Old Harbor Books, Sitka, Alaska, is the 250th independent bookstore to begin selling Google eBooks from its website through Google's partnership with the American Booksellers Association. In honor of the milestone, Google posted an item from Don Muller, a co-founder of Old Harbor Books, who wrote in part, "We wanted to give our customers a way to buy books from us in whatever format they want--including e-books. So whether you want to read books on your computer, tablet, smartphone or e-reader, you can now choose from hundreds of thousands of Google eBooks titles we offer."
The store promises to show people how to sign up for an account and start e-book shopping--both in person and via a video from the hilarious filmmaker-booksellers at Green Apple Books, San Francisco, Calif.
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Hotel Angeline is the title of the book written last October by 36 authors during the course of six days, an event called The Novel Live! and sponsored by Seattle7Writers that raised $10,000 for literacy programs (Shelf Awareness, October 19, 2010). The book was quickly published as an e-book by Open Road Media, which now has released a printed version ($22.99, 9781453218785). Last week the organization had a launch party at Richard Hugo House in Seattle, where the book was written. See happy videos and photos here.
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In a move that is the mirror image of what happened with Hotel Angeline, Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, which has sold 2.5 million print copies since it appeared a dozen years ago, is making its electronic debut today from Macmillan Children's Publishing. The book is also being reissued in a paperback edition from Square Fish.
Speaking of Speak, Anderson said: "A new generation of readers is discovering the story for the first time. A new generation of parents is realizing the power of the book to start conversations and strengthen their families. I am thrilled and honored that Speak will continue to help teens find their voices, and help adults understand the need to listen, when kids speak up."
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Some 15 booksellers from BookPeople, Book Woman, Blue Willow Bookshop, Katy Budget Books and Body Mind and Soul attended the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association spring meeting in Katy Budget Books in Houston, Tex., last week. Authors Ernie Cline (Ready Player One) and Christina Mandelski (The Sweetest Thing), who spent a few minutes in Cline's vintage DeLorean, met with the booksellers.
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Five young women at Knopf put their best foot forward in Lucky Magazine's June issue. You have to see "their killer style" to appreciate them fully.
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Our item yesterday about the New York Times Book Review's essay on writers who work in bookstores has elicited several reminders of bookseller-authors who weren't mentioned in the Times piece. Among them:
Suzy Staubach, manager of the general books department at the UConn Co-op, Storrs, Conn., who wrote Clay in 2005. (Thanks to Carole Horne!)
Sarah Willis manages the Lit Arts room at Loganberry Books, Shaker Heights, Ohio, and has published four novels. (Thanks to Brenda Logan!)
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Congratulations on two launches:
Richard Nash, former head of Soft Skull Press, has launched Red Lemonade, the pilot for his Cursor platform, "a web-based social publishing platform that combines traditional editorial discrimination with the wisdom of the crowd, and harnesses the shared passions of writers and readers. It allows established, emerging and aspiring writers who self-identify as interested in a given aesthetic, genre, or subculture to share their work with one another. This enables a publisher to gather writers and readers simultaneously, thereby solving each other's biggest problems, finding readers who will love their work, and finding writers to love."
Magnus Books, the new LGBT press that Don Weise launched last fall, has just posted its debut list at magnusbooks.com.
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In
1971, the Troy, Mich., Public Library (which is currently "dodging
closure") came up with a novel idea for attracting more young people to
the newly opened facility. According to Letters of Note,
children's librarian Marguerite Hart "wrote to a number of notable
people with a request: to reply with a congratulatory letter, addressed
to the children of Troy, in which the benefits of visiting such a
library were explained in some form."
The 97 respondents
included authors Isaac Asimov, Hardie Gramatky, Theodore "Dr. Seuss"
Geisel and E.B. White. All of the letters are viewable on the library's website as PDFs.
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The Guardian's
world literature tour headed to China, soliciting reader
recommendations of important literature from "the world's mightiest
totalitarian regime, which has kept a tight lid on dissent since 1989's
Tiananmen Square protests, on the basis of a vote, is acute. At the
opening of the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008, International Pen
identified 42 writers and journalists imprisoned by the regime, a
situation which appears only to have worsened since, with 10 pages of
International Pen's 2010 caselist taken up with Chinese writers and
recent uprisings across the Arab world prompting a new crackdown.
"All
the more reason to celebrate both great writers from the past and those
contemporary authors who are bravely creating fine work despite the
commercial and political difficulties which surround them."
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Bad hair days for authors. Flavorwire showcased 10 Writers' Unruly, Manly Manes,
noting: "If hair doth make the man, then the following writers stand
against the grain in these times, acting as iconoclastic reminders that
one can still be manly (perhaps even more so) with an irrepressible
hairdo. So let your hair down and enjoy the following modern scribes'
tangled tresses."
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Book trailer of the day: Seeking Sicily: A Cultural Journey through Myth and Reality in the Heart of the Mediterranean by John Keahey (Thomas Dunne Books), which will be published November 8.
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Debra Woodward has joined Candlewick Press as New England sales representative. She was formerly a sales rep with Watson & Woodward.
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All in the family. Effective Monday, May 16, Stephanie A. Hargadon joins St. Martin's Press as senior publicist. She is currently associate publicist at Macmillan Audio/Macmillan Young Listeners.