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Welcome
to the Vol. 9, No. 1 January 2011Index (scroll down for stories)
1. Manual on how to become expert cat
burglar
becomes best-seller 1. Manual on how to become expert cat burglar becomes best-seller A Japanese thief who describes himself as a gentleman cat burglar has become a best-selling author after writing a book giving tips on how to carry out burglaries. Futabasha Publishing says that a first print run of 10,000 copies of Occupation, Thief; Annual income, Yen 30 Million almost ran out in the 10 days after publication. Hajime Karasuyama, the pen name of the career burglar, claims to have developed the uncanny ability to guess where the occupant of any home will have hidden cash and valuables, and provides tips on how to gain access to a locked property and then get away without leaving any signs. He says he earns about US$350,000 (£230,000) a year from burglary.
"Once we get inside a house, us thieves have an instinct for knowing where the m Karasuyama provides details on how to pick any lock and silently use a glass cutter on a window. He reveals that placing a jeweler’s magnifying eyepiece against a door peephole reverses the view and enables him to look inside the house, while he recommends a hybrid car for going on "jobs" because they are very quiet. The publisher dismissed suggestions putting out what amounts to a manual of how to become a burglar is irresponsible. "This book is not targeted at people who might want to be a burglar but more at homeowners who want to know how they can better protect their home," Kenichi Nakazawa, the book's editor, said. (Source: Julian Ryall, Daily Telegraph, Nov. 27, 2010; reprinted in The Vancouver Sun) 2. Amazon entrepreneurs charging Kindle users for free e-books A story in the Nov. 30 Washington Post by Rob Pegoraro has opened a new can of worms for Amazon.com's self-publishing platform. Users of that platform are taking free books from Project Gutenberg and selling them at the online store for the Kindle e-reader. Amazon itself isn't repurposing the Gutenberg texts - that's being done by "publishers" using the company's self-service platform. But it is taking a cut of the proceeds from the sale. There's nothing illegal about what the self-service publishers are doing. Project Gutenberg's license agreement clearly states: "If you strip the Project Gutenberg license and all references to Project Gutenberg from the ebook, you are left with a public domain ebook. You can do anything you want with that." But some would say the practice is far from ethical. Contributors to Project Gutenberg put a lot of sweat equity into the books they upload to the site. Gutenberg contributor Linda M. Everhart started the current fuss when she complained in an e-mail in late October that Amazon was selling a title she'd contributed to Gutenberg, Arthur Robert Harding's 1906 Fox Trapping for $4. "They took the text version, stripped off the headers and footer containing the license, re-wrapped the sentences, and made the chapter titles bold," wrote Everhart, a Blairstown, Mo., trapper. She added that "their version had all my caption lines, in exactly the same place where I had put them." In follow-up messages, Fox Trapping and other Gutenberg titles appear to be sold with Amazon's standard digital-rights-management restrictions, a limit absent from Gutenberg downloads. Producing a Gutenberg text is not easy, Everhart wrote. She said she downloads a scan of the book's pages from the Internet Archive's collection, runs it through optical-character-recognition software and then corrects mistakes and strips out extraneous data before formatting the text to Gutenberg's strict guidelines. Next comes converting that text file into an HTML version with linked images that can finally be uploaded to Gutenberg. Apparently it's less work to convert that output to a Kindle Store download: Canadian Wilds, another purloined Gutenberg title, appeared on Gutenberg Oct. 30 and showed up on Amazon a day later. Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation Chief Executive Greg Newby says that many other booksellers engage in this sort of harvesting but called Amazon "the worst offender," owing to the number of suppliers it works with. Amazon spokeswoman Sarah Gelman did not deny the basic allegation in an e-mail to the Washington Post that followed a series of queries to the company's PR department: "These books were uploaded by a third party using our self-service platform. I've sent your note to the appropriate team internally." Newby noted that when Gutenberg had complained about copyrighted, non-public-domain works showing up on Amazon, the site "took immediate action." But he said the Seattle-based retailer had ignored its suggestion that it directly offer Gutenberg titles as no charge, DRM-free downloads -something Apple did in its iBooks store. (Sources: Rob Pegoraro, Washington Post, Nov. 30, 2010; John P. Mello Jr., PCWorld, Nov. 30, 2010)
3. Breaking news from the book barons
According to a story by Paul Farhi in the Dec. 10 Washington Post, Sarah
Palin's America by Heart, her new memoir based mainly on her stump
speeches, is logging disappointing sales.
Although the book briefly
hit No. 2 on the New York Times bestseller list (behind former president
George W. Bush's Decision Points), its publisher, HarperCollins, hasn't
ordered a second printing - a sign that sales are less than brisk. Palin's first
book, Going Rogue, became the second-fastest-selling political book in
history after its release in 2009. It went into a second printing three days
after its release and went on
to sell 2.2 million copies in hardcover. America by Heart: Reflections on
Family, Faith and Flag got
a more modest launch. HarperCollins's initial press run was one million copies.
Nonetheless, HarperCollins
(a unit of Ruper Murdoch’s News Corp./Fox News) says it is pleased with sales.
In 2009, Palin spent six weeks on the road promoting Going Rogue in 33
states. Her "America by Heart" tour was more modest - 16 states in 10 days. The
word within the publishing industry is that Palin is overexposed, at least in
terms of drawing readers right now… During its first week on sale (Oct.
27-Nov. 2), The Confession by John Grisham sold 70,000
e-book copies while hardcover sales were approximately 210,000, according to the
Wall Street Journal. The combined first-week sales easily
topped those of Grisham’s The Associate, published in January 2009. "The
e-book sales are astonishing,"
Grisham told the Journal. "Would anybody have thought that a year ago?
The future has arrived, and we're looking at it."… Center Street, a division
of Hachette Book Group, will publish The Tea Party Goes to Washington by
newly elected senator from the state of Kentucky and ambassador of the Tea Party
movement, Rand Paul. The book is scheduled for crash publication in February
2011, coinciding with the start of his first term. Paul is from Bowling Green,
Ky., where he has been a practicing ophthalmologist for 17 years. Katherine Ann Samon, writing for the “BedfordKatonaPatch” blog, which covers a small suburban area immediately north of New York City, recently described a visit by William Paul Young (he goes by Paul), one of the authors of The Shack. She described his presentation as “wowing” the audience with his backstory on the book.
