Maeve Binchy Dies at 72 — BBC
This makes me so sad! She was one of my mother’s favorite authors – and a fantastic Irish story-teller.
If you haven’t read any of her books, I highly suggest you do so now. Circle of Friends and Echoes are my two favorites. She has an honest and open charm in her writing, and her stories are true to life.
Thank you, Publishers Lunch, for providing the link.
In Supreme Court Filing, Libraries Say Decision in Wiley Suit Threatens Lending Rights — Publisher’s Weekly — Andrew Albanese
In a recent interview with PW, lawyer Jonthan Band, who authored the LCA brief, said a ruling upholding the Second Circuit’s interpretation of First Sale would be “a blow to the heart of the library enterprise,” because it would mean libraries conceivably could not lend books that were printed abroad. “Not only books from foreign publishers,” Band explained, “but American-published books that are merely printed overseas.” The LCA brief notes that a significant portion of U.S. library collections consist of resources that were manufactured overseas, and more than 200 million books in U.S. libraries have foreign publishers.
Read on for more of the legalities. It’s incredibly to interesting to see how ebook lending and publishing can help some areas of the book business and harm others.
Simon & Schuster is adding QR codes to all its print books. Will readers bite? — paidContent — Laura Hazard Owen
Twenty-six percent of Simon & Schuster’s sales are now digital, and the QR codes are seen as a way to link digital and print. The codes “make it easy for consumers to visit our site and hopefully subscribe to one of our newsletters,” S&S chief digital officer Ellie Hirschhorn wrote in a recent email to employees. Scanning the QR code on a book ”will bring the consumer to the author’s mobile page on S&S.com where they can sign up for an email, browse the author’s other books and watch video.” Jackets will also include a printed link to the author’s website “so consumers without smartphones or QR scanners could still easily find the author’s page.”
Personally, I’m not sure it will catch on. QR codes still remain somewhat of a mystery to most Americans – and those who are aware of it rarely whip out their smart phones to scan things. What do you think?
Click here! Just click here! It’s so simple it’s brilliant!
Thank you, Hachette Book Group / Little, Brown!
Indie Publishers Back Agency Model, Criticize DoJ Deal – Publisher’s Weekly
Nine independent publishers have combined to file joint comments objecting to the pending settlements of the Department of Justice’s lawsuit with Hachette, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster related to e-book pricing. The publishers noted that while they continue to sell e-books under the wholesale model, they have “benefitted significantly”–along with authors, booksellers and consumers,– from the ability of the Big Six publishers to adopt the agency pricing model with Amazon, since those arrangements, “contributed dramatically to increased competition and diversification in the distribution of e-books.”
It is suggested that the ruling could ban the agency model, which then defeats all purpose of bookseller/publisher competition.
Monopolies are never good, folks.
The nine publishers backed their statement with statistical reports previously conducted in March. Data always helps in arguments!
The publishers, who noted that they were never contacted by the DoJ to get their views on industry issues, concluded by stating that if the defendant publishers did indeed collude, competition should be restored in a way that does not ban the use of the agency model, something that would “harm innocent third parties such as the Independent Book Publishers, other trade book publishers, authors, booksellers and consumers.”
Jeez.
ALA Hands Out First Adult Prizes – Publisher’s Weekly – Andrew Albanese
A committee of librarians has done what Pulitzer Prize officials could not do this year: they selected a winning work of fiction, giving the first-ever Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction to Irish novelist Anne Enright for her book The Forgotten Waltz (W.W. Norton). Robert K. Massie, meanwhile, took home top honors for nonfiction for Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman (Random House).
Thank you, American Library Association! Click to find out more about the awards and the runners-up!
US judge sets 2013 trial date for Apple ebook lawsuit – Reuters – Basil Katz
Following a hearing in Manhattan federal court, U.S. District Judge Denise Cote said a bench trial in the case will begin June 3, 2013, for Apple and two publishers who are fighting the antitrust charges.
The U.S. Justice Department sued Apple in April, saying it colluding with five publishers to boost e-book prices in early 2010, as the Silicon Valley giant was launching its popular iPad tablet.
As more and more information is revealed, a part of me wants to bang my head against a desk. Really, everyone?
“Is She in a Coma, or Is She Dead?” – ShelfTalker blog – Elizabeth Bluemle
If you’ve ever worked in a bookstore — or, for that matter, shopped in one — you’ll know that booksellers do a fair amount of detective work. Every day, we track down books people have heard about on the radio or from friends, cobble together titles from fragments of customer memory, and plumb our own reading experiences to make matches with the keywords our patrons conjure.
It’s not exactly news, but something fun and quirky to read. I was thrilled to start working in a bookstore for this exact reason (heck, in came in handy when I worked at an architecture library!): to solve mysteries when someone could barely remember the book title or author.
A funny one happened a few days ago, actually. A lady came up to the counter and said she heard a book on NPR with “cheese…or something” in its title. “Something so outrageously weird that I thought I’d remember the whole thing, but I can’t! I just remember cheese!”
We have the ability to search for books talked about in the media, but only if it was discussed within the last two weeks. This lady told me it was recent. To our system, it wasn’t recent enough. I began to ask her other questions, such as “what was it about? What struck you, other than the title?” and put what she said as key terms. The book has absolutely nothing to do with cheese – it was actually a very serious novel – but the title did contain the word. We found it, which was a great eureka! moment, and also one of the most hilarious experiences I’ve ever had.
Do you have any stories, as a bookseller or customer, that is similar to this?
Books-A-Million Adds Voice in Opposing DoJ Deal – Publisher’s Weekly – Jim Milliot
Books-A-Million has joined the growing number of parties objecting to the Department of Justice’s agreement with Simon & Schuster, Hachette and HarperCollins to settle the department’s e-book price fixing lawsuit. BAM’s letter, signed by president and CEO Terry Finley, strikes especially hard at the provisions in the settlement that would impose restrictions on how the publishers can do business with all third parties (including BAM) that were not involved in the lawsuit.
The agency model is a good thing. The bad thing is having everything at the same price. It’s terrible for competition purposes and for consumers: how are we going to find the best prices if we cannot search for them?
Book Expo America 2012: Diversity Rules at YA Editors’ Buzz Panel – Publisher’s Weekly – Carolyn Juris
For those of you interested in the goings-on of the BEA 2012, here’s an article that tackles the big dystopia quesiton: do we really need another trilogy? Yes.
…the [young adult] genre has plenty of room for dystopias, realistic fiction, thrillers—provided they present authentic teenage voices that readers can relate to.
…It’s the authentic teenage voice, [Karre] adds, that makes a novel successful, no matter the subject. “If the story lacks the teenage voice, it lacks life,” Karre said. “Whether you set a novel in Dubuque or District 12, there’s a universal teenager at the core of every YA novel.”
I think this is very true. YA goes through trends — a few years ago, it was all about vampires and werewolves. Now it’s mostly dystopias/post-apocalyptic, which taps into the political climate across the world today. No matter what trend the YA fiction follows, it should still speak to the teenager (or adult, truly) in the midst of discovering their identity.
Scribbles & Wanderlust 