Collection Developments @ Sno-Isle

despite typos and a lack of information regarding the demographics of respondents and full methodology (apparently not made public), Random House commissioned an online survey of readers that is worth a quick read.  a couple of questions not asked: do you prefer to buy online or at a brick and mortar store (sort of implied by the question of “Where do you most often buy books,” pg. 4, in which online is at 43%) and if 62% of respondents are browsing online without a specific book in mind, pg. 7, what guides them?  also, if the most sold genre is romance and only 7% of respondents are buying this genre online, pg. 5, does that mean that most are buying at brick and mortar, getting them from the library, e-book viewing, or….?  not quite sure what the “with passport” and “without passport” distinction means, pg. 9, perhaps a reference to citizenship?  the reference to “residents of planet earth,” pg. 9, made me question the authenticity of the survey, but it does seem to be legit.  via Dear Author.

Dear Author posted a commentary from a Forbes’ columnist claiming that authors will benefit monetarily from Amazon’s monopoly over the publishing industry in only allowing Amazon p.o.d. titles to be sold on its site (summarized nicely here). clearly, the author is not up-to-date on the pitfalls of the Amazon reviewing process and since when have monopolies passed along profits to anyone?!

what is sort of fascinating about the attempt by Amazon to dominate with Booksurge is the possibility that major publishing houses will go the way of McCellan’s What Happened and start printing more titles using p.o.d. technology. will Amazon sell the latest John Grisham if the publisher doesn’t go with Booksurge? or are they just assuming that the big houses will outsource only to Amazon?

an object of buzz at BEA was the much publicized Kindle.  the device is not exactly the new, popular kid in school with booksellers envisioning reduced sales and an increase of Amazon’s power in the marketplace.

Sarah over at Smart Bitches devoted a posting to the Kindle and ebooks in general and brings up a very important point:  ebooks are not significantly cheaper to the consumer, especially compared to the price of a mass market pb, and this is a major hurdle.  the way i see it, it’s a similar phenomena to what’s happening in the music industry:  downloading a cd from itunes is not that much cheaper than going to the record store.  and for someone who is lazy like myself, downloading an album and then burning it to a cd for my car is much more time intensive, less enjoyable than a trip to the record store, and results in a far less attractive product than a cd with the glossy cover art, tracts, and lyrics.  if ebooks are going to hit mainstream, changes on many levels will need to be made.

first introduced and discussed here, Borders is opening one of their concept stores in Tukwila:

Borders will open another new concept store, in July in Tukwila, Wash., near Seattle, one of 14 new concept stores Borders is opening this year. The 26,368-sq.-ft. store will be in the Westfield Southcenter Mall, located at Southcenter Parkway and Strander Boulevard.

this news slipped through the cracks last week, but the charges against comics shop owner, Gordon Lee, were dismissed after more than 3 years. let’s here it for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund! below is today’s Shelf Awareness blurb on the news and here’s Neil Gaiman’s journal entry.

After a mistrial and many delays, prosecutors have dismissed all charges against Gordon Lee, the Rome, Ga., comics shop owner who was charged with obscenity for giving a copy of Alternative Comics #2 to a minor during a street fair. The comic book included a depiction of Pablo Picasso nude in a non-sexual context.

Neil Gaiman announced the dismissal at New York Comic Con last week. Charles Brownstein, executive director of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, which spent $100,000 helping to defend Lee, commented: “This is a victory for Gordon and a victory for comics. For more than three years, the comics world has stood behind Gordon’s innocence and now we are vindicated.”

Authors Guild Looking at Antitrust Issue of Amazon’s POD Plan

By Jim Milliot — Publishers Weekly, 4/6/2008 10:03:00 AM

Saying it is reviewing the antitrust and other legal implications of Amazon’s “bold move,” the Authors Guild sent an e-mail late Friday to its membership questioning the motives—and implications—of the e-tailer’s new position on print-on-demand that makes publishers use its BookSurge division if they want the sell their titles on Amazon in the traditional manner. While Amazon is pitching the move as a consumer-friendly change that will improve the speed of shipping books and other products, the Guild says it suspects the motivation has more to do with profit margin than customer service.

If Amazon is successful in wresting a large chunk of pod business away from current leader Lightning Source (which the Guild says does a good job), they will have taken a huge step in controlling publishing’s supply change and thus control much of the industry’s long tail business, the Guild said. “Once Amazon owns the supply chain, it has effective control of much of the “long tail” of publishing,” the statement reads. “Since Amazon has a firm grip on the retailing of these books (it’s uneconomic for physical book stores to stock many of these titles), owning the supply chain would allow it to easily increase its profit margins on these books: it need only insist on buying at a deeper discount — or it can choose to charge more for its printing of the books — to increase its profits. Most publishers could do little but grumble and comply.”

If Amazon does impose deeper discounts, the big losers, other than Lightning, will be authors, since many are paid for on-demand sales based on the publisher’s gross revenues, as well as publishers, the Guild says.

The statement closes by inviting anyone who has information that could help the Guild investigate the matter to contact it by phone at 212-563-5904 or through its site, authorsguild.org.

If You Want Closure in Your Relationship, Start With Your Legs won this year’s oddest book title award. Reuters reported that the winner of the Bookseller’s 30th annual competition “took an impressive one-third of the 8,500 votes cast online.” I Was Tortured by the Pygmy Love Queen finished a distant second.

from today’s Shelf Awareness

from today’s Shelf Awareness:

One of the stranger censorship laws we’ve heard about, signed into law last week by Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, requires mainstream bookstores in the Hoosier State to register with the government if they sell “sexually explicit materials.” As is often the case with these kinds of laws, “sexually explicit” is defined so broadly as to apply to mainstream novels, work with any kind of sexual content and educational books about sexuality and sexual health.

One of the bill’s sponsors told the Indianapolis Star that the law is aimed at “helping counties that do not have zoning ordinances track businesses selling sexually explicit material, including videos, magazines and books,” especially adult stores that open along interstates in the southern part of the state. And a spokesperson for the governor told the Star that the law applies only to new businesses, those that relocate or businesses that begin offering “sexually explicit” material after the law goes into effect.

But many booksellers and legal experts disagree. “This lumps us in with businesses that sell things that you can’t even mention in a family newspaper,” Ernie Ford, owner of Fine Print Book Store in Greencastle, said in the Star.

In a statement, ABFFE president Chris Finan said, “It is un-American to force booksellers to register with the government based on the kinds of books they carry. It is also unconstitutional, and we intend to do everything we can to challenge this violation of the First Amendment rights of Indiana booksellers and their customers.”

The Great Lakes Booksellers Association, 15 independent bookstores and Borders Group sent a letter to the governor before he signed the bill. But a statement from the governor’s office indicated that he had not received the letter and that “no complaints were brought to our attention.”

Now the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression is asking the Media Coalition to challenge the new law.

Book Sense

The winners of the 2008 Book Sense Book of the Year Awards, honoring the titles ABA members most enjoyed handselling, are:

• Fiction: A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini (Riverhead/Penguin)
• Nonfiction: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver, with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver (HarperCollins)
• Children’s Literature: The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick (Scholastic Press)
• Children’s Illustrated: Knuffle Bunny Too: A Case of Mistaken Identity by Mo Willems (Hyperion Books for Children)

The awards will be presented at ABA’s annual Celebration of Bookselling on Thursday, May 29, at Hotel ABA (the Renaissance Hollywood) during BookExpo America. For the honor titles, click here.

unfortunately, it looks like All for Kids is not going to make it.  definitely an institution that will be missed; hopefully, a buyer will come forth.