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Borders Group announced this evening that it has entered into an asset purchase agreement with Direct Brands, a portfolio company of Najafi Companies....

Read more: Columbia House, Direct Brands, Borders Najafi, Borders Bookstores, Book Publishing, Borders Books, Najafi, Book of the Month, Books News

Pottermore has responded to retailers' frustrations over being unable to sell the Harry Potter e-books, saying the idea was to "ensure ease of availability across all reading devices".

Read more: Ereaders, Pottermore Ebooks, Book Publishing, JK Rowling, Harry Potter eBooks, Waterstone's, Pottermore, Ebooks, Books News

It was after the FutureBook Innovation Workshop a few weeks ago that The Bookseller cornered me in the pub.

Read more: Wired Magazine, Book Publishing, Publishing, Waste Land App, eBook Publishing, Futurebook Innovation Workshop, Digital Publishing, Ebooks, Publishing Game Changer, Books News

Independence Day 2011--it's approaching next week, and we wanted to celebrate the spirit of independence in books. In a difficult economy and a landscape of big box stores with no individuality, we asked you for your favorite independent bookstores from around the country and the world, the stores you go to for personal reading recommendations and for the discovery of new voices.

Here's what you've chosen so far this year and we'll run more tomorrow, including your suggestions if you'll leave them in the comments section below. And don't miss last year's series for other ideas:

Independent Bookstores
Independent Publishers
Big Books from Small Publishers

Read more: Half-Priced Books, Greenlight Books, Skylight Books, Lemuria Books, Independent Bookstores, The Bookworm, Indie Bookstores, Boswell Book Company, Bookstores, Books News

Politico, an accelerant to the news cycle like wind is to brushfire, is taking on the one realm of political news that it has not yet sped up: book publishing.

The all-things-politics Web site is teaming up with Random House to publish four e-books about the 2012 presidential campaign, the first of which is scheduled to go on sale sometime before Christmas.

Read more: Ereaders, Book Publishing, Random House, Politico Ebooks, Random House eBooks, Politico Random House, Politico Publishing, Random House Politico, Ebooks, Books News

Maybe you think of yourself as being not so much a "graphic novel" kind of person. But then you watch a movie based on Watchmen or Persepolis or V for Vendetta and you're told that the source material is even better, so you pick one up. Or a friend presses a book by Carla Speed McNeil or Jaime Hernandez or Joe Sacco into your hands, saying, "No, really, I think this is something you'd be into."

However it happens, you start reading, and you realize before long that you're in the presence of something really special -- these plotlines are taking you places of an entirely different scope than those visited by mainstream prose fiction. And you consider: These are nothing like the comic books I read as a kid.

And they truly aren't. Thanks to accidents of economics, flashes of artistic inspiration, and flukes of both government and culture, comics have really "grown up."

The comic book was originally conceived of and executed as entertainment for children. If it aspired to be art, that was fine, as long as those aspirations didn't interfere with the holy trinity of quick, cheap, and strong. They were ten-cent blurts of low-brow bliss, and they had to compete for space on newsstands with the pulps and glossy magazines marketed to adults, so they had to push really hard to fire up kids' imaginations

Over the course of the '40s and early '50s, American comics pretty much stuck to their niche: kid stuff. But then came the blood-spattered comic book series "Crime Does Not Pay". Here's when America freaked out.

Spurred on by a book titled Seduction of the Innocent: The Influence of Comic Books on Today's Youth, a national moral panic arose over the idea that comics were leading to feral teenagers running wild in the streets.

In 1954, the U.S. Senate held a series of hearings about comic books and juvenile delinquency. To save itself, the comics business created its own censoring agency, the Comics Code Authority. Cops and judges had to be represented positively and other clauses banned vampires and werewolves, "suggestive posture," unusually concealed weapons, the words "horror" and "terror" in titles, and "depravity" in general. Pretty lame, right?

And so it happened that the American branch of the comics medium, going through a difficult but promising adolescence, was marched straight back to its childhood room, sedated and infantilized. Imagine if every movie released in the U.S. between 1954 and, say, 1985 had to be rated G, and you'll see the problem.

Even so, American comics kept evolving; there were a handful of gifted, prolific writers and artists who were happy to work within that G-rated framework. The era when the Comics Code was at its peak of power was also the era when Spider-Man, The X-Men, and Iron Man first appeared and when Jack Kirby unleashed the spectacular visions of his "Fourth World" stories.

