listings
The Interest Group will be chaired by Phil Madans of Hachette Book Group and will meet bi-monthly on the second Tuesday of the month. The meetings will take place in New York City at Hachette's offices at 237 Park Avenue. A conference line will be provided for those who cannot attend in person.
The first three meetings, which will run from 10 a.m.-12 p.m., will take place April 8, June 10 and August 12. For more information, e-mail info@bisg.org.
No word yet on how to pronounce PIWIG . . .
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Len Riggio Barnes & Noble Stock Purchase Watch:
On Monday and Tuesday, the chairman of B&N bought another 320,000 shares of company stock, in this case via B&N College Booksellers, a private entity that he owns. He purchased the shares for between $28.21 and $29.54 each, or a minimum of slightly more than $9 million. Riggio owns about 15.3 million shares of B&N, roughly 25% of the company stock outstanding.
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Before its evening awards presentation Saturday, March 29, at the Heathman Hotel in Portland, Ore. (Shelf Awareness, January 8, 2008), the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association
will hold a lunch, an ABA Forum and a session "Booksellers at the
Tipping Point: Leveraging Localism and Independence to Promote Your
Store." Participants will include the ABA's Avin Domnitz and Len Vlahos
as well as ABA president Russ Lawrence of Chapter One Book Store,
Hamilton, Mont.
Booksellers planning to attend the ABA Forum program should RSVP to sarah@bookweb.org.
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Congratulations to Susan L. Weis, proprietress of breathe books, Baltimore, Md., who was named Merchant of the Year by the Hampden Village Merchants Association, her local business association. She was cited for running a successful business, for many events that "bring lots of people to Hampden"--she has 73 planned in April alone--for being "a positive, creative force for our community" and for her work for the association, where she has been secretary for two years. (Incidentally, Benn Ray, owner of Atomic Books, is president.)
Weis, who is also on the ABA's Bookseller Advisory Council, contributes to New Age Retailer and last but not least does a column on New Age topics and is a reporter on occasion for Shelf Awareness, wrote: "I was very excited to win. My bookstore has only been open three and
half years and to be recognized by my peers whom I greatly admire, was
really wonderful.
"Fittingly for our eclectic, funky little neighborhood, the Merchant of the Year Award is a giant golden cup, reminiscent of a bowling trophy! Everyone who wins gets their name engraved on the side. The winner keeps the trophy until he or she must relinquish it to the next years' winner. I keep the cup atop a stand behind the counter. It's a nice reminder of what it means to be in business in a warm and caring independent business culture such as this little haven called Hampden in Baltimore."
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In what might be termed the dawn of Penguin Classics 2.0, CNET.com reported that "Penguin and start-up Six to Start launched their new ARG [alternate-reality game], We Tell Stories,
a new-style game that its creators say is a hybrid of traditional
story-telling, Web 2.0-style mashups, interactive games, and classic
novels." Players can use "a Google Maps mashup to work their way
through a brand-new story line based on John Buchan's famous novel, The Thirty-Nine Steps."
"We
knew when we came up with the idea that using Google Maps (would allow)
lots of movements," said Adrian Hon, chief of creative for Six to
Start, "like running down streets and driving down roads. It's a bit
like The Bourne Identity."
CNET added that, at the "end
of the game's rainbow is a prize that any erudite player would
certainly desire: Penguin's complete library of 1,300 books." Although
the organizers anticipate attracting players from all over the world,
the game is based in England and "only U.K. residents are eligible to
win the library grand prize."
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Twenty lots of J.K.
Rowling's books were auctioned off by Christies International for a
total of £36,560 (US$73,000), dramatically exceeding a low presale
estimate of £20,000 pounds.
According to Bloomerg News, a first edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
that went for £4,000 "raised questions about Christie's controls after
the London-based auction house confirmed that it didn't check whether
the first edition . . . might have been stolen from the
Northamptonshire Libraries & Information Service, whose label
appears on the volume."
When Bloomberg asked the library to
check the book's barcode number, it was confirmed that the library had
"disposed of the book in 1999."
"Someone got lucky,'' said Grace Kempster, Northamptonshire's library-service manager.
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In other big bucks book news, a rare, inscribed copy of the 1937 first edition of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit sold at auction for £60,000 (US$118,873), according to the Guardian, which noted that the inscription was "a message of thanks to his friend Elaine Griffiths, who helped the author see the work into print."