Problem is, either her reporting was a little off, or William Young’s
presentation on the backstory was. So let’s set the record straight on this
best-selling self-published book. While The Shack is admittedly a mega-seller, it’s also a controversial work about God and suffering that’s drawn its share of criticism from theologians and those who are more certain than others of the correctness of their own spirituality. Young, the father of six, began writing the book in 2005 at the urging of his wife Kim. Originally a Canadian, Young was at the time working as a salesman and at other menial jobs in Portland, Ore., after attending Bible School there. During his daily 40-minute commute to work, Young wrote “conversations with God” in short spurts on “scrappy, yellow pieces of paper.” It took him four months to write the book. Young took the manuscript to Office Depot to make copies for Christmas presents. He made 15, passing them out to family and friends.
Soon, Young began receiving e-mails from people he didn’t know, telling him they
loved his book. His friends had given their copies to their friends, spreading
the story in an ever-widening circle. The oldest of four children, Young was born in 1955 in Alberta, Canada. but the majority of his first decade of life was spent with his missionary parents in the highlands of Netherlands New Guinea (West Papua), among the Dani, a technologically stone age tribal people. There, Young says, the tribe sexually abused him from age four. He experienced further sexual abuse at age six at a Christian missionary boarding school. Additionally, his father was "a brutal, rough disciplinarian," with "God taking on the face of my father." After Young turned 10, his family moved back to Canada. Later, as an adult, Young paid his way through Bible College in Portland working as a radio disc jockey, lifeguard, and even a stint in the oil fields in northern Canada. He completed his undergraduate degree in religion and graduated summa cum laude from Warner Pacific College. The following year, he met and married his wife Kim. At age 38, Young had an extramarital affair that almost scuttled his marriage. He spent 10 years in therapy as a result.
“I had a three-month affair with my wife’s best friend. It was either kill
myself or face my wife,” he says. “I went through her fury. She was the perfect
person for me because her anger and betrayal were so deep that she just pounded
on me until I saw how screwed up I was in my heart.”
Surprised by the popularity of the copies he had produced at Office Depot, Young
sent the book to the only author he knew, sometimes pastor Wayne Jacobsen, to
see what he thought. Jacobsen and Cummings rewrote the novel draft from Young at least four times, and began showing the draft to publishers, but all rejected it. Christian publishers found it too controversial while mainstream publishers found it “too Christian.”
“The faith-based publishers said that although they liked it, they didn’t have a
niche for it; it was too edgy and would upset their constituents,” Young says.
“The non-faith-based publishers said basically the same thing, except it was
‘too much Jesus.’” While Young is often quoted as saying the book was published for $200 or so, that’s far from accurate. Windblown spent $15,000 on producing, printing and distributing the first press run of The Shack. Around $200-$300 was spent on initial marketing – most of that for an Internet ad. The book had an initial printing of 11,000 copies when it was released in May 2007. Those copies went into Cummings’ garage in California. Windblown sold 1,000 copies within 10 days, mostly from subscribers to Jacobsen and Cummings’ popular podcast “The God Journey.” Some copies were sold through a hastily thrown up Web site.
In four months, the entrepreneurs had sold the entire 11,000-book print run.
They reprinted, and sold 22,000 more in 60 days, and 33,000 more in 30 days,
almost all through viral word of mouth. Soon, The Shack appeared at No. 1
on The New York Times bestseller list, where it remained for many weeks. That same month, Hachette Book Group took over distribution. The book had become so popular it had outstripped Windblown’s limited production and distribution capabilities.
For those unfamiliar with it, the book portrays God as a gently teasing, overweight African-American woman named "Papa," Jesus Christ in the form of an approachable, modern-day Jewish carpenter and the Holy Spirit as a transparent, Asian fairy-like sylph. When Young was interviewed by Pat Robertson on CBN’s “The 700 Club,” his book was introduced as follows: “Mackenzie Allen Philips' youngest daughter, Missy, had been abducted during a family vacation and evidence that she may have been brutally murdered is found in an abandoned shack deep in the Oregon wilderness. Four years later, in the midst of his great sadness, Mack receives a suspicious note, apparently from God, inviting him back to that shack for a weekend. Against his better judgment, he arrives at the shack on a wintry afternoon and walks back into his darkest nightmare. What he finds there will change Mack's world forever. In a world where religion seems to grow increasingly irrelevant, The Shack wrestles with the timeless question, ‘Where is God in a world so filled with unspeakable pain?’” Young says that 'the shack' in the book is a metaphor, and the story is like a parable. “It's a metaphor for that place where we get stuck or damaged, or where we've made really bad choices, or where we've piled up a lot of stuff in our lives that we don't want to go back to and deal with,” he says. "Mack was in the shack for one weekend, which represented 11 years of my life." A central theme of the book is everyone is forgiven and saved, a theological viewpoint described as “universalism.” That’s one of the themes that upset more conventional theologians. But Young sticks by his beliefs. He offers an anecdote about a talk he gave at a women's prison in Edmonton, Alberta. "An inmate asked me, 'Do you really think Papa (God) is fond of me?' I said, 'She's especially fond of you.' She said, 'That's all I need to hear.' That's all anyone needs to hear." While it is Young’s name that appears on the book as its author, exactly who wrote the book is one of the central questions in a lawsuit pitting Jacobsen and Cummings against Young, with distributor Hachette caught in the middle.
In November 2009, Young filed suit against his former partners, Jacobsen and
Cummings of Windblown Media, and Hachette Book Group has been sucked unwillingly
into the litigation. Since then, the original suit has evolved into a series of
lawsuits involving accusations over improper accounting practices, millions of
dollars in missing royalties, contract breaches and copyright disputes.
Hachette Book Group got involved in May 2008. It cut a deal with Windblown Media
to market and distribute the book. In the two years since, The Shack has
become a publishing phenomenon worldwide, and the biggest Christian publishing
sensation in decades. On May 14, 2008, Windblown Media and Hachette entered into a separate agreement by which Young, Jacobsen and Cummings would each receive one-sixth of net profits, with Hachette taking the rest. Young alleged that Windblown and Hachette got "more and more creative" in determining his royalties, including an attempt to exclude nearly 40 percent of sales by designating them "high discount sales," such as those earned from book clubs or giveaway programs.
Last November, after a royalty audit, Young filed suit in a Ventura County,
Calif., state court against Windblown Media and Hachette Book Group, alleging
that "accounting improprieties have deprived" him "of over $8 million in
proceeds" of sales through December 2008 alone. Young calculates that through
the end of 2008, The Shack "had generated over $36 million in profits"
for the publishers.
