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an online newsletter for publishers, authors, book lovers and booksellers

Vol. 8, No. 3   March 2010

Index (scroll down for stories) 

  1. Amazon backs down in dust-up with Macmillan over ebook prices
  2. Spring Book Show announces two Atlanta workshops for writers
  3. Justice Dept. casts monkey wrench into latest Google book deal
  4. Breaking news from the book barons
  5. New Kitty Kelley biography unlikely to be Oprah Book Club selection
  6. Borders denies it is delaying payments to small publishers
  7. Simon & Schuster CEO berates "cheap" digital books
  8. New U.S. Sen. Scott Brown shopping biography
  9. Rebecca Stead wins Newbery; Jerry Pinkney awarded Caldecott
10. News about bookstores, publishing, marketing and promotion
11. TeleRead e-book community acquired by North American Publishing
12. Nelson CEO shares data on Top 10 U.S. book publishers in 2009
13. Amazon dips toes into traditional publishing with Amazon Encores
14. Covey displeases Simon & Schuster, gives e-book rights to Amazon
15. Borders criticized for destroying mass market paperbacks
16. Books to Movies Department
17. How bad is it – and what is the book business doing to cope?
18. Borders holiday sales down 13.7 percent from 2008
19. Bookstore sales fell two percent in November
20. AAP members report November sales rise of 10.9 percent
21. Update journalism: Latest skinny on past Southern Review stories
22. The publishing revolution: News of ebooks and other new media
23. Amazon launches 70 percent Kindle royalty option
24. Kindle fans use reviews to punish delayed digital edition of book
25. New BISG survey tracks behavior toward ebooks
26. Apple introduces iPad “on the shoulders” of Amazon.com’s Kindle
27. News about self-publishing and vanity presses: B&T to print, distribute PublishAmerica POD titles
28. Author Solutions asks RWA, MWA, SFWA to smoke peace pipe
29. Marketing books: what works and what doesn’t
30. Milestones: Records and news of note in book publishing
31. Amazon offers alternative royalty for Kindle books
32. Mystery Writers of America announces 2010 Edgar Award nominees
33. ‘Christianity Today’ announces 2010 Book Awards
34. Tort-feasing in the book business: Christian publishers in legal rhubarb over kids' books
35. Chuckles: Californian schools ban dictionary over naughty words
36. Major upcoming trade shows, book fairs and book festivals
 

1. Amazon backs down in dust-up with Macmillan over ebook prices

The fracas started with Amazon.com Inc. removing all (well, all that it could find) ebook titles published by Macmillan from Amazon’s Web site and its Kindle e-reader site, Macmillan said on Jan. 30.

The move followed the earlier launch of Apple Inc.'s new iPad device, which is expected to compete directly with Amazon's Kindle reader and allow publishers to set their own retail prices on their ebooks.

Macmillan CEO John Sargent said he visited Amazon on Jan.28 in Seattle to discuss "new terms of sales for ebooks" and that by the time he returned to New York, he'd been informed that Macmillan's ebooks would only be for sale on Amazon.com "through third parties."

The fracas was resolved, at least partially, on Feb. 1, when Amazon reversed its position.

The announcement came via an Amazon letter to customers posted on its Kindle Community page. Amazon said that "ultimately" it had to capitulate "because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles," forcing Amazon to sell its titles "even at prices we believe are needlessly high for ebooks." Amazon concluded, "We don't believe that all of the major publishers will take the same route as Macmillan" and called it likely that "many independent presses and self-published authors will see this as an opportunity to provide attractively priced ebooks as an alternative."

Macmillan companies include Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Holt, St. Martin's, Tor, Metropolitan, Times Books, Palgrave Macmillan, Feiwel & Friends, Kingfisher and others.

The Amazon ban did not include lines distributed by Macmillan such as Rodale, Graywolf and Bloomsbury, and third-party sellers on Amazon were still selling Macmillan titles. The ban also didn't apply abroad to Macmillan or other companies owned by its parent company, Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group.

While the ban was in effect, Amazon went into Kindle devices and removed Macmillan titles from wish lists and removed sample chapters of Macmillan titles.

Amazon has consistently priced new ebook titles at $9.99, below its cost, taking a loss of at least $4 or $5 on each sale of those titles. Publishers and others in the industry have been concerned that the Amazon approach will create in customers an unsustainably low expectation about what constitutes a fair price for ebooks and are concerned in general that such pricing taints the prices of all books.

While Amazon admitted defeat, it took its sweet time restoring Macmillan titles on its Web site. It was a full week before new copies of Andrew Young’s The Politician, Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall and other books published by Macmillan again became available for purchase on Amazon.com.

This was the second time Amazon has had a showdown with the publishing industry. In 2008, it removed all titles by Hachette Livre U.K. on its U.K. website in a dispute over its demands for better terms.

2. Spring Book Show announces two Atlanta workshops for writers

The Southern Review of Books newsletter has announced that seven outstanding authors and book professionals will teach two day-long seminars on writing on Friday-Saturday, March 26-27, at Atlanta’s Cobb Galleria Centre.

The workshops, entitled “Authorship 101”  and “Authorship 201” will focus on writing, getting published and marketing fiction and nonfiction. The classes will be held  in conjunction with the Spring Book Show being held at the same location.

Authorship 101, “How To Become a Successful Author – The Basics,” is scheduled for Friday, March 26. Featured presenters include:

Authorship 201, “How To Become a Successful Author - Getting Down to  Business," is scheduled for Saturday, March 27. Featured presenters include:

Noel Griese of Atlanta-based Anvil Publishers, and editor of the Southern Review of Books newsletter, said that people attending the workshop get free admission to the Spring Book Show.

Additional details about the class are available at the Anvil Publishers Web site at http://anvilpub.net/spring_seminars.htm

3. Justice Dept. casts monkey wrench into latest Google book deal

In another blow to Google’s plan to create a giant digital library and bookstore, the Justice Department on Feb. 4 said that a class-action settlement between the company and groups representing authors and publishers had significant legal problems, even after recent revisions.

In a 31-page filing that could influence a federal judge’s ruling on the settlement, the department said the new agreement was much improved from an earlier version. But it said the changes were not enough to placate concerns that the deal would grant Google a monopoly over millions of orphan works (books whose right holders are unknown or cannot be found).

The department also indicated that the revised agreement, like its predecessor, appeared to run afoul of authors’ copyrights and was too broad in scope.

The revised agreement “suffers from the same core problem as the original agreement: it is an attempt to use the class-action mechanism to implement forward-looking business arrangements that go far beyond the dispute before the court in this litigation,” the department wrote.

The department asked the court to encourage the parties to continue discussions on further changes to the settlement, which it said had many public benefits.

While the Justice Department did not explicitly urge the court to reject the deal, as it had the previous version, its opposition on copyright, class action and antitrust grounds represented a further setback for Google and the other parties to the deal.

The settlement stems from copyright lawsuits filed by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers over Google’s plan to digitize books from major libraries. The settlement, introduced in October 2008, would allow Google to make millions of books available online and commercialize them, while creating new ways for authors and publishers to earn money from digital copies of their works.

But the deal faced a host of critics who argued that it would give Google a monopoly on millions of out-of-print books and had failed to take into account the interests of many authors.

In a statement on behalf of Google and the author and publisher groups, a Google spokesman, Gabriel Stricker, said the Justice Department’s filing “recognizes the progress made with the revised settlement, and it once again reinforces the value the agreement can provide in unlocking access to millions of books in the U.S.” He said Google looked forward to the court’s review of the department’s views and those of the deal’s supporters.

Critics of the agreement include Amazon, Microsoft and a range of authors, academics and public interest groups.

Judge Denny Chin of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, who will rule on the settlement, has scheduled a hearing on the agreement for Feb. 18.