By the mid-1960s, however, countercultural waves infiltrated all of American society. The first issue of Robert Crumb's hilariously obscene Zap Comix had a little Code-shaped seal on its cover that read "Approved by the Ghost Writers in the Sky." This new generation of comic book authors simply didn't care about "respectability" or newsstand sales.

Soon the Comics Code turned out to be an option rather than an obligation. The artists associated with Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly's art-comics magazine RAW got a toe-hold in the fine art world, which had previously always treated comics as kitschy raw material at best. The legendary cartoonist Will Eisner popularized the term "graphic novel

"When I'd finished my first novel in 1995, I immediately went down the usual route of trying to find a publisher. I signed with a very small press. The book was published and it did absolutely nothing. I'd naively thought that once I'd signed the contract I could sit back and wait for the cash to start rolling in but, of course, that didn't happen (in fact, I still have the remains of the microscopic first print run sitting in boxes in my attic!)."

Read more: Authors, Book Publishing, Self-Published Stars, Ibooks, Self-Published Success, Kindle, Self-Publishing, David Moody, Self-Published Authors, Barry Eisler, Indie Publishing, Amazon, Books News

LONDON — Harry Potter's adventures are going digital.

Author J.K. Rowling announced Thursday that her seven Potter novels will be sold as e-books starting in October – ending the boy wizard's status as one of the highest-profile holdouts against digital publishing.

Read more: Ereaders, Pottermore Ebooks, Harry Potter eBooks, Book Publishing, Jk Rowling Website, pottermore.com, Pottermore Revealed, Jk Rowling Ebooks, Harry Potter Website, Ebooks, Harry Potter Games, Books News

PORTLAND: Mass-producing books for an ambivalent market has led to fears of the death of publication. With Kindles, tablets, and e-books thriving, what place remains for the physical book?

Read more: Ereaders, Hand Made Books, Publishing, Book Publishing, Kindle, Patricia No, Publication Studio, Digital Publishing, Ebooks, Books News

There are two kinds of people in this world. There are the ones who "go with the flow"--who frequent big-budget Hollywood movies, listen to Top 10 radio, watch network tv and read mostly The New York Times bestsellers. It is these people who drive the multi-billion industry we know as "popular culture."

But the second type of person is equally important. We'll call them the pioneers. These are the people who helped move indie films from the art house to the Oscars. They listened to Kurt Cobain long before he was signed to a major record label. These are people who take pride in being the ones to discover--and pass along--the newest indie film, garage band and self-published book.

The fact is, both indie films and indie music have become more accessible these days, more akin to popular culture than cutting edge. Which makes indie books--published and produced by the person who wrote them--practically the last frontier for those itching to discover a new talent. Take, for instance, Amanda Hocking, a self-published author of paranormal books who became a million dollar indie author, later signing a deal with St. Martin's Press. Or John Locke, who just passed the one million sales mark for Kindle downloads, something only seven other authors in history have achieved: Stieg Larsson, James Patterson, Nora Roberts, Charlaine Harris, Lee Child, Suzanne Collins and Michael Connelly.

There are many more great indie authors where John and Amanda came from. And while it will take the "go with the flow" type of people to make them bestsellers, it will first take the pioneers to discover them. So, if you're the kind of discriminating reader who doesn't want to peruse the same book that's on everyone else's night table, then an indie book might be just what you're looking for.

Yes, the wild and wooly world of indie books can be overwhelming. But we've got 5 tips below to help you explore the terrain.

Read more: John Locke, Self-Publishing, Slidepollajax, Self-Published Authors, Barry Eisler, Indie Reader, Amanda Hocking, Traditional Publishing, Authors, Book Publishing, Books News

There’s something new going on in the literary world these days: Some literary agencies are starting up their own publishing divisions.

Read more: Literary Agents, Literary Agencies, Book Publishing, Publishers, Writers, Publishing a Book, Writing, Books News

Technologically driven unemployment is really hardly new: we’re pretty much out of buggy whip makers now just as we’re pretty much out of buggies that need whipping.

Read more: Kindle Self Publishing, Book Publishing, Self Publishing, Amazon Kindle, Kindle Books, Self Published Authors, Traditional Publishing, Books News

A few weeks ago Apple announced iCloud, its new music hosting service.