The contract between Young and Windblown, attached to the lawsuit, has standard
high-discount language ("notwithstanding the above royalties for copies sold at
a discount of 55% or greater off the retailer price, premiums, and copies sold
as a result of the Publisher's direct marketing programs, shall be 10% of net
sales revenue for hardcover editions and 5% for all other editions, e.g. large
print"). Hachette has filed their own complaint with a California Federal court, and gave just under $1 million for the quarter ending March 31 to the court's clerk to hold. They noted in their suit that "as a result of disputes that have arisen concerning the allocation of royalties and certain other proceeds from the sales of the book, Hachette requires the guidance of this Court to determine how much of these funds should be paid to Windblown and how much should be paid to Jacobsen, Cummings and Young." Young says that The Shack’s theme of hitting bottom and recovering seems tailor-made for a movie. He is hopeful that the book will be made into a movie using his script. (Sources: Katherine Ann Samon, Bedford-KatonahPatch, November 2010; Jordan E. Rosenfeld, “William P. Young’s Cinderella Story, Writers Digest, Jan. 13, 2009; Elizabeth Thai, “Publishing Phenom;” Motoko Rich, “Christian Novel Is Surprise Best Seller,” The New York Times, June 24, 2008; Transcript, William Young, A Look Inside ‘The Shack,’ The 700 Club, CBN.com; Sarah Weinman, “The flak over ‘The Shack,’” Los Angeles Times, July 13, 2010; “Shack” Author Embroiled in Lawsuit While Writing Screenplay, commentary by Susan Brinkman, OCDS, staff journalist)
5. ‘Wimpy Kid’ initial sales are double those of Bush’s ‘Decision Points’ Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Ugly Truth, the fifth in his bestselling series, sold over 375,000 copies in its first day on sale according to publisher Abrams.
In its first two weeks on sale, former president Bush's memoir sold 1,125,000 copies and debuted atop the Times hardcover non-fiction list, according to Crown Publishing Group. The book also spent its first 21 days at the No. 1 spot on Amazon.com's bestseller list, which included pre-orders from the days before the book went on sale. The sales included 135,000 e-book downloads, about 12 percent of the total. The book's performance has been helped by a media blitz that has included an appearance by the ex-president on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and a one-on-one interview with “Today” show host Matt Lauer. According to Nielsen BookScan, which tracks about 75 percent of the market but does not cover Sam's Club or Wal-Mart, the book sold 697,000 copies in its first two weeks. That put it ahead of Sarah Palin's 2009 blockbuster Going Rogue, which sold 667,000 copies in its first two weeks. Bush also bested Hillary Clinton, whose 2003 book Living History sold 608,000 copies in its first two weeks. Bill Clinton's 2004 memoir My Life, sold 764,000 copies in its first two weeks.
6.
News about bookstores, publishing, marketing and promotion Winners of Canada’s Scotiabank Giller Prize can expect to sell about 75,000 additional hardcover copies of their books - in a country with one-tenth the population of the United States. The 2010 winner is Johanna Skibsrud for The Sentimentalist. But good luck to shoppers looking for the book, which is partly based on her father’s experiences as a soldier in Vietnam. At the time it was announced that she was a contender for this year’s prize, her publisher, Gaspereau Press, had made an initial print run of less than 800 copies which quickly sold out. When it was announced that she had won the prize, Gaspereau rushed a second printing of 2,300 copies. 7. 'A Million Little Pieces' author James Frye under fire for latest project Author James Frey was chastised by Winfrey when she learned his multi-million selling 2003 book, A Million Little Pieces, which she had endorsed and helped to sell, was not a true autobiography. After publishing two less than stellar follow-ups, Frey has founded Full Fathom Five, a workshop through which budding authors can use his access to shakers and movers in the publishing industry to get their work before influential figures. In return for a percentage of eventual royalties, the authors must sign contracts with Frey under which they are paid only an initial $250 and then another $250 on completion of the full book. They are promised 40 per cent of revenues if they came up with the initial idea, and 30 per cent if they develop a story created by Frey. Authors are often banned from taking credit, and must sign secrecy deals, according to Suzanne Mozes, who wrote in New York magazine about her aborted negotiations with Frey. The project's first high-profile success, I Am Number Four, a science-fiction thriller, is being developed into a $60-million-budget film by Steven Spielberg, and will be released in February. However its author, Jobie Hughes, had to develop Frey's original idea under a pseudonym, Pittacus Lore, and could be heavily fined if he speaks about his involvement, Mozes claims. After several disputes, Hughes stopped working with Frey and the pair have agreed to a settlement. Almost 30 other writers are thought to be involved with Full Fathom Five. Conrad Rippy, a publishing attorney, described the deal offered to Mozes as "a collaboration agreement without there being any collaboration" and told New York he had never seen a contract like it. In return for full control, the deal offered "40 percent of some amount you can't verify - there's no audit provision - and after the deduction of a whole bunch of expenses," Rippy said. Frey has said his contracts are competitive and authors are credited where appropriate. One of his authors, Elizabeth Topp, who is producing a series about a female travel writer, dismissed claims of unfairness. "I look forward to the day that I'm irritated that he's making millions and millions and I'm only making millions," she told the Wall Street Journal. I Am Number Four has already been filmed by Michael Bay and DJ Caruso. Author "Pitticus Lore" is a fictional alien elder who enjoys describing the sexual cravings of teenagers. The books are tailored to Hollywood - in the case of I Am Number Four, the book was rewritten to match some decisions that were made on the film, and Frey created a new emblem for the series, a crop circle, after movie producers said they wanted something along the lines of Harry Potter's lightning bolt to put on marketing materials. Frey reportedly has 27 writers working on a total of 28 series. 8. PR rep for drug industry tells Michael Moore he’s sorry for smear campaign Wendell Potter, who was the head of corporate communications for health insurance giant CIGNA when Academy Award-winning filmmaker Michael Moore released “Sicko” in 2007, has apologized for the industry smear campaign directed at Moore. Potter left CIGNA in 2008 and has since become the industry’s most prominent whistleblower. Moore accepted his apology, but acknowledged to Potter that, “I think we both know this is much larger then what was done to me or in the movie.” Moore said that the industry was willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to “stop a movie” because they were afraid it “could trigger a populist uprising against,” what he called, a “sick system that will allow companies to profit off of us when we fall ill.” When Moore announced he would be making a documentary about the American healthcare system in 2004, it put the health insurance industry on high alert. One person who went on the offensive was Potter “We felt that this movie would have such an impact that it would really pave the way for legislation to be passed that could be very detrimental to the insurance industry. So it was very important for the insurers to attack this movie as fiercely as possible,” Potter has since said. “We developed a very, very sophisticated communications campaign to make sure that people saw him (Moore) as a Marxist, as a socialist, and that he was going to be destroying the American Dream.” Potter now predicts that, instead of repealing the new health care law passed during the Obama administration, Republicans will ultimately settle for gutting the law of its provisions that protect consumers. That’s because the insurance industry is a major beneficiary of healthcare reform and they’re also a major contributor to Republican campaigns.