4. Breaking news from the book barons

Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight books have sold more than 85 million copies around the world. Now, Yen Press, the graphic novel imprint of Hachette Book Group, will release Twilight: the Graphic Novel, the much-anticipated manga-style comics adaptation of Stephenie Meyer’s international bestseller, on March 16 with a 350,000 copy first printing. That’s an extremely high first run for a graphic novel. More typical is a run of 20,000 to 25,000, which is usually enough for both the comic-book market and general bookstores, according to Milton Griepp, the publisher and founder of ICv2. On the other hand, in August 2008, expecting a major sales bump from the film version of “Watchmen,” DC Comics printed more than 900,000 copies of the softcover collected edition of the comic. According to Nielsen BookScan, 733,000 copies of that edition were sold in 2008 and 2009 combined. More than 170,000 copies were sold in comic stores, according to estimates at ICv2.  “Watchmen,” a dark tale by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, has been a perennial top seller since the limited series was first collected in 1987. In 2001 it sold around 22,000 copies; in 2007 it sold nearly 100,000… Crown will soon release Kitty Kelley's 544-page Oprah: A Biography in a first printing in excess of a half-million copies. The North American laydown included a simultaneous ebook edition, along with an audio release...  Suffering from a double whammy - the shrinking market for trade paperbacks plus financial losses inflicted by the bankruptcy filings of Anderson News and Source Interlink - Dorchester Publications, a privately owned publisher of mass-market romance, horror, and thriller novels since 1971, and the distributor since 2004 of imprint Hard Case Crime, is selling some of its titles to HarperCollins.  Avon, the mass-market romance arm of News Corp.'s HarperCollins, has acquired select frontlist and backlist romance titles from Dorchester, most notably books by New York Times bestsellers Christine Feehan, Katie MacAllister and Marjorie Liu. Avon says it's planning the Avon releases of these titles.

5. New Kitty Kelley biography unlikely to be Oprah Book Club selection

An unauthorized biography of talk show hostess Oprah Winfrey is set to be released on April 13 by Crown Publishing, according to EW.com.

The book is written by bestselling celebrity biographer Kitty Kelley, who has previously written about Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Frank Sinatra, Elizabeth Taylor, Nancy Reagan and the British Royal Family.

"Oprah has spent years eliciting intimate confessionals from her subjects, but she herself has a carefully guarded persona," Crown spokesman David Drake said, according to EW.com. "This is the first complete portrait of her - it will reveal Oprah as she has never been seen before."

More than 500,000 copies of the 544-page book have been ordered for the first printing. Kelley reportedly interviewed 850 sources while researching Oprah Winfrey's life for three years.

The book, Oprah: A Biography, will "cover all aspects of her life" and "be evenhanded," Drake says.

"Kelley understands Oprah's cultural importance and that is something she covers at length," he adds.

Drake said Kelley and the publishing company are not overly worried about Winfrey coming down on them.

But Winfrey isn't coming forward to talk about the book, according to CNN. "Oprah hasn't participated in or read Kitty Kelley's book, so she is unable to comment," a spokeswoman told the cable news network.

Kelley is described as a "poison pen" biographer, and her profiles frequently contain unflattering personal anecdotes and details.

The accuracy of her writing is often questioned. Her credibility and sources have been called into question multiple times. For example, Time magazine reported that most journalists believe Kelley "too frequently fails to bring perspective or analysis to the fruits of her reporting and at times lards her work with dollops of questionable inferences and innuendos." Kelley has been described as a "professional sensationalist" and her books have been called "Kitty litter."

That said, Kelley has never been successfully sued for libel or had to retract a single written statement.

6. Borders denies it is delaying payments to small publishers

Borders Group said that a Debtwire claim alleging slow payment to some small publishers "includes inaccurate information."

Borders said that it "has continued to pay its vendors in a timely manner, has not lengthened its days to pay, and has not been contacted by a group of publishers as alleged. Product is flowing to our stores for sale to customers. In fact, we have significantly increased book inventory in the fourth quarter compared to last year, a sign that we have continued to receive support from the vendor community."

Concerning the debtwire.com assertion that several publishers had contacted Lowenstein Sandler to represent them against Borders, Borders said that the law firm had issued this note: "The statement in the article that a group of smaller publishers had hired the bankruptcy group of Lowenstein Sandler as legal counsel is incorrect."

Debtwire alleged that Borders, which has been financially troubled and has been unable to find a buyer to acquire it, is paying some of the publishers it trades with more slowly than others.

Three major publishers said they received payments in full from Borders for the December period but three smaller firms said the company has been delaying payments.

The average time it took for Borders to pay back suppliers spiked over 40 percent to 97.9 days in the year ended 31 October, from 69.4 days in the same period a year ago, according to Debtwire.

The beleaguered bookseller is struggling to adapt to technological change, cautious consumers, a revolving door in the executive suite and increased competition from big box retailers such as Wal-Mart, said Michael Norris, a trade book analyst at Simba Information.

Borders has lagged in adopting new publishing technologies, particularly electronic readers, as it struggles to ramp up foot traffic in its physical locations.

The paradigm shift in the traditional bookselling space has forced some publishers to re-adjust how they do business with the retailer. One major publisher has terminated its return policy with Borders to reduce risk. A seventh publisher said his firm has stopped shipping to Borders because of fears the retailer will send the books back unsold.

7. Simon & Schuster CEO berates "cheap" digital books

Simon & Schuster CEO Carolyn Reidy recently told employees in an annual letter that the company must resist the "the downward pressures exerted by the marketplace" and "the perception that 'digital' means 'cheap.'"

Amazon has led the charge in adopting a policy, adopted by other retailers, of discounting new release ebooks to $9.99 or lower.

“We must do everything in our power to uphold the value of our content against the downward pressures exerted by the marketplace and the perception that ‘digital’ means ‘cheap,’” Reidy said in her letter obtained by Publishers Weekly. “We must work to defend the livelihoods of our authors at a time when instantaneous file transfer makes piracy easier than ever, and in a world in which many consider copyright irrelevant.”

Simon & Schuster's ebook delay policy provoked a swift rebuke from Amazon, which called the publisher "backward-leaning" and singled out Reidy by name. "Carolyn wants to corral readers, force them to buy what they wouldn't buy if they had a choice. It won't work. The better approach is to embrace the evolution of the book and give customers what they want," Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener told The New York Times.

Simon & Schuster, owned by CBS Corp., is part of a growing group of publishers, including Hachette Book Group and HarperCollins, that are delaying ebooks. HarperCollins, a unit of News Corp., is also squaring off against Kindle on the newspaper front.

Meanwhile, a number of Amazon “reviewers” gave best-seller Game Change, published by HarperCollins, negative reviews as a way of punishing the book for its delayed ebook version. (See “Kindle fans use reviews” below.)

The publishers fear heavy discounting of ebooks will devalue what consumers consider a fair price for books, and upend the industry's business model, which is already under significant pressure.

Reidy, in her letter to employees, wrote that the book market is "truly lackluster, and year-on-year sales at most of our major customers have declined significantly."

8. New U.S. Sen. Scott Brown shopping biography

Scott Brown, the Republican who recently stunned Massachusetts and the nation by getting elected to the seat held by the late U.S. Sen. Edward M. “Ted” Kennedy, has already done most things required of a rising political star. He’s been interviewed by Barbara Walters. He’s appeared on Jay Leno’s show.  He’s been satirized on “Saturday Night Live.”

Next step: the Scott Brown story in hardcover.

According to Matt Viser of the Boston Globe, that’s coming soon.

Seeking to cash in quickly on his newfound celebrity, the freshman Republican from Massachusetts is shopping his autobiography to publishers. He has retained agent Robert Barnett, the Washington attorney whose high-powered clients include President Obama and former president Bill Clinton, among other luminaries. Barnett represented Sarah Palin in several media negotiations, including her contract as a commentator on Fox News and the deal for her book Going Rogue.

Brown will work with a yet-to-be-named collaborator to minimize distraction while he is representing the state in the Senate, his spokeswoman says.

Brown could command a six-figure advance, publishing specialists said, particularly if publishers feel his celebrity status will continue to grow among the sort of disaffected conservatives and independents he successfully wooed in his surprise election in January.

Brown’s story certainly defies stuffy Senate stereotypes: a tumultuous childhood, with both parents married three times; sternly lectured by a judge at age 12 for shoplifting LPs including a Black Sabbath record; and posing nude for Cosmopolitan magazine.

“He will tell his story in a book in hopes of providing insight and encouragement to others and also to ensure that the record is complete and accurate,’’ Gail Gitcho, Brown’s communications director, said in a statement.

News of the book plan was first reported by Politico.