Read more: Ereaders, Book Publishing, Book Publishing Industry, Apple, Ibooks, Publishing Industry, Icloud, Amazon, Ebooks, Books News

If you happened to have read John Wins: When Rob Bell's Editor Calls, you know I'm thinking about doing a book with an actual, real book publisher. I'm a little hesitant about doing that because, as we all know, the e-book revolution has been unto the book publishing industry what the CD was to cassette tapes. And this player knows there's no rewind button on history. For me, it's fast-forward all the way, until I've crossed the tape into the record books.

And that, my friends, is exactly the kind of high-wire metaphorical artistry that moves the likes of famous authors and big-deal book publishers to often totally think about responding to my calls, emails, letters, instant messages, and attempts to catch them on Skype.

Troubled times or not, there are still some outstanding reasons to take the route of the traditional book publishing. One is that there are, after all, still a lot of open bookstores out there. And I am confident that big bookstore chains like Barnes and Noble are vigorously buttressing themselves against the onslaught of challenges to their retail model now being leveled at them by the rise of the e-book.

Right? Wouldn't you think Barnes and Noble would be on their game right now?

Well, they are. But only if their game is Battleship Down.

Yesterday I visited my local gymnasium-size Barnes and Noble. And, as is my wont, I wonderingly and non-wantonly wandered over to the Christian book section, so that I could see what's happening with all my Christian book author buds who also never call me but whatever.

And there I saw that on the shelf next to one copy each of Rob Bell's Velvet Elvis and Sex God were no copies of Rob's mega-bestselling smash sensation book Love Wins.

Huh? How could they not have Love Wins on the shelf?

Rob Bell's my best friend. We go back weeks. And friends take care of friends. So off I went to the big round info desk situated in the middle of the store like the bridge deck for the Barnes and Noble Enterprise.

Employees buzzed around back there like bees in a hive. But despite first impressions they didn't seem to actually be worker bees, since they almost determinedly refrained from directly assisting we few who were trying to access the sweet deliciousness of their books.

Finally one of them waved me over to a computer. What luck! She was a queen bee: she had strapped to her head the Madonna/helicopter pilot headset, and clipped to her belt was a squawking walkie-talkie that would have been the pride of any socially maladjusted, authority-crazed mall cop.

"Can I help you?" she said.

Having heard what I was looking for, she typed away for a moment before pausing. She repeated the ol' type-pause-type cycle a few times, before looking up to ask me, "What was the title again?"

"Love Wins. By Rob Bell."

"That's the whole title? Love Wins?"

I had a fleeting idea that maybe she really worked at the Starbucks next door, and just happened to wander behind the counter in search of a novelty key chain or $6.99 blank book.

"Yes, Love Wins. By Rob Bell." I made sure to tamp down the mania that I could feel rising in me like a werewolf during full moon. "It's one of the bestselling books in the country."

"Oh, I know. I've heard of it." She peered into her screen like it was showing the answer to life in print too small to read.

"Jay

"To be a person is to have a story to tell."

So said Isak Dinesen, pen name for the Danish writer Baroness Karen von Blixen. Dinesen gave us the deeply honest story of her life in Kenya during the last decades of the British Empire. You may remember Meryl Streep's portrayal of Dinesen in Out of Africa.

As someone who has spent a career teaching people how to write memoir, I'm convinced that like Dinesen we each feel compelled to share our stories. It's how we connect, how we learn. Civilizations have been built because we heeded the lessons learned from stories.

Later this month I'll be on the faculty of the International Women's Writing Guild (IWWG)'s 34th annual summer conference beginning June 24 on the campus of Yale University. The Guild's goal is, "personal and professional empowerment of women through writing," and it draws women from all over the world to this week-long conference.

More than 40 workshops are offered each day: memoir, fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, screenwriting, publishing, along with manuscript critique sessions and workshops on creativity and personal transformation -- all taught by some of the finest writers, teachers, publishing professionals and transformation experts working today.

This Yale conference really is mecca for women writers, the best thing you could do for your writing life this summer. Hannelore Hahn founded the IWWG almost 40 years ago and during that time, she, along with her daughter Elizabeth Julia Stoumen -- and a league of gifted women -- have crafted a presence unique in the pantheon of writing organizations. Where else can you study the intricacies of writing craft and doll making all in one day? Or the legal pitfalls of publishing and soul collage?

At root, what sets the Guild apart is its focus on holistic thinking. The Guild recognizes interconnections between people, events and emotions, as well as conventional logic.