Potter spent two decades as a spokesman for two of the nation’s largest health
insurers, Humana and CIGNA. He quit and made national headlines in June 2009
when he testified on Capitol Hill about the profit In Potter’s new book, Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans, he discusses how the healthcare industry attacked Moore’s film and the heathcare reform movement. Potter is now a senior fellow on health care for the Center for Media and Democracy. Before an appearance by Potter and Moore on “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” on MSNBC, Potter said he would like to offer an apology to both Moore and the health insurance industry. “I need to apologize to Moore for the role I played in the insurance industry's public relations attack campaign again him and ‘Sicko,’ which was about the increasingly unfair and dysfunctional U.S. health care system,” Potter said. “And I need to apologize to health insurers for failing to note in my new book, Deadly Spin, that the front group they used to attack Moore and ‘Sicko’ - Health Care America - was originally a front group for drug companies. APCO Worldwide, the PR firm that operated the front group for insurers during the summer of 2007, was outraged - outraged, I tell you - that I wrote in the book that the raison d'être for Health Care America was to disseminate the insurance industry's talking points as part of a multi-pronged, fear-mongering campaign against Moore and his movie. An APCO executive told a reporter who had reviewed the book that I was guilty of one of the deceptive PR tactics I condemned: the selective disclosure of information to manipulate public opinion.” According to Potter, the health insurance industry plowed $86.2 million into drumming up opposition to the health care reform bill in 2009. Big insurers UnitedHealth Group, CIGNA Corp. and others funneled the money to America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the industry's lobbying group, which in turn gave it to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which acted as a front group for big industries to influence elections. The Chamber used the money to buy advertisements, conduct polling and put on Astroturf events aimed at ginning up public opposition to the bill, according to Chamber spokesman Tom Collamore. Before he worked for the Chamber, Collamore was vice president of Philip Morris Corporate Affairs, the department responsible for implementing programs aimed at thwarting efforts to reduce smoking. The amount the insurers spent was more than AHIP's entire budget from 2008, and accounted for 40 percent of the Chamber's 2009 spending. The Chamber disclosed the funding in annual tax records required by the U.S. government.
9. UK author says publishers have lost appetite for serious biographies Victoria Glendinning, author of biographies of Edith Sitwell and Anthony Trollope, is being forced to self-finance the research for her next work as a result of the shrinking market for serious biography.
"Getting an advance is very, very hard if you want to do something a bit
different to what you've done before," said Glendinning, who is shortly to set
off on a self-financed trip to southeast Asia to research a major new work on
the life of statesman and adventurer Sir Stamford Raffles, best known now as the
founder of Singapore. "I'm not commissioned. But I'm feeling quite confident somehow," she added. "I will write 50 pages and try to sell it." Jeremy Lewis, author of studies of Graham Greene and Cyril Connolly, suspects that the publishing industry is undergoing a backlash after a long spate of huge advances for books that were always unlikely to make much money. "Writing a biography is time-consuming and labor-intensive and is getting increasingly difficult, but it will be sad if the only people who can afford to write them are salaried dons," said the writer, who is embarking on a biography of David Astor, a former editor of the Observer, for Jonathan Cape. "I have a fifth of the £50,000 I got for my book on Connolly in 1992, but I'm not complaining. The publisher in me disapproved of those absurd advances, anyway… publishers were behaving stupidly." Editors tried to push him towards a better-known figure, such as Arthur Conan Doyle, but in a piece for the Oldie magazine he argues there is no need for successive studies of the same few literary figures. "Sixty years ago Jonathan Cape told Norman Lewis that he couldn't go wrong with a life of Captain Cook; his modern equivalents seem obsessed by Hitler, Churchill and Conan Doyle, but take a dim view of less familiar names," he writes. Glendinning came up against the same prejudice: "This new book will be a biography of a fascinating man… in my opinion, this is the book of my life. I thought publishers would all be thrilled. But no. They want (me) to do something exactly the same as before." She was asked, instead of Raffles, if she would write about the Brontë sisters: "I nearly fell off my chair. It is playing safe to a ridiculous level. The Brontës have been so well written about. They don't need another book and I cannot go on that tragic trip with them again." In the late 1980s, Michael Holroyd earned a reported advance of more than £600,000 from Random House for a four-volume study of George Bernard Shaw. Large advances also went to Peter Ackroyd for his biography of Dickens and more recently to Adam Sisman, whom Weidenfeld paid around £100,000 to write his biography of Hugh Trevor-Roper. Editor Clara Farmer, who works on non-fiction titles at Chatto & Windus, admits advances have shrunk, but believes publishers have become more discerning. "In general, it has always been very rare for a writer to make a living, but biography is a longer road than others because of the research," she said. (Source: Vanessa Thorpe, arts and media correspondent, The Observer, Nov. 14, 2010) 10. Author recognition: John Grisham, 250 million copies in print With more than 250 million copies of his books published in 29 languages, John Grisham is a publishing phenomenon. His first novel, A Time to Kill, appeared in 1989 after being rejected by 28 publishers. In 1991 he hit the literary jackpot with the publication of The Firm, the story of a young lawyer who accepts a job too good to be true. It spent 47 weeks on the New York Times bestsellers list, sold seven million copies and was turned into a successful Sidney Pollack film starring Tom Cruise.