Several in the publishing industry said Brown’s book would probably fetch hundreds of thousands of dollars - but not the kind of money Sarah Palin or Obama brought home. He’s a hot name right now, but publishers would have to bet that he’ll still be interesting in the six months to a year that it would take to put a book out.

The Senate is loaded with authors. At least 40 of the current members have written books, ranging from policy (The Next Front: Southeast Asia and the Road to Global Peace with Islam by Christopher Bond) to sports (Grand Slam: The Secrets of Power Baseball by Jim Bunning), to comedy (I’m Good Enough, I’m Smart Enough, and Doggone It, People like Me! by Al Franken).

Brown’s counterpart from Massachusetts, John F. Kerry, has written several books, including A Call to Service: My Vision for a Better America in 2003.

Brown’s book may provide further details about his infamous nude photo spread, his daughter’s stardom on “American Idol’’ and a behind-the-scenes look at an astute political campaign that featured a pickup truck and a barn coat at a time of intense anger at Washington and Wall Street.

9. Rebecca Stead wins Newbery; Jerry Pinkney awarded Caldecott

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead (Wendy Lamb/Random House) has won the 2010 Newbery Medal. 

The 2010 Caldecott Medal went to Jerry Pinkney for his wordless piéce de resistance set on the East African Serengeti, The Lion and the Mouse (Little, Brown).
 
Four Newbery Honors were awarded: Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice by Phillip Hoose (Melanie Kroupa/FSG), which won the National Book Award; a debut novel, The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly (Holt/Macmillan); Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin (Little, Brown), lushly illustrated with occasional full-color pictures by the author; and The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg by Rodman Philbrick (Blue Sky/Scholastic), in which funny moments balance the sorrows of the Civil War.

Both Caldecott honors went to artists who illustrated someone else's text: Marla Frazee for All the World, written by Liz Garton Scanlon (Beach Lane/S&S); and Pamela Zagarenski for Red Sings from Treetops: A Year in Colors, written by Joyce Sidman (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).
 Libba Bray won the 2010 Michael L. Printz Award for Going Bovine (Delacorte/Random House), about a 16-year-old diagnosed with Mad Cow disease who takes off on a road trip in search of a cure with a sidekick he meets in the hospital.

Four Printz Honors were given: Charles and Emma: The Darwins' Leap of Faith by Deborah Heiligman (Holt/Macmillan), which was also a National Book Award finalist; The Monstrumologist by Rick Yancey (S&S); Punkzilla by Adam Rapp (Candlewick); and Tales from the Madman Underground: An Historical Romance, 1973 by John Barnes (Viking/Penguin).
The William C. Morris Award for best debut YA novel went to Flash Burnout by L.K. Madigan (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).

The committee named four honor books: Ash by Malinda Lo (Little, Brown); Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl (Little, Brown); The Everafter by Amy Huntley (Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins); and Hold Still by Nina LaCour (Dutton/Penguin).

The Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime contribution in writing for young adults was awarded to Jim Murphy, and Lois Lowry was chosen to deliver the 2011 May Hill Arbuthnot Honor Lecture.

The Theodor Seuss Geisel Award, for "the most distinguished book for beginning readers," went to Benny and Penny in the Big No-No! by Geoffrey Hayes (RAW Junior/Toon). There were four Geisel Honor books: I Spy Fly Guy! by Tedd Arnold (Scholastic; Little Mouse Gets Ready by Jeff Smith (RAW Junior/Toon), author of the Bone series; Mouse and Mole: Fine Feathered Friends by Wong Herbert Yee (Houghton); and Pearl and Wagner: One Funny Day by Kate McMullan, illustrated by R.W. Alley (Dial).

 The Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal went to Almost Astronauts: 13 Women Who Dared to Dream by Tanya Lee Stone (Candlewick). The three Sibert honor books were The Day-Glo Brothers: The True Story of Bob and Joe Switzer's Bright Ideas and Brand-New Colors by Chris Barton, illustrated by Tony Persiani (Charlesbridge); Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11 by Brian Floca (Richard Jackson/Atheneum/S&S); and Phillip Hoose's Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice (Kroupa/FSG).

The Mildred L. Batchelder Award for best work of translation went to A Faraway Island by Annika Thor, translated from the Swedish by Linda Schenck (Delacorte/Random). There were three Batchelder Honors: Big Wolf and Little Wolf by Nadine Brun-Cosme, illustrated by Olivier Tallec, translated by Claudia Bedrick (Enchanted Lion); Eidi by Bodil Bredsdorff, translated by Kathryn Mahaffy (FSG); and Moribito II: Guardian of the Darkness by Nahoko Uehashi, illustrated by Yuko Shimizu, translated by Cathy Hirano (Scholastic/Arthur A. Levine).

The Odyssey Award for Excellence in Audiobook Production went to Live Oak Media, producer of Louise, the Adventures of a Chicken by Kate DiCamillo, illustrated by Harry Bliss, narrated by Barbara Rosenblat.

Walter Dean Myers won the inaugural Coretta Scott King-Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Coretta Scott King Awards. Vaunda Micheaux Nelson won the Coretta Scott King Author award for Bad News for Outlaws: The Remarkable Life of Bass Reeves, Deputy U.S. Marshal, illustrated by R. Gregory Christie (Carolrhoda/ Lerner); and Charles R. Smith Jr. won the Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award for My People, written by Langston Hughes (Ginee Seo/ Atheneum). The John Steptoe Award for New Talent went to Kekla Magoon, author of The Rock and the River (S&S/Aladdin).

Mare's War by Tanita S. Davis (Knopf/Random House) was named a CSK Author Honor Book; and The Negro Speaks of Rivers, illustrated by E.B. Lewis, written by Langston Hughes (Jump at the Sun/Disney) was a CSK Illustrator Honor Book.

The three Schneider Family Book Awards, which honor an author or illustrator for "a book that embodies an artistic expression of the disability experience for child and adolescent audiences" and which come with a $5,000 prize, were given to Django by Bonnie Christensen (Neal Porter/Roaring Brook) in the children's book category; Anything but Typical by Nora Raleigh Baskin (S&S) for middle grade; and Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork (Arthur A. Levine/Scholastic) won for teens.

The Alex Awards for the 10 best adult books that appeal to teen audiences:

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer, published by William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

The Bride's Farewell by Meg Rosoff, published by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group.

Everything Matters! by Ron Currie, Jr., published by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group.

The Good Soldiers by David Finkel, published by Sarah Crichton Books, an imprint of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

The Kids Are All Right: A Memoir by Diana Welch and Liz Welch with Amanda Welch and Dan Welch, published by Harmony Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House.

The Magicians, by Lev Grossman, published by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group.

My Abandonment by Peter Rock, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Soulless: An Alexia Tarabotti Novel, by Gail Carriger, published by Orbit, an imprint of Hachette Book Group.

Stitches: A Memoir by David Small, published by W.W. Norton & Company

Tunneling to the Center of the Earth by Kevin Wilson, published by Harper Perennial, an imprint of HarperCollins.

10. News about bookstores, publishing, marketing and promotion

The former bookkeeper who embezzled more than $100,000 from Page and Palette, Fairhope, Ala., has been sentenced to eight months in prison, two months of home confinement and ordered to make restitution of $81,000, according to the Mobile Press-Register. Owner Karin Wilson told the paper that "the business is still suffering" and the store had gone into debt as a result. "It was such a hit."

11. TeleRead e-book community acquired by North American Publishing

North American Publishing Company (NAPCO) of Philadelphia, Pa., announced on Feb. 10 that Gadgetell, a division of NAPCO, has acquired TeleRead.org, a Web Site covering global ebook news based in Alexandria, Va.

Noel Griese of Anvil Brokers of Atlanta handled details of the acquisition. TeleRead.org covers daily and long-term developments for readers, writers, editors, publishers and sellers of ebooks, as well as for librarians. Created in the 1990s, it is believed to be the oldest English-language Web site devoted to general e-book news and views.

The site's opinion posts helped spur the creation of the ePub standard used for ebooks by Sony Readers and other products, including Apple's iBooks e-reading software for the iPad.

According to David Rothman, the founder of TeleRead.org, who is stepping down as editor-publisher, the time was ripe for moving the popular site to a publisher with more resources.

