save the information or immediately buy and download the e-books."
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A glimpse of the future? Ion Audio's "venture into the book-digitizing business," the $149 Book Saver, "promises one-second color scans of both pages of a book" and is scheduled to be available in June "at places like Barnes & 
Noble, Staples, and Office Depot," according to Engadget, which cautioned that the "big problem here is that there's no automation for page turning, and worse yet, you'll need to lift the entire, somewhat fragile, scanner in order to flip to the next page."
Cnet News observed that "publishing has wrestled with piracy for years, but one of the reasons the sector hasn't been hit as hard by illegal file sharing as much as the music or film industries is that there isn't an easy way to digitize books. Scanning them is typically labor intensive.... Book publishers should know that eventually someone or some company, maybe even Ion, will streamline the process."
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Obituary notes:
Editor and publisher Ruth Cavin died earlier this week. She was 92 and had "remained active as associate publisher of Thomas Dunne Books, an imprint of St. Martin’s Press, where she was credited with having acquired and edited some 900 books in the 22 years since she was hired, at age 70," the Times wrote.
Crime writer Joe Gores, whose work was compared with Dashiell Hammett's and who wrote a sequel to The Maltese Falcon, died Monday. He was 79.
John Gross, editor of the Times Literary Supplement in London in the 1970s and a book critic for the New York Times in the 1980s, died Monday, the Times reported. He was 75.
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James Bond fans flying to Jamaica can now land at Ian Fleming International Airport, "close to the scenic retreat where the late author reportedly wrote all 14 of his books about the elegant, crafty spy," the Huffington Post reported, adding that several 007 movies, including Live and Let Die and Dr. No, were filmed near Fleming's estate.
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Boing Boing featured Tom the Dancing Bug's classix comix version--using illustrations from the first edition--of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Corrected to reflect modern sensibilities).
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The Guardian asked readers to check their literary balances with a "banking in literature" quiz.
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Noting that "2011 is quickly shaping up to also be a year of fresh books by and about beloved bygone writers," Flavorwire showcased "New Books About Old Favorites."
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Book trailer of the day: Shadowfever by Karen Marie Moning (Delacorte), which goes on sale on Tuesday.
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The American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression has moved, Bookselling This Week reported. ABFFE's new address is 19 Fulton Street, Suite 407, New York, N.Y. 10038. The organization's phone and fax numbers remain the same: 212-587-4025 and 212-587-2436, respectively.