Grisham's investigation exposed the police and the prosecutor in the case, who used forced confessions, unreliable witnesses and flimsy evidence to obtain their conviction. His latest novel, The Confession, fictionalizes many of the key episodes of the earlier nonfiction book. In The Confession, Reverend Keith Schroder is a 35-year-old Lutheran minister in Topeka, Kansas, living a fulfilling and relatively uncomplicated life. Then Travis Boyette, a convicted sex offender, walks into his office and confesses to murder. He says that in 1998 he abducted, raped and killed a popular high school cheerleader in Texas and buried her body in a different state. He has an inoperable and fast-growing brain tumor and wants to clean the slate before he dies. Even more shocking is the fact that, as he tells Rev. Schroder, an innocent man, a black teenager from the girl's home town, was charged with the murder, convicted and is due to be executed in just four days. Troubled by Boyette's confession, Schroder delves into the murder case and becomes convinced he has to do something to try to save the young man's life. 11. How bad is it – and what is the book business doing to cope? Amazon plans to hire more than 15,500 people to fill temporary jobs at shipping centers nationwide during holidays... September bookstore sales fell 7.1 percent, to $1.5 billion, compared to September 2009, according to preliminary estimates from the Census Bureau. For the year to date, total bookstore sales have slipped 2.6 percent, to $12.3 billion… Books-A-Million reported sales for the third quarter of $104.8 million, down 5.5 percent overall, with same-store sales down 5.8 percent. Their net loss rose to $1.7 million, $100,000 larger than this time a year ago. Like other book retailers, they are reporting weakness in hardcovers (whether due to the economy, ebooks, or both) and strength in bargain books. CEO Clyde Anderson said in the release, "Comparable store sales for the third quarter were disappointing as we faced a tough comparison to last year's bestseller lineup and a cost conscious consumer buying fewer hardcover books. We did see continued positive trends in bargain books and gifts."… Sales of books at Hastings stores open at least a year fell 6.2 percent in the third quarter 2010, which included a 9.3 percent drop in the sale of new books but a 7.8 percent increase in the sale of used and value books. Total revenues at Hastings Entertainment in the third quarter ended Oct. 31 were $112.284 million, down just $53,000 from the same quarter last year. The net loss during the quarter was $3.1 million, a slight improvement on the net loss of $3.4 million in the same period a year ago. Total revenues at stores open at least a year rose 1.3 percent. 12. AAP sales: E-books 8.7 percent of trade print sales for year to date Publishers’ book sales tracked by the Association of American Publishers (AAP) for the month of October decreased by 0.9 percent on the prior year to $721 million but were up by 3.4 percent for the year to date. In the children’s book category, Hardcover Children’s/YA sales showed an increase of 13.9 percent over October of last year with sales of $100 million; however, year-to-date sales decreased by 11.1 percent. Children’s/YA Paperback sales were down by 3.3 percent in October with sales totaling $50.9 million; sales fell 6.5 percent for the year to date. The Adult Hardcover category was down 6.5 percent in October with sales of $242.9 million, and sales for the year-to-date down by 7.7 percent. Adult Paperback sales decreased 11.8 percent for the month ($115 million) revealing no change for the year to date. Adult Mass Market sales decreased 1.1 percent for October with sales totaling $60.2 million; sales were down by 14.3 percent year to date. E-book sales from participating reporting publishers continued to grow, with an 112.4 percent increase over October 2009 ($40.7 million) compared to $19.2 million in October 2009. January-October 2010 year-to-date e-book sales are up 171.3 percent reaching $345.3 million compared to 127.3 million from January-October 2009. Downloaded Audio Books also saw an increase of 20.7 percent over last year, with sales of $6.3 million this October; and the category was also up 38.6 percent year-to-date. Physical Audio Book sales decreased 20.5 percent in October with sales totaling $14.7 million; sales for the year to date are down 13.5 percent. Religious Books were down 4.1 percent for the month with sales totaling $57.5 million, and sales were down by 0.7 percent for the year to date. Sales of University Press Hardcover books decreased 15.6 percent in October to $4.4 million; sales increased by 1.9 percent year-to-date. University Press Paperback sales decreased 13.2 percent for the month with sales totaling $3.0 million, with sales up 4.1 percent for the year. Sales of Professional books decreased 6.1 percent to $44.8 million and were up by 8.4 percent for the year to date. Higher Education publishing sales increased 12.0 percent for the month ($22.5 million) and increased 10.6 percent for the year. Finally, the K-12 El-Hi (elementary/high school) category posted total net sales of $154.3 million in October, down 10.8 percent over the prior year, and year-to-date sales of $3.3 billion, a 3.8 percent increase over 2009.
13. The publishing revolution: News of e-books and other new media
Wondering how to sign an e-book? Autography LLC of St. Petersburg, Fla., has a
patent-pending method for inserting an autograph or other salutation into an
ebook.
The personalization can take place at the time of purchase or any time
afterwards, including after secondary (used) sales. According to an article by
Paul Biba in TeleRead, authors can also use Autography to give away
signed sample chapters to introduce themselves to new readers who later purchase
the full volume at their convenience. The now full copy e-book retains the
author’s salutation (replacing the sample chapters) without the need for Digital
Rights Management (DRM) software. Autography also provides a permanent archive
of salutations. In the event a consumer’s eReader device is lost, stolen, or
switched with another brand the autograph is quickly retrieved and replaced at
no cost… Forrester 14. Google to tilt with Amazon for digital book market Google in December opened an e-book store that offers titles in formats compatible with Web browsers, Apple and Android mobile devices and most other e-book readers - but not Amazon's line. The big difference is that Google books will be stored in “the cloud” rather than downloaded to individual e-book readers. That means an individual’s books can be accessed by a wide variety of devices - android phones, e-book readers and computers. Google eBooks (which the company referred to as Google Editions during its development) will stock more than three million books. Most will be free, public-domain titles, but that inventory will include "hundreds of thousands of books you can pay money for," the company's director of engineering, James Crawford, said in a telephone interview on Dec. 3. Users will be able to browse, buy and read titles through a standard Web browser at books.google.com/ebooks or through new software for the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch and for devices that run Google's Android operating system. They can also read Google e-book downloads on devices that support Adobe's "digital rights management" (DRM) software - a requirement that Amazon's Kindle devices don't meet but that dozens of less popular devices, including Sony's Reader series and Barnes & Noble's Nook models, do. Most large publishers will be able to set their own prices. Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken and George W. Bush's Decision Points go for $9.99 each, the same as at Amazon's Kindle Store. Amanda Edmonds, director of strategic partnerships for Google's e-books store, said most such publishers can also apply existing publishing contracts. Google e-book publishers - about 4,000 at the start - will be able to opt out of DRM on individual titles or on everything they sell, a slightly more liberal approach than that of other large e-book stores. Most mainstream publishers are expected to do the "safe," conservative thing and limit the value of purchases with DRM-enforced restrictions. Allowing reading over the Web - what Crawford called "the philosophy we've taken of ‘buy everywhere, read everywhere’" - also sets this venture apart. He said Google's Web-based reader application will be able to show a book's original fonts and graphics, but it won't support offline reading at the start. Other promised features didn't make the cut for the launch. The company held up support for copy-and-paste and printing, for example, after too many publishers balked. Highlighting and annotation features won't happen until later. The same goes for text-to-speech capabilities that would allow Google's reader programs to read a book aloud. Google's reader applications, Web and otherwise, will sync the reader’s progress across devices and platforms. Its book format, unlike that of Amazon's, will feature consistent page numbers. Google's iOS offers fewer features than Apple apps. The Android program offers fewer font choices (four, compared with seven) than the iPad and iPhone apps and - of all the things for Google to leave out - lacked the iOS release's search function. 