Philadelphia-based NAPCO publishes more than 16 trade magazines including Book Business, Printing Impressions, Target Marketing and Publishing Executive.

“We’re delighted to have acquired TeleRead and to benefit from the diversity of viewpoints in its global digital community,” said Ned Borowsky, president of NAPCO. “Ebooks is the hot topic! We have been covering it extensively in the pages of Book Business magazine, through our webinars and virtual shows, as well as at our upcoming conference Publishing Business Conference & Expo this March (www.publishingbusiness.com). TeleRead will dramatically add to the conversation and we couldn't be more pleased.”

Borowsky said TeleRead will continue in its present format. Co-editor Paul Biba in Bernardsville, NJ, will succeed Rothman as editor of the digital newsletter.

Rothman intends to focus on books and movie scripts, including marketing of The Solomons Scandals, his recently published Washington newspaper novel.

12. Nelson CEO shares data on Top 10 U.S. book publishers in 2009

Thomas Nelson CEO Michael Hyatt recently shared on his blog proprietary market intelligence data on the market shares of the top 10 U.S. publishing houses in 2009.

Every month, Hyatt reviews a set of market share reports prepared by one of Nelson’s internal analysts.

“Keep in mind that these lists are based on revenues for the 12 months ending Dec. 31, 2009,” Hyatt wrote on his blog. “We created these lists from a proprietary database we have developed at Thomas Nelson. It is derived from various point-of-sale systems from multiple sales channels.

“We prepare two ‘top 10’ lists internally. First, we track the Top U.S. Trade Publishers (publishers whose books are primarily sold through retail booksellers as opposed to, say, textbook publishers). We consolidate the various imprints into their parent companies. So, for example, HarperCollins includes William Morrow and Zondervan. Simon & Schuster includes Free Press, Pocket Books, Howard Books, Scribner, etc.”

The following table shows the percentage market shares of the top 10 from his post. The Top 10 account, by Nelson’s reckoning, for 72 percent of the overall U.S. book market.

What’s changed in the two years since Nelson last shared a similar ranking?

Though Random house has retained its #1 position, it has also grown its market share by 160 basis points (from 15.9 to 17.5 percent).

Pearson, which includes Penguin among other imprints, has remained at #2. Their market share remained relatively flat, gaining 30 basis points (from 11.0 to 11.3 percent).

Hachette has moved up from #5 to #3, no doubt as a result of the success of the Stephenie Meyer Twilight series. As a result, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster each moved down one spot.

Thomas Nelson maintained its position at #7, but its market share dropped by 150 basis points. “Frankly, the entire Christian category didn’t perform well as evidenced by the fact that we actually gained share in the Christian segment,” Hyatt noted. “Tyndale fell off the list completely.”

Scholastic fell from #6 to #8, mostly as a result of the sales decline in the Harry Potter series.

“You may be wondering how John Wiley and Scholastic could be smaller than Thomas Nelson,” Hyatt noted. “Keep in mind that our ranking only considers trade sales. Both Wiley and Scholastic have large academic, professional and technical publishing programs that aren’t considered trade sales. In addition, Scholastic has a book fair program, whose sales are not included here. We are not in any of those businesses, so we haven’t built any systems to track them.”

The U.S. book market is estimated at $32 billion. But don’t assume you can multiply that figure by the percentages above to get individual company dollar revenues. Keep in mind that textbook sales, the big kid on the block in retail book sales, are not included in the table percentages – and certain other sales are excluded. © 2010, Michael S. Hyatt. All rights reserved. Originally published at michaelhyatt.com.

13. Amazon dips toes into traditional publishing with AmazonEncore

Zetta Elliott’s self-published A Wish After Midnight sold about 500 copies -better than the average for a self-published title. The book was praised on blogs and picked up by some schools and libraries.

Then an editor from Amazon called her in 2009 offering to publish it. Elliott at first thought the call was a hoax.

In February, her novel, along with Daniel Annechino's They Never Die Quietly and Maria Murname's Perfect on Paper, were released as AmazonEncore paperbacks, ebooks and audios.

All three were previously self-published via Amazon's print-on-demand vanity press subsidiary, among more than 10,000 such self-published titles sold online.

Amazon vice president Jeff Belle says the company's first venture into traditional publishing "identifies great books that we think have been overlooked and brings them to a wider audience."

It's starting small, but, Belle says, "we plant a lot of seeds."

Last August, AmazonEncore released its only other book, Legacy, a fantasy by Cayla Kluver, 16, which she and her mother self-published in 2008.

Belle says Legacy has sold about 2,000 copies.

Belle and Elliott declined to reveal details of their contract. Belle says AmazonEncore doesn't pay advances to authors, only a "competitive royalty" based on sales.

He says Amazon editors use customer reviews and sales data to find promising books.

Amazon's major rivals, Barnes and Noble and Borders, list AmazonEncore titles on their websites and say that, depending on demand, they may carry them in their physical stores as well. (Source: Bob Minzesheimer, USA Today)

14. Covey displeases Simon & Schuster, gives ebook rights to Amazon

Stephen R. Covey is bypassing his publishing company and sending the ebook versions of some of his best-selling works directly to Amazon.com, and earning a much larger piece of the pie as a result.

Covey’s publisher is Simon & Schuster, and the books are The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and Principle-Centered Leadership, perennial big sellers on the top business book sales list.

Covey gave Amazon rights to the ebooks for only a one-year period. The royalty he earns on each sale of one of his ebooks will garner him at least twice the royalty he gets from Simon & Schuster, and possibly much more. His ebook technology provider, RosettaBooks, said bluntly: "There are superstars, and superstars are entitled to more."

Amazon says it will heavily promote the ebooks of the works in question - Habits sells more than 100,000 paperbacks a year alone, making that one title a million-dollar book year-in and year-out.

S&S claims that it owns the exclusive electronic rights to all of its works Habits was published before ebooks came into being, so who owns the rights to publish books in this format are naturally in question, and the publisher says it plans to protect its interests.

15. Borders criticized for destroying mass market paperbacks

According to as story by Ylan Q. Mui in the Jan. 23 Washington Post, employees and customers of the Borders chain were critical of the company for destruction of the mass market inventory of its stores.

The demise of the Waldenbooks chain in January led to workers being instructed to destroy unsellables - leftover mass-market romance novels and true-crime stories – by stripping off the covers and throwing away the remaining book blocks. Online and in interviews, employees and customers across the country called it wasteful and launched a viral Internet campaign to change the practice.

"As a librarian and book freak, this hurts my heart!" posted one member of the Facebook group Donate, Not Dumpster! "Give them to kids, homeless shelters, shelters for abused women and families, foster homes, hospitals, health clinics - the possibilities are endless!"

Organizers of the Borders campaign said that destruction of mass market paperbacks at the remaining Borders stores felt uncomfortably similar to what happened at Waldenbooks.

Retailers typically receive a credit from publishers for shipping back any books they cannot sell. But mass-market paperbacks are so inexpensive that they are not worth shipping back, Borders said. Instead, booksellers rip off the covers to prove the books were not sold and then receive credit for the covers. The rest is tossed away.

The practice occurs throughout the year as stores make way for new merchandise, but employees said they were struck by the mass of books headed for the trash heap as nearly 200 Waldenbooks locations shut down.

Borders said many paperbacks could not be donated because the material might not have been appropriate for schools and libraries. But in response to the campaign, it said it would recycle the books rather than throw them away.

"It's our commitment to do the right thing for the product and the book," said Mike Edwards, Borders' chief merchandising officer.

Edwards said the chain is in talks with publishers about long-term alternatives to pulping. In addition, the company said this week that it would donate all non-returnable merchandise, such as its private-label gift items, CDs and DVDs, to the nonprofit Gifts in Kind.

16. Books to Movies Department

Producer Lionel Wigram has tapped screenwriter Peter Straughan (“The Men Who Stare at Goats”) to update Alexandre Dumas's The Three Musketeers to make a movie version that appeals to young, contemporary audiences." As with his recent Sherlock Holmes release, and a sequel in the works, Wigram sees similar franchise potential in a remake of the Dumas novel that has already been the basis for several movies.