15. ‘New York Times’ to begin publishing e-book best-seller lists The New York Times has announced that starting early in 2011 it will begin publishing best-seller lists of fiction and non-fiction electronic books. The newspaper said the e-book lists will be compiled from weekly data from publishers, chain bookstores, independent booksellers and online retailers. The move by the Times recognizes the growing popularity of digital books available through such devices as Amazon's Kindle and Apple's iPad. "The vibrant growth of digital publishing has created a need for an impartial, reliable source for tracking and reporting the top-selling e-books across the country," said Janet Elder, editor of News Surveys for the Times. Elder, in an interview with the Times, said "It was clear that e-books were taking a greater and greater share of total sales, and we wanted to be able to tell our readers which titles were selling and how they fit together with print sales," she said. The Times said an independent third party, RoyaltyShare Inc., will be used to help validate e-book sales data. 16. Aptara survey finds e-reader compatibility biggest ebook problem With eBook sales skyrocketing, why aren’t more publishers profiting from them? To find out, Aptara surveyed more than 600 trade, professional and educational publishers this summer. Key findings from the survey of book publishers include:
Click to download the complete results and analysis of all 19 survey questions:
17. Stephen King reports financial success publishing ‘Ur’ for Kindle For some writers, self-publishing e-books on Kindle can be lucrative. Best-selling author Stephen King recently told the Wall Street Journal he's netted $80,000 from sales of his novella Ur, which he wrote in just three days and released solely on Amazon's Kindle platform. With more than 700,000 e-book offerings, Amazon has close to 80 percent of the paid e-book market. 18. Consumer Reports rates ereaders – Kindle wins top honors
Consumer
Reports has released its latest
survey of e-readers, with the Kindle once again at the top. Consumer Reports recommended buying the iPad for e-books only if consumers were willing to compromise to get a multifunction device.” Consumer Reports gave top ratings to the 3G Kindle, which costs $189. “It’s the best reader we’ve ever tested,” said Paul Reynolds, a tester with CR. “The type is crisp and easy to read. The battery life is outstanding, as is the speed of the page turns.” But you can save money buying the $139 Kindle, which is identical to the 3G except you can only download content via Wi-Fi. Amazon Kindle forum regular “Fool for Books” points out that many customers have had to upgrade their $139 WiFi-only models almost immediately because they had not understood that in order to use “wireless WiFi” in the home when one doesn’t have the 3G cellular wireless feature (which all past Kindles have had), they had to have set up a WiFi network in their home - which itself also brings expenses, while the top model with 3G cellphone-type wireless carries no additional costs for even the added feature of looking up info on the web, in about 61 countries) from almost anymore. Other e-readers tested, along with their scores: Barnes & Noble nook 3G + Wi-Fi – 56: Though among the more challenging devices to use, due in part to its dual screens, it’s also among the highest-scoring models that allow e-book rentals from public libraries, a potential cost-saver. Barnes & Noble nook Wi-Fi – 53: Same description as for the 3G-included model above.
Other e-reader scores in descending order (The new Sonys were "In testing"): The Kindles are the only ones with full “Excellent” ratings for Readability. For Navigation, they share that with the Pan Digital Novel. (Source: Andrys Basten’s A Kindle World blog, republished in TeleRead under Creative Commons license). 19. Amazon to allow Kindle book reading from Web browsers Amazon.com has announced a new service to be introduced in 2011 that will let Kindle customers read their e-books from Web browsers.
Amazon made the announcement at an event held by new e-book rival Google for its
Chrome operating system. IDW Publishing and HBO announced in a press release that actor and "Lucid" creator Michael McMillian, who stars on "True Blood" as the nefarious Reverend Steve Newlin, is lending his talents as a co-writer to the television-based comic book series. He'll co-author the second arc of "True Blood" alongside writer Marc Andreyko, with Joe Corroney handling art . According to the press release, McMillian and Andreyko's "True Blood" comic centers on freshly turned vampire Jessica Hamby as she's exposed to a contaminated bottle of Tru Blood that makes her go berserk. Sookie and Bill are tasked with figuring out who or what is behind the bad Blood.
21. Amazon flap may have sparked sales of pedophilia book It’s already well known that Amazon.com bowed to public outrage on Nov. 11, removing a controversial self-published eBook entitled A Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure that triggered a groundswell of protest on social networks. The day before, Amazon defended selling the book, saying it was not in the business of censoring titles that may be objectionable. But before the book was pulled, it was propelled to the top 100 rankings of paid Kindle titles on Amazon.com. Less than 24 hours earlier, the virtually unknown digital book ranked below 157,000 on Amazon. So the controversy may have actually spurred sales of book, which was sold only on the Kindle platform. Amazon doesn't disclose precisely how its book rankings relate to actual sales. But publishing industry observers say the extraordinary move higher in Amazon ranking meant people were buying the title, even as thousands protested Amazon for selling it. Selling a large number of books in an hour can propel a title into the top-100. (Sources: numerous stories in mass media, with special thanks to one by CNBC Reporter’s Bertha Combs on Nov. 12, 2010) 22. Amazon providing authors with Nielsen BookScan data Amazon has begun letting authors enrolled in their "Author Central" program such as FiledBy for Amazon access to some Nielsen BookScan sales data for their own books. The offer is a major inducement for authors not already enrolled to sign up for Author Central.
The Amazon data show the most recent four weeks of sales as tracked by Nielsen
on a week-by-week basis. The data also provide geographical breakdowns, showing
the same limited data set, according to local DMA markets. Amazon is not providing authors any data on the site's own book, or ebook, sales. 23. News about self-publishing and vanity presses
According to Mark Coker of Smashwords, quoted in an article by Paul Biba at
TeleRead, “We’ve renegotiated our
ebook distribution agreements with Barnes & Noble, Sony and Kobo… Our 10,000+
Smashwords authors and publishers now determine their ebook prices at retail. No
more discounting. The move also allows us to increase the royalty rates we pay
authors and publishers to 60 percent (of) retail price across the board. Some
Smashwords statistics: Total # of authors & publishers using the Smashwords
platform, 10,970; Original ebook titles published at Smashwords (no public
domain), December 2, 2010: 25,813 (On track to end year at 28,500+); New
releases in the last 30 days, 2,900. Current Smashwords retail partners include
B&N, Apple iBookstore, Sony, Kobo and the Diesel
eBookstore, as well as mobile apps such as Stanza and Aldiko. The Investment Answer became an instant hit after an article about it appeared in The New York Times. Murray has been diagnosed with brain cancer. Financial terms were not disclosed, but two publishing executives with knowledge of negotiations said bidding had reached at least $1 million.
25. Inside Audubon's Birds, the world's 'most expensive' book
A rare copy of what is billed as the world's most expensive book
was sold at auction in London on Dec. 7.
John James Audubon's Birds of America was the natural history publishing
sensation of the 19th century. The book was valued at between £4 and £6 million
prior to the auction, and was being sold as part of a collection from the estate
of the second Baron Hesketh. In an unexpected bidding war that lasted for only
four minutes, the original copy of Birds of America sold for $11.5
million, according to the Wall Street Journal. The auction was won by
Michael Tollemache, a London fine arts enthusiast and birder. 26. Gordon wins National Book Award for ‘Lord of Misrule’
"I am totally unprepared and I am totally surprised," Jaimy Gordon said as she
accepted the National Book Award for Fiction for Lord of Misrule.
Patti Smith accepted the nonfiction award for the memoir Just Kids (Ecco), while Terrance Hayes won the poetry award for his poetry collection, Lighthead, from Penguin.
Kathryn Erskine’s Mockingbird (Philomel) won in the young people's
literature category. 27. News of chicanery, dishonesty and tort-feasing in the book business A New York appeals court on Nov. 4 reinstated Amazon's and Overstock's 2008 lawsuit claiming a state law forcing them to collect sales taxes was unconstitutional. CNET reported that the court ruled 5-0 that "the dismissal of the entire complaint was premature" and that the lawsuit should continue. Amazon has been collecting sales taxes on shipments to customers in New York while the case is under way. The decision "is anything but a complete victory for the Internet retailers, however," according to CNET, which noted "the judges ruled that, in at least some cases, the state law can be constitutional. That leaves the retailers' other arguments - which are separate and still in play - that the statute remains unconstitutional as applied to the Internet and their businesses. 28. China’s Taobao.com apologizes for selling 50,000 pirated e-book titles It is rare for a Chinese e-commerce website to apologize for what it sells in China. However, Taohua.com, a website that sells digital content in China, has apologized for selling pirated e-books. The homepage of Taohua.com featured a statement saying that the company has removed 50,231 pirated e-books from its online offerings. Fearing the increase of pirated digital content, few Chinese publishers are willing to cooperate with technology companies to sell their e-books online. Although iPad or other Kindle-like e-readers are now popular in China, few consumers are in the habit of buying e-books online. Pirated versions of most best-selling books in China are available online as pirated e-book editions, even via mainstream portals like Baidu.com and Sina.com. According to a press release, Taohua.com, launched in June, is a joint venture between Taobao.com and Washu Media Internet Ltd.. Taohua.com (www.taohua.com) is China’s first comprehensive digital products platform offering single-stop sharing and purchase of video, e-books, music and other digital entertainment and educational products,” according to one of the company’s recent news releases. As a subsidiary of trade giant Alibaba group, Taobao is eBay’s rival in China at present. Taobao, based in Hangzhou, near Shanghai, is ranked number one among the online companies providing B2C service in the country. Few people knew of Taohua’s existence prior to several best-selling authors and their publishers condemning it for selling pirated content online. Despite the Taobao announcement, many pirated e-books were still available on the site. Thanks to Michael von Glahn for the link. 29. China publishers ‘mistakenly’ translate erotic Grimm fairy tales Chinese publishers have pulled a collection of Brothers Grimm fairy tales from children's shelves in book stores after mistakenly translating a pornographic Japanese reinterpretation of the tales.
"We couldn't find the original German edition of Grimm's Fairy Tales, so we took Japanese editions as our references and translated those," a China Media Time official surnamed Yuan was quoted as saying. These included a version of the classic Snow White tale in which the heroine has sexual relations with her father and the seven dwarves, the newspaper said. After she dies, a necrophiliac prince falls in love with her body. "The book was not supposed to be read by children, but it was put on the children's literature shelf, so we asked to pull it," Yuan said, adding book stores were told to send back the edition on Dec. 2. The new Chinese translation listed only the Brothers Grimm as authors and Yuan said the process was "complicated" when asked to confirm which version had been used, the report said. (Source: AFP) 30. HarperCollins sues Gawker Media over Palin book excerpts
The publisher of Sarah Palin's America By Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith
and Flag filed a lawsuit against Gawker Media on Nov. 19 for leaking pages
of the book before its Nov. 23 release.
Federal District Court Judge Thomas Griesa, in an unusually weekend action on
Nov. 20, convened a hearing and issued a temporary restraining order under which
Gawker was "restrained and enjoined from continuing to distribute, publish or
otherwise transmit pages" of Palin's book.
Gawker replaced the pages with a brief article entitled "Sarah Palin Is Mad at
Us for Leaking Pages From Her Book," and defended its posting as covered under
the fair use doctrine of copyright law. Crum declined to comment on whether there was a financial settlement. “HarperCollins is gratified that it was able to resolve the dispute in this way,” Crum said in the news release. “HarperCollins does welcome public commentary on its books, so long as any book content is utilized in a manner that is consistent with the law.” Remy Stern, editor in chief of Gawker, said in an e-mail about the settlement: “HarperCollins’ decision to file suit against us and seek a temporary restraining order generated a good deal of press for Ms. Palin’s book in advance of its publication. Now that the book is out and destined to appear on the best-seller list, we’re pleased that HarperCollins proposed settling this case as is, thus avoiding lengthy litigation for both sides.” Palin began her book tour on Nov. 23 in Phoenix with a signing at a Barnes & Noble store, to be followed by appearances in 15 more cities in the next 10 days, including Des Moines and Houston. The initial print run for the book was one million copies. In a precedent-setting 1985 case that parallels HarperCollins v. Gawker, Harper & Row, predecessor of HarperCollins, prevailed over the Nation, which argued fair use when it published excerpts from former President Gerald Ford's memoirs prior to their publication. In that case [Harper & Row Publishers, Inc. v. Nation Enterprises, 471 U.S. 539, (1985)], which went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, the Nation only published about 400 words in quotes from the book. In Harper & Row v. Nation Enterprises, Harpers had sold the exclusive right to publish excerpts of the book to Time magazine, but the leak scooped Time. Time then backed out of its deal with Harper. The Nation unsuccessfully asserted the fair use doctrine as an affirmative defense to copyright infringement. Harper said in a statement that before filing the lawsuit suit it "sent a cease and desist letter to Gawker, which was ignored." The company said, "We believe that the reprinting of pages from Gov. Palin's book without permission constitutes a blatant infringement of copyright.... Accordingly, HarperCollins has filed a lawsuit in federal court in New York to stop the infringement and to protect our legal rights in the content of the book." Gawker was not the first site to publish excerpts from the book, which has been billed as a tribute to American values. If Gawker Media had wanted to avoid a legal dispute over publishing leaked pages from Palin’s new book, it could have done what media outlets have been doing for a long time when copies of an unreleased book or article have fallen into their hands: paraphrase and use direct quotations sparingly. The Associated Press was one of the organizations that bought a copy of the new Palin book ahead of its Nov. 23 release date and published excerpts.