17. How bad is it – and what is the book business doing to cope?

Independent bookstores in the United Kingdom are closing at a rate of nearly two per week. The Booksellers Association found that "102 independent stores closed in 2009, leaving just 1,289 left in the U.K. - a decline of 27 percent since 1999," the Guardian writes, noting that only 40 new indies opened last year.

18. Borders holiday sales down 13.7 percent from 2008

Borders's holiday sales fell more than twice as much as holiday sales at its closest bricks-and-mortar competitors, Barnes & Noble and Books-A-Million.

Sales at Borders Group in the 11 weeks ended Jan. 16 fell 13.7 percent, to $846.8 million. At Borders superstores, sales fell 14.7 percent, to $649.2 million, and at Borders superstores open at least a year, sales fell 14.6 percent.

At the Waldenbooks Specialty Retail segment, sales fell 14.6 percent, to $153.2 million. Borders is currently closing 182 of those stores. Sales at the handful of Waldenbooks that will remain open beyond January dropped 9.4 percent.

International sales rose 8.7 percent, to $44.4 million.

By comparison, sales during the last quarter at Barnes & Noble fell five percent and comp-store sales fell 5.4 percent, while at Books-A-Million sales fell 4.5 percent and comp-store sales fell 6.2 percent.

19. Bookstore sales fell two percent in November

November bookstore sales fell two percent to $1.025 billion, compared to November 2008, according to preliminary estimates from the Census Bureau. Through November, total bookstore sales for 2009 fell 0.9 percent, to $14.579 billion.

Through November, total retail sales for 2009 were down four percent, to $3,730.15 billion. Bookstores in the first 11 months of 2009 were doing better than most retailers.

20. AAP members report November sales rise of 10.9 percent

AAP member book sales rose 10.9 percent in November 2009, to $808.5 million. The sales are for publishers who report to the Association of American Publishers. Sales for the year through November rose 4.9 percent.

Sales by category in November 2009 by reporting members:  

21. Update journalism: Latest skinny on past Southern Review stories

Last December, we reported that Kirkus Reviews was being discontinued by publisher A.C. Nielsen. Since then, a white knight has come to the rescue of the venerable publisher of advance reviews of forthcoming book releases. Herb Simon, owner of the Indiana Pacers, has bought Kirkus. Simon has named Marc Winkelman CEO of the company, which will be renamed Kirkus Media. Simon, 74, is a co-owner with Winkelman of Tecolote Books of Montecito, Calif.  Winkelman told the New York Times that the company would "retain its editorial leadership," including editor Elaine Szewczyk and managing editor Eric Liebetrau. "With the growth of ebooks and e-reading devices, no one can really see the future of publishing," Simon observed. "But turmoil like this creates opportunities. At a time when even the definition of a book is changing, my love of books makes me want to be part of the solution for the book publishing industry." Winkelman added: "Over the years librarians have submitted a lot of comments to Kirkus about things they would like to see enhanced. We hope to do that and make Kirkus even more relevant in the world of book buying and book reading.”

22. The publishing revolution: News of ebooks and other new media

English literary star Ian McEwan's has made a deal to publish five of his early books exclusively with Amazon under terms that are far better than his current publisher is offering. Through Rosetta Books, an ebook company run by former literary agent Arthur Klebanoff that offers authors a 50 percent royalty, McEwan is publishing the five books on the Kindle. The big publishing houses for the most part are giving authors only 20-25 percent of what the publisher receives.

23. Amazon launches 70 percent Kindle royalty option

Amazon has launched a new 70 percent royalty option for the Kindle. 

Under the option, Amazon will pay authors and publishers a royalty of 70 percent of the list price of Kindle books, which is a far higher per-copy royalty than most authors receive on physical book sales, including the standard Kindle book royalties. 

The new plan is designed to encourage more authors to go direct to Amazon, or force their publishers to sell ebooks at a substantial discount.  The new royalty plan comes with some strings attached, all of which are designed to further Amazon's goals:

24. Kindle fans use reviews to punish delayed digital edition of book

Game Change, the inside scoop on the presidential campaigns of 2008 published by HarperCollins (see article in February 2010 issue of Southern Review of Books), has raised the ire of Kindle fans, who have punished the book by giving it bad reviews on Amazon.com’s Web site.

The Kindle fans were angry over the publisher’s delayed issuance of the ebook version of the book. The initial press run quickly sold out following a media blitz publicity campaign, leaving Amazon.com’s hefty corps of “reviewers” unable to get their hands on copies.

Amazon.com has been urging publishers to release new books in hardcover and in electronic form for its Kindle readers. But some publishers are holding back the digital edition of new titles by weeks or months to protect hardcover sales. (See “Simon & Schuster CEO” above.) Kindle ebooks are typically cheaper ($9.99 or less) than their hardcover versions designed to retail in the $24.95-$27.95 range. In the case of Game Change, Amazon.com priced the pre-order Kindle version at $8.61 and the hardback at $15.39.

Game Change was deluged with one-star negative reviews placed on Amazon by “reviewers” protesting publisher HarperCollins' decision to delay the Kindle version to Feb. 23.

The one-star reviews have contributed to an average customer review rating of 2.5 stars out of 5.0 possible, despite the book-s best-seller status.

25. New BISG survey tracks behavior toward ebooks

In a benchmark survey, the Book Industry Study Group, Inc. (BISG) has just revealed concrete consumer data collected directly from book readers that addresses how print book buyers access, purchase and use ebooks and e-readers.

"In new markets, too much money is often spent reaching too few qualified consumers," said Angela Bole, BISG's deputy executive director. "BISG's Consumer Attitudes Toward E-Book Reading survey has been tailored to help solve this problem by identifying specific consumer use patterns that are measureable and actionable."

"For example," Bole said, "the survey found that 30 percent of print book buyers would wait up to three months to purchase the ebook edition of a book by their favorite author. This kind of information can inform decisions publishers need to make today about when and how to publish ebook editions."

The initial Consumer Attitudes Toward E-Book Reading survey also found that the majority of print book buyers rank "affordability" as the number one reason they would choose to purchase an ebook rather than a print book of the same title. Of less consequence when it came to their purchase decisions was the extent to which an ebook was searchable or environmentally friendly.

Additional findings include:

The January 2010 survey is the first installment of a three-part study that breaks new ground by providing data from hundreds of print book buyers who also identify as ebook readers. Over the course of nine months (November 2009 to July 2010), respondents were and will be surveyed to find out when, why, how and where they purchase and use both ebooks and e-readers. The findings will be available for sale both as a summary report and as a complete data compendium accessible online.
"This past holiday season, major ebook retailers reported unprecedented sales growth," said BISG Executive Director Scott Lubeck. "The data available in Consumer Attitudes toward E-Book Reading starts making sense of it all."

Out of 36,000 possible panelists for the survey, 868 qualified for the BISG ebook survey by indicating they had either purchased a "digital or ebook" in the last 12 months or owned a dedicated e-reader device (such as Amazon Kindle or Sony Reader). 556 survey responses were received, yielding a response rate of 64 percent at a confidence level of 95 percent.

26. Apple introduces iPad “on the shoulders” of Amazon.com’s Kindle

Apple CEO Steve Jobs on Jan. 27 introduced the iPad tablet. "Amazon's done a great job of pioneering this functionality with the Kindle, Jobs said at the introductory news conference. “We're going to stand on their shoulders and go a bit further."

The new app powering the iPad is called iBooks. Using it, you can choose books from what looks like an actual bookshelf. All major publishers except for Random House (Penguin, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan and Hachette) are participating in the bookstore.

To read a book you tap on it and it opens to be read via portrait or landscape. Tap anywhere on the right to flip forward in pages, tap on the left to go back. You can also pick up a page and lift it by dragging your finger right to left.

The iPad uses the ePub format for displaying content. A scroll bar on the bottom shows a user’s  progress through the book and what page he or she is on. Users can change type font and size if they desire.

Will the iPad do for the marketing of books what the iPod did for the marketing of music?

The jury is still out. People who have seen the tablet say Apple will market it not just as a way to read news, books and other material, but also a way for companies to charge for all that content. By marrying its famously slick software and slender designs with the iTunes payment system, Apple could help create a way for media companies to alter the economics and consumer attitudes of the digital era.

This opportunity, however, comes with a sizable catch: Apple CEO Steven

Jobs, who made Apple the most important distributor of music by imposing the company’s own will on the music labels, bullying them into accepting Apple’s pricing and other terms. Apple sold lots of music, but the music labels claimed that iTunes had destroyed the concept of the album and damaged their already deteriorating bottom lines.

With the new tablet, publishing companies could be submitting themselves to similar pricing restrictions and sacrificing their direct relationship with customers to Apple.

While Random House is not among the publishers that have initially signed on to the iPad, Stuart Applebaum told the New York Times that the company would “look forward to our continuing conversations” with Apple.

Apple did not comment on whether self-publishers will be able to upload their books.

Slate's Farhad Manjoo reported "the iPad's screen is a traditional backlit LCD display, not E-Ink. LCD isn't as easy on the eyes, but it's got a few upsides - it can display colors, it can do animation, and you can use it in the dark. Pages turn instantly in iBooks, unlike the half-second it takes on the Kindle. You can also see full-color photos, you can get iPad travel books, photo books, cookbooks, and textbooks, all of which look crummy on the Kindle - and authors can even include video."

Publishers Kaplan Publishing, McGraw-Hill Education, Pearson and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt have signed deals to be among the first to provide their textbooks on Apple's recently announced iPad.

Not only will their textbooks, study guides and test prep manuals be featured on the new Apple tablet, but on the iPhone and iPod Touch as well.

The agreements were made with ScrollMotion, a company that provides the iPhone e-reader app Iceberg Reader and works with publishers to digitize their books for the mobile market.

According to ScrollMotion, students can mark text in any of six different colors to visually categorize each highlight. They can write notes or use the microphone built into the iPad and iPhone to record audio notes.

Students can also search text by subject, topic and other criteria. The digital books are even capable of playing quick videos to accompany the content. Finally, students can take interactive quizzes and track their right and wrong answers on the device.

McGraw Hill's CourseSmart textbook line was already available as an iPhone and iPod Touch app before the iPad was introduced.

27. News about self-publishing and vanity presses: B&T to print, distribute PublishAmerica POD titles

Baker & Taylor Inc., the world's largest distributor of physical and digital books and entertainment products has signed an agreement for its TextStream Digital Print Service to print and fulfill orders for PublishAmerica's catalogue of more than 40,000 titles.

PublishAmerica's vanity press titles  will also be available to Baker & Taylor's worldwide network of library and retail customers.

"This collaboration illustrates Baker & Taylor's position as the trusted go-to provider of print and electronic products and services for publishers," said Tom Morgan, CEO of Baker & Taylor. "TextStream enables publishers to operate more efficiently and more quickly deliver the books that readers want when they want them."

Baker & Taylor has than 44,000 retail and library customers worldwide.

28. Author Solutions asks RWA, MWA, SFWA to smoke peace pipe

Kevin Weiss, chief executive officer of leading vanity press Author Solutions, has released a video statement calling for three major authors' guilds to join him for a discussion about choice and opportunity in book publishing.

Weiss specifically addresses the leadership of the Romance Writers of America (RWA), the Mystery Writers of America (MWA) and Science Fiction Writers Association (SFWA) - all vocal critics of ASI's new partnerships with leading traditional publishers.

"I'm inviting the three writers guilds who've expressed the greatest objections with the partnerships we've established with traditional publishing to sit down with us and discuss how we can improve the opportunity for their writers and the choice for readers," Weiss said.

In response to ASI's announcements of partnerships with traditional publishers, the three writer's guilds led a campaign to discredit the publishers involved in creating these groundbreaking opportunities, even going so far as to de-list one as a qualified publisher.

Weiss believes the guilds may not fully understand the role self-publishing can play in expanding options for writers and consumers while at the same time providing benefits to traditional publishers who are in the midst of tremendous upheaval.

"Not only do I want to discuss the differences they have with our business, as well as the partnership models that we're engaging with traditional publishing, but I also want to discuss the things that we are doing and plan to do to advance the cause of their members on a daily basis," Weiss said.

Weiss invited the groups to engage in a direct conversation with him and other ASI leaders at their convenience.

29. Marketing books: what works and what doesn’t

In a recent piece in the Sunday New York Times Book Review called "The D.I.Y. Book Tour," Stephen Elliott discussed the do-it-yourself tour he did for his new book, The Adderall Diaries, which took him to 33 cities - with all events held at fans' homes. Rather than doing a conventional book tour, he wrote in the article, "I decided to try something I hoped would be less lonely. Before my book came out, I had set up a lending library allowing anyone to receive a free review copy on the condition they forward it within a week to the next reader, at their own expense… I asked if people wanted to hold an event in their homes. They had to promise 20 attendees. I would sleep on their couch. My publisher would pay for some of the airfare, and I would fund the rest by selling the books myself." While some readings were disappointing, "All together, I sold about 1,100 books (not counting copies of my older books, which I was also selling) at 73 events. Seven hundred of those were books I purchased wholesale, a few hundred more were sold by local booksellers invited to the readings."

30. Milestones: Records and news of note in book publishing

J.D. Salinger, 91, who created a lasting symbol of adolescent discontent in his 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye, died on Jan. 27. In addition to Catcher in the Rye, which sold more than 60 million copies worldwide, he was the author of three volumes of short stories and 21 other stories. His last story - "Hapworth 26, 1924" - was published by The New Yorker in 1965. The famously reclusive writer died of natural causes at his home in Cornish, N.H. His stellar fictional creation was Holden Caulfield, the teenage anti-hero of The Catcher in the Rye. Enraged by all the "phonies" who make "me so depressed I go crazy," Caulfield became American literature's most famous anti-hero since Huckleberry Finn… Since publishing his first novel in 1976 (it sold 10,000 copies), author James Patterson has become one of America’s best-selling novelists. In 2009 alone, an estimated 14 million copies of his books in 38 different languages were sold. Patterson regularly outsells Stephen King, John Grisham and Dan Brown combined, according to data from Nielsen BookScan... Robert B. Parker, 77, author of the Spenser mystery series, died of a heart attack on Jan. 18 while working at his desk at his home in Cambridge, Mass. Besides his detective fiction, he wrote westerns and YA books, more than 60 in total… While the late Robert Parker is one of the authors who proved early in his career by tirelessly visiting bookstores that best-sellers are built one reader at a time, it was Jacqueline Susann in the mid-1960s who really drove that lesson home.  The author of Valley of the Dolls (30 million copies sold) conducted hundreds of bookstore signings, often dropping in unannounced… Erich Segal, 72, the classics scholar best known for his bestselling 1970 novel made into movie Love Story, died on Jan. 17 of a heart attack in London. He also wrote the screenplay for the popular Beatles movie Yellow Submarine. He was a professor of classical literature at Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Oxford – although never tenured.

31. Amazon offers alternative royalty for Kindle books

Effective June 30, Amazon.com is offering authors and publishers who use the Kindle Digital Text Platform a new royalty option that will give them 70 percent of list price for each book, net of delivery costs, Reuters reported. The company will continue to offer its standard royalty option, which on average is about half the new option's rate.

Delivery costs will be set at 15 cents per megabyte of file size.

Amazon is requiring participants who opt for the new royalty to set prices on titles between $2.99 and $9.99, and at least 20 percent below the lowest list price for the physical book. The ebooks need to available for sale in all territories in which the author or publisher has rights.

In addition, Amazon said, "Books must be offered at or below price parity with competition, including physical book prices. Amazon will provide tools to automate that process, and the 70 percent royalty will be calculated off the sales price."

32. Mystery Writers of America announces 2010 Edgar Award nominees

Mystery Writers of America in January announced its nominees for the 2010 Edgar Allan Poe Awards, honoring the best in mystery fiction, non-fiction and television published or produced in 2009. The Edgar Awards will be presented to the winners at MWA’s 64th Gala Banquet on April 29 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, New York City.

BEST NOVEL: The Missing by Tim Gautreaux (Random House - Alfred A. Knopf); The Odds by Kathleen George (Minotaur Books); The Last Child by John Hart (Minotaur Books); Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death by Charlie Huston (Random House - Ballantine Books); Nemesis by Jo Nesbo, translated by Don Bartlett (HarperCollins); A Beautiful Place to Die by Malla Nunn (Simon & Schuster - Atria Books).