The Washington Post also obtained a copy in advance of release and
reviewed the book, saying "Take a Sarah Palin stump speech, expand it to 272
pages, and you've pretty much summed up America By Heart. There's a lot
about faith and flag, not nearly enough about the Palin family." 31. Foundation sues Ray Charles's son for photo, lyrics use in book The Ray Charles Foundation is suing the late singer's son for publishing the recently released book You Don't Know Me: Reflections of My Father, Ray Charles. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles against Ray Charles Robinson Jr. and publisher Random House. According to the complaint, the son of the deceased singer is being sued because he put a photo of his own father on the cover of his book, and also included some of his father's lyrics in the book. The photo was allegedly taken by an employee of Charles in 1965. The Foundation claims that the photo was a "work made for hire" and that it owns the copyright on the photo. It says it has sustained and will continue to sustain damage because the photo was published without permission. The Foundation also alleges that the son included lyrics from “I Got A Woman, Hallelujah I Love Her So” and “What Kind of Man Are You?” in the book. The foundation wants US$150,000 per infringement. The Ray Charles Foundation was set up by the singer in 1986 to provide financial support for hearing disorders. 32. George W. Bush among 350 authors who spoke at Miami Book Fair
One of the major book events held annually, the Miami Book Fair, fielded a
stellar cast of authors
The fair opened at 4 p.m. on Nov. 14 with a keynote presentation by former President George W. Bush, who talked about his new memoir Decision Points. Tickets to the presentation sold out in less than 10 minutes to those lucky enough to get them. The fair ended on Nov. 21 with a presentation by Jonathan Franzen, whose novel Freedom chronicles the effects of the Bush years on a Minnesota family. Among the more than 350 authors who made presentations were Dave Barry, MSNBC's Willie Geist, Carl Hiaasen and Scott Turow. 33. Major upcoming trade shows, book fairs and book festivals January 2011 Jan. 7 -11. American Library Association's Midwinter Conference. www.ala.org Jan. 11-13. Inspirational Value Book Show (IVBS). www.ivbshow.com Jan. 16-17. Ciana Remainder Book Show, London. http://www.ciana.co.uk February Feb. 25-March 1. The National Association of College Stores Conference. www.nacs.org Ninth Hispanic Book Festival. www.hispanicbookfestival.com or call Andres Puello, Festival Director, 281-558-3052 South Carolina Book Festival. http://www.scbookfestival.org March
March 25-27. Spring Book Show, Cobb Galleria/Renaissance-Waverly Hotel, Atlanta,
Ga. SBS is one of the largest remainder and bargain book shows in the world.
www.springbookshow.com Bologna Children’s Book Fair. www.bolognachildrensbookfair.com April April 11-13. London Book Fair . www.londonbookfair.co.uk
April 30-May 1.
Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. After 15 years at the UCLA campus in
Westwood, the festival, which has grown into one of the biggest in the country,
is moving to the University of Southern California's University Park Campus,
near downtown Los Angeles. Last year, more than 140,000 people attended. May 23-26. BookExpo America, New York. www.bookexpoamerica.com National Stationery Show, New York. June June 24-29. American Library Association, Washington, DC. www.ala.org June 27–30. ICRS - International Christian Retail Show, St. Louis, Mo www.christianretailshow.com Printers Row Book Fair, Chicago. http://www.chicagotribune.com/about/events/printersrow The Australian Booksellers Association's, Melbourne. The International New Age Trade Show West July July 21-24. Comic-Con International, San Diego, Calif. The grandfather of all comics shows, which began in 1970, and capped its attendance at 125,000 three years ago.
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The
Southern Review is edited by Noel Griese. The author of 17 books and
numerous articles on various subjects, he has been a newspaper reporter
and editor and has taught English and journalism at the Universities of
Wisconsin and Georgia. Elected to both Phi Beta Kappa and Phi Kappa Phi,
he holds three degrees in English and journalism.
oney
is squirreled away," Karasuyama told the Shukan Taishu magazine in an
interview about his book - which carries the warning "Please do not attempt to
copy me" as its subtitle. 
we're offering a beginners and an advanced seminar. Both seminars will be held in
classrooms at the Cobb Galleria Centre in north Atlanta. Attend either day
or both days,
and you get free admission to the Spring Book Show, a $75 value.
Today,
The Shack has sold more than 15 million copies - more than eight million
in the U.S. alone - since first self-published. The initial success of the book
was propelled by word of mouth, perhaps the most important factor in book-buying
decisions - and it’s still selling mainly by word of mouth. 
The
results put Kinney well ahead of first-day sales of former President George
Bush’s memoir Decision Points. Random House said opening day sales were
the best opening-day sale for a nonfiction book since Bill Clinton's My Life
in 2004. Imprint Crown said that Bush's book sold at least 170,000 print copies
and 50,000 e-books in its first day, with the Wall Street Journal
reporting that roughly 85,000 of those copies were pre-ordered. President
Clinton's memoir was said to have sold 400,000 copies on its opening day. 
Four
years ago, his first non-fiction work, The Innocent Man, told the story
of two friends tried and convicted of the murder of a cocktail waitress in
Oklahoma.
Research
predicts that 10.3 million e-readers may be in readers' hands by the end of the
year, up from nine million now. According to the New York Times,
Peter Hildick-Smith of market research firm Codex Group commented: "This is the
tipping-point season for e-readers, there's no question. A lot more books are
going to be sold in e-book format. It also means that a lot fewer people are
going to be shopping in bookstores." On the other hand, Geoffrey Jennings of
Rainy Day Books, Fairway, Kan., told the Times that print books sales at
the store are higher than last year and cautioned that the popularity of
e-readers may be limited. "A lot of people are going to get these things and
they're going to go, 'This isn't like reading a book.' Then again, you'll have
people who get them and then say, this is a fun gadget. But people get sick of
gadgets after a while."… Trine University’s School of Professional Studies,
located in Angola, Ind., has initiated a new collegewide mandate to adopt
e-textbooks in all courses by January. The School of Professional Studies,
which has 500 adult students enrolled in 10 degree programs online and at branch
campuses across Indiana, hopes the e-textbook push will help students save
money, and enhance classroom and online instruction. Faculty members will
be required to teach from digital editions of their textbooks using the
CaféScribe platform, operated by the Follett Higher Education Group. The
Web-enabled e-textbook system allows students to highlight and take notes on the
text while they read as well as compare notes and discuss their reading in
online forums.
Her
publisher thought so. The lawsuit asked that Gawker be banned from what it
termed "further copyright infringement" and that Gawker deliver the source
material to the publisher so it could be destroyed. HarperCollins also sought
financial damages. 
during
its Nov. 14-21 run. The 27th annual edition of the event was held at
Miami Dade College's Wolfson Campus. 