 BEST FIRST NOVEL BY AN AMERICAN AUTHOR: The Girl She Used to Be by David Cristofano (Grand Central Publishing); Starvation Lake by Bryan Gruley (Simon & Schuster - Touchstone); The Weight of Silence by Heather Gudenkauf (MIRA Books); A Bad Day for Sorry by Sophie Littlefield (Minotaur Books - Thomas Dunne Books); Black Water Rising by Attica Locke (HarperCollins); In the Shadow of Gotham by Stefanie Pintoff (Minotaur Books).

BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL: Bury Me Deep by Megan Abbott (Simon & Schuster); Havana Lunar by Robert Arellano (Akashic Books); The Lord God Bird by Russell Hill (Pleasure Boat Studio - Caravel Books); Body Blows by Marc Strange (Dundurn Press - Castle Street Mysteries); The Herring-Seller's Apprentice by L.C. Tyler (Felony & Mayhem Press).

BEST FACT CRIME: Columbine by Dave Cullen (Hachette Book Group - Twelve); Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde by Jeff Guinn (Simon & Schuster); The Fence: A Police Cover-Up Along Boston's Racial Divide by Dick Lehr (HarperCollins); Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art by Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo (The Penguin Press); Vanished Smile: The Mysterious Theft of Mona Lisa by R.A. Scotti (Random House - Alfred A. Knopf).

BEST CRITICAL/BIOGRAPHICAL: Talking About Detective Fiction by P.D. James (Random House - Alfred A. Knopf); The Lineup: The World's Greatest Crime Writers Tell the Inside Story of Their Greatest Detectives edited by Otto Penzler (Hachette Book Group - Little, Brown and Company); Haunted Heart: The Life and Times of Stephen King by Lisa Rogak (Thomas Dunne Books); The Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith by Joan Schenkar (St. Martin's Press); The Stephen King Illustrated Companion by Bev Vincent (Fall River Press)

BEST SHORT STORY: "Last Fair Deal Gone Down" - Crossroad Blues by Ace Atkins (Busted Flush Press); "Femme Sole" - Boston Noir by Dana Cameron (Akashic Books); "Digby, Attorney at Law" - Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine by Jim Fusilli (Dell Magazines); "Animal Rescue" - Boston Noir by Dennis Lehane (Akashic Books); "Amapola" - Phoenix Noir by Luis Alberto Urrea (Akashic Books).

BEST JUVENILE: The Case of the Case of Mistaken Identity by Mac Barnett (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers); The Red Blazer Girls: The Ring of Rocamadour by Michael D. Beil (Random House Children's Books - Alfred A. Knopf); Closed for the Season by Mary Downing Hahn (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Children's Books); Creepy Crawly Crime by Aaron Reynolds (Henry Holt Books for Young Readers); The Case of the Cryptic Crinoline by Nancy Springer (Penguin Young Readers Group - Philomel Books).

BEST YOUNG ADULT: Reality Check by Peter Abrahams (HarperCollins Children's Books - HarperTeen); If the Witness Lied by Caroline B. Cooney (Random House Children's Books - Delacorte Press); The Morgue and Me by John C. Ford (Penguin Young Readers Group - Viking Children's Books); Petronella Saves Nearly Everyone by Dene Low (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Children's Books); Shadowed Summer by Saundra Mitchell (Random House Children's Books - Delacorte Press).

BEST TELEVISION EPISODE TELEPLAY: "Place of Execution," Teleplay by Patrick Harbinson (PBS/WGBH Boston); "Strike Three" - The Closer, Teleplay by Steven Kane (Warner Bros TV for TNT); "Look What He Dug Up This Time" - Damages, Teleplay by Todd A. Kessler, Glenn Kessler & Daniel Zelman (FX Networks); "Grilled" - Breaking Bad, Teleplay by George Mastras (AMC/Sony); "Living the Dream" - Dexter, Teleplay by Clyde Phillips (Showtime).

ROBERT L. FISH MEMORIAL AWARD "A Dreadful Day" - Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine by Dan Warthman (Dell Magazines).

GRAND MASTER: Dorothy Gilman RAVEN AWARDS Mystery Lovers Bookshop, Oakmont, Pennsylvania Zev Buffman, International Mystery Writers' Festival.

ELLERY QUEEN AWARD: Poisoned Pen Press (Barbara Peters & Robert Rosenwald).
THE SIMON & SCHUSTER - MARY HIGGINS CLARK AWARD (Presented at MWA's Agents & Editors Party on Wednesday, April 28, 2010): Awakening by S.J. Bolton (Minotaur Books); Cat Sitter on a Hot Tin Roof by Blaize Clement (Minotaur Books); Never Tell a Lie by Hallie Ephron (HarperCollins - William Morrow); Lethal Vintage by Nadia Gordon (Chronicle Books); Dial H for Hitchcock by Susan Kandel (HarperCollins).

33. ‘Christianity Today’ announces 2010 Book Awards

The annual Christianity Today Book Awards considered 472 titles submitted by 72 publishers. From the field, 12 winners (including two ties) and 11 notables emerged.

The winners:

Apologetics/Evangelism: God Is Great, God Is Good: Why Believing in God Is Reasonable and Responsible, William Lane Craig and Chad Meister, Editors (InterVarsity Press).

Biblical Studies: Sin: A History, Gary A. Anderson (Yale University Press).

Christianity and Culture: Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults, Christian Smith with Patricia Snell (Oxford University Press).

Christian Living: I Told Me So: Self-Deception and the Christian Life, Gregg A. Ten Elshof (Eerdmans).

The Church/Pastoral Leadership (tie): Deep Church: A Third Way Beyond Emerging and Traditional, Jim Belcher (InterVarsity Press)

Why We Love the Church: In Praise of Institutions and Organized Religion, Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck (Moody)

Fiction: Notes from Underground, Fyodor Dostoevsky; Boris Jakim, translator (Eerdmans)

History/Biography: Predestination: The American Career of a Contentious Doctrine, Peter J. Thuesen (Oxford University Press)

Missions/Global Affairs: The New Shape of World Christianity: How American Experience Reflects Global Faith, Mark A. Noll (InterVarsity Academic)

Spirituality: Longing for God: Seven Paths of Christian Devotion, Richard J. Foster and Gayle D. Beebe (InterVarsity Press)

Theology/Ethics (tie): Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation, James K. A. Smith (Baker Academic)

The God I Don’t Understand: Reflections on Tough Questions of Faith, Christopher J. H. Wright (Zondervan)

The 2010 CT Awards of Merit:

Apologetics/Evangelism: Faith at the Edge: A Book for Doubters, Robert N. Wennberg (Eerdmans)
Biblical Studies: The New International Commentary on the New Testament: The First and Second Letters to the Thessalonians, Gordon D. Fee (Eerdmans)

Christianity and Culture: American Babylon: Notes of a Christian Exile, Richard John Neuhaus (Basic)

Christian Living: Singled Out: Why Celibacy Must Be Reinvented in Today's Church, Christine A. Colón and Bonnie E. Field (Brazos)

The Church/Pastoral Leadership: The Monkey and the Fish: Liquid Leadership for a Third-Culture Church, Dave Gibbons (Zondervan)

Fiction: Angel Time, Anne Rice (Knopf)

History/Biography: The Sisters of Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers Discovered the Hidden Gospels, Janet Soskice (Knopf)

Missions/Global Affairs (tie): The Hole in Our Gospel: What Does God Expect of Us? Richard Stearns (Thomas Nelson) The World Missionary Conference, Edinburgh 1910, Brian Stanley (Eerdmans)

Spirituality: The End of Suffering: Finding Purpose in Pain, Scott Cairns (Paraclete)

Theology/Ethics: Knowing Christ Today: Why We Can Trust Spiritual Knowledge, Dallas Willard (HarperOne)

34. Tort-feasing in the book business: Christian publishers in legal rhubarb over kids' books

Thomas Nelson, the world's largest publisher of English-language Bibles, has accused its competitor, evangelical publisher Zondervan, of copyright infringement, civil conspiracy and breach of contract for hiring the same children's book illustrator.

Nelson claims that Zondervan's Princess Twins children's book series look an awful lot like Nelson's Gigi, God's Little Princess series, right down to the button noses, white cats and tea parties.

Meredith Johnson, the illustrator for both book series, is also a defendant in the federal complaint. Nelson says Johnson began working with it in October 2004 on its successful "Gigi" books.

In that series, Gigi and her friend Frances provide Christian lessons to girls between the ages of 4 and 8, who can also buy Gigi dolls, toys, stickers, dress-up kits and clothes.

"Gigi's First Day of School was the number one selling Christian DVD for at least two weeks in 2009," Nelson says in its complaint.

Nelson complains that soon after Gigi's debut, Zondervan hired Johnson to draw its "substantially similar" Princess Twins series.

Zondervan's Princess Emma and Nelson's Gigi "both have round faces, dark wavy hair, button noses, two prominent front teeth and virtually identical smiles," according to the complaint. It adds that several story lines are the same, and each girl has a white cat.

Johnson started working for Nelson on a work-for-hire basis and was apparently “disgruntled with the compensation," when she negotiated a deal with Zondervan, according to the complaint.

Nelson seeks damages for breach of contract, intentional interference with business relations, copyright infringement, unfair competition, violation of the Tennessee Consumer Protection Act and civil conspiracy.

35. Chuckles: Californian schools ban dictionary over naughty words

A school district in California has, at least temporarily, banned the use of Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary 10th Edition because it contains a definition for oral sex. A permanent ban is a possibility.

When a mother volunteering in her son's class at Oak Meadows Elementary in Menifee Union School District, in Southern California, came across a definition of 'oral' sex' in the dictionary - some accounts say that the woman's son came across the word - she complained to the school's principal. Officials decided to remove the dictionary from the district's classrooms.

A newly formed committee will decide whether to ban the dictionary on a permanent basis.

District spokeswoman Betti Cadmus said that principals, teachers and parents will be on the committee along with district representatives.

The committee will "determine the extent to which the challenged material supports curriculum, the educational appropriateness of the material and its suitability to the age level of the students," according to school district policy.

The collegiate dictionaries were purchased several years ago to allow advanced readers in the fourth and fifth grades to look up words that they didn't know, Cadmus said. Other less extensive and more elementary dictionaries remain available to students, she said.

The district's Assistant Superintendent, Karen Valdes, said that while the dictionary, published in 1998, is a respected source, it contains a number of words/definitions that are "age-inappropriate".

The dictionaries were purchased in recent years for use by fourth-grade and fifth-grade students (children aged nine through 11).

School Board member Rita Peters observed that parents should not be setting school policy and that if the dictionary is banned, other books in the library that refer to oral sex should face a similar ban. She is concerned that the removal took place after just one complaint.

Others opposing the move include Peter Scheer of the California First Amendment Coalition, a "nonprofit public interest organization dedicated to advancing free speech, more open and accountable government, and public participation in civic affairs". He declared that "common sense seems to be lacking in this school".

The district officials' decision to ban the dictionary has the support of at least one school board member, Randy Freeman. An elementary school teacher and the father of four daughters in Menifee schools, Freeman noted that Merriam Webster's may be "a prestigious dictionary that's used in the Riverside County spelling bee" but he believes that "there are words in there of concern".

Joan Bertin, executive director of the New York-based National Coalition Against Censorship, whose members include the American Library Association, said dictionary bans have happened in the past, although none has been reported since the mid-1990s.

In the 1970s and early 1980s, there were efforts to ban the American Heritage dictionary at schools in Alaska, Indiana, Missouri and California, she said. The Merriam-Webster's dictionary came under scrutiny in New Mexico in the mid-1990s.

36. Major upcoming trade shows, book fairs and book festivals

February

Feb. 26-28. South Carolina Book Festival, http://www.scbookfestival.org/, Metropolitan Convention Center, Columbia, S.C., more than 6,000 attend three-day festival

March

March 8-10. “Publishing at a Tipping Point” publishing business conference keynoted by Steve Forbes. New York Marriott Marquis. www.publishingbusiness.com.

March 12-15. Shortened National Association of College Stores CAMEX show in Orlando, Fla., reduced to four days from its traditional five. Under the new schedule, the trade show and educational panels will overlap somewhat on Saturday, March 13. 

March 26-28. Spring Book Show - Atlanta, GA. Cobb Galleria Centre - Renaissance-Waverly Hotel. SBS is one of the largest remainder and bargain book shows in the world. www.springbookshow.com
March. Bologna Children’s Book Fair- Bologna, Italy.

April

April 16-18. Philadelphia Book Festival, http://libwww.freelibrary.org/bookfestival/, attended by 35,000 and more than 50 authors, performers.

April 19-21. London Book Fair - www.londonbookfair.co.uk. April 19-21. Global marketplace for sale and distribution of content across print, audio, TV, film and digital channels

April 24-25. Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, a big festival attracting 150,000 readers - http://www.latimes.com/extras/festivalofbooks April 24-

May

May 6-9.  Harlem Book Festival, http://www.qbr.com/, Bermuda.

May 17-20. The Museum Store Association's Retail Conference & Expo
National Stationery Show. New York City.

May 25-27. BookExpo America -  Jacob Javits Center, NYC, the premier North American book show of the year.  http://www.bookexpoamerica.com 

June

The American Library Association - Anaheim, CA.

June 12-13. Printers Row Book Fair, http://www.chicagotribune.com/about/events/printersrow a large book fair attended by more than 100,000 book lovers in 2009.

The International New Age Trade Show West - Denver, Colo.

June 24-29. American Library Association's Annual Conference. Some 2,000 seminars and events as well as a huge trade show. http://www.ala.org/ala/conferencesevents/upcoming/annual/index.cfm Washington, D.C., some 2,000 seminars and events plus a huge trade show.

June 27-30. CBA/The International Christian Retail Show, St. Louis, Mo.www.christianretailshow.com. Considered the best show for Christian authors.See also http://www.marketingchristianbooks.com

June. The National Association of College Stores Conference. www.nacs.org

August

August 20-21 (tentative). The Great American Bargain Book Show (GABBS) – Boston, Hynes Convention Center. www.gabbs.net

August. The New York International Gift Fair – www.nyigf.com

August. New Orleans-Gulf South Booksellers Association.

September

Sept. 4-5. Decatur Book Festival, Decatur (Atlanta), Ga.,  http://www.decaturbookfestival.com/Community/index.php. Held Labor Day weekend, claims to attract over 50,000 book fans.

Sept. 24-26.  Baltimore Book Festival, attracts more than 100 authors, http://www.baltimorebookfestival.com.

October

Oct. 6-10. Frankfurt Book Fair 2010. This is the Big Daddy of all book shows, the biggest in the world. Argentina is the Guest of Honor. Held in Frankfurt, Germany.

Oct. 8-10. Southern Festival of Books: A Celebration of the Written Word, http://tn-humanities.org/festival/index.php, Nashville, Tenn., attracts more than 200 authors from throughout the U.S.

October. Litquake, San Francisco’s Literary Festival.  Event was held Oct. 9-17 in 2009. We’ll post the 2010 dates when we get ‘em. Meanwhile, visit http://www.litquake.org.

Louisiana Book Festival, Baton Rouge, http://lbf.state.lib.la.us. Event was held Oct. 16-17 in 2009. Oct. 30. Also visit http://www.litquake.org.

November

Nov. 14-21. Miami Book Fair International, http://www.miamibookfair.com

draws hundreds of thousands of people.

Dates uncertain – check hyperlink for Show Web site

Litquake, San Francisco’s Literary Festival, http://www.litquake.org

Ann Arbor Book Festival, http://www.aabookfestival.org/, Ann Arbor MI

National Book Festival, http://www.loc.gov/bookfest/ sponsored by the Library of Congress on the Mall in Washington, D.C. Held on Sept. 26 in 2009.

Vegas Valley Book Festival, Las Vegas, http://www.vegasvalleybookfest.org

Kentucky Book Fair, http://www.kybookfair.com. Frankfort Convention Center, attended by up to 5,000 people including 150 authors.

Texas Book Fair, http://www.texasbookfestival.org. Established in 1995 by First Lady Laura Bush, a former librarian, more than 45,000 attend.

Delaware Book Fair & Authors Day, http://heritage.delaware.gov/book_fair.shtml.

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