The Yale conference helps women who might not even consider themselves writers find a way to tell their stories. Personal storytelling, preserving these moments, leads to personal transformation, so not only do the workshops at the Guild's summer conference teach the fine points of craft, they give women the chance to enjoy the company of kindred spirits and to claim the daily practice of writing as a means for personal growth.

After years of teaching the art and craft of writing personal stories, what I know is that when people write memoir they change their lives. Few things are as powerful for transformation as discovering you're the hero of your own story.

Here are just a few of the teachers at the Yale IWWG summer conference, June 24-July 1:

• Linda Bergman
• Rainelle Burton
• Pat Carr
• Susanne Davis
• Marj Hahne
• Jan Phillips
• Judith Searle
• Susan Tiberghien

Read more: Book Publishing, Personal Transformation, Susan Tiberghien, Self-Publishing, Women Writing, Fiction Writing, International Women's Writing Guild,

Love me! Read me! Buy me!

Writing a book takes a certain set of skills: intense concentration, imagination, the ability to read the same 400 pages time after time, and the fortitude to take criticism (excuse me, ahem, critique) without weeping. You must learn to shut out all noise at a given moment and you must love solitude.

Getting your book in reader's hands requires the opposite: writing in 140-character soundbites, talking about oneself while sounding modest, balancing online me! me! me! without having REGO (readers eyes glaze over) or worse, RSOY (readers sick of you.)

Anyone who has read the hysterical, but frighteningly close to the truth, New Yorker piece on promotion knows how much falls on the writer these days. (Surprisingly few readers know this; at a recent book club, members were shocked to learn writers did their own promotion.) Even if one has great and supportive publicists, much of the responsibility for getting that book read is on the writer.

"You have to sell it one book at a time," my agent warned me.

How was I supposed to do that? I pictured myself walking door to door with a box of books slung around my neck in the manner of nightclub cigarette girls of yore. In terror, I read every book I could find (thus buying their books), listened to experienced writers, attended forums on promotion, jumped from one online site to another, lurked in online forums (and finally came out of the closet and wrote sad plaintive pleas on same forums) and, in short, thus tried to get a cheap fast Masters in SMB (selling my book.)

The problem is this: except for the most ego-driven or ego-protected among us, it's an unnatural position for most writers. We like working in pajamas. We like watching sentences unfold as ideas unfurl. We don't like shaking our booties.

But to sell, we must.

This is the uncomfortable truth. If you want to follow your fantasy of writing and publishing, then you gotta shake that booty. You must learn how to sell without appearing crazed -- because nobody likes the snake oil man. You must swallow your pride and put it out there--Look, I wrote a book! Want to buy it? -- without coming across as greedy, crazed, or so entranced by yourself that people back away in horror.

None of us succeed all the time. Once I got an email from the moderator of an online alumni group to which I belong. I'd sent out a group email inviting members to a reading I'd be giving in NYC, and received this squirm-inducing scold: Usually I try not to use the XYZ Group for personal promotion. Please refrain in the future.

Shame overcame me as my self-image went from energetic-information-sharer to self-promoting-hussy. I imagined whispers in the online hallways: Who does she think she is? God, enough, already. Will she ever shut up about that damn book?

But they said I have to, I whine.

Yeah. It's hard out there for a pimp. But, I remind myself: this is my dream. Suck it up, self. So here's my advice for writer-friends and my pleas to reader-friends:

Readers: Forgive us each day our daily shilling. It's the only game in town these days. And if you have it in your hearts, and you like our books, please pass the word along. If you really love it, write a review on Amazon or B&N or Goodreads. You can't believe how much it means.

Writers: Don't overdo it online. Talk about other books besides your own. Find a launch buddy or two. Or three. Someone with whom you can be as whiny and self-pitying as you need, someone who won't judge you for it. BFF launch sisters and brothers. Make sure it's someone you can truly root for and who will totally root for you. Know that sometimes she'll be ahead of you. That's okay -- keep rooting. That's what sisters and brothers do for each other.

Most important, learn, learn, and learn more. And then remem

Books, stacks of books waiting to be read, are piled high in my office. Most of these books were sent to me by publicists or the attributed authors, all with the expectation that I'd review their works. Unfortunately, many of these books are dusty with age and any review I'd now write would seem like an afterthought.

There's a feeling of guilt on my part that I've let someone down because I didn't follow through, so I've gotten to the point where I usually demur when I'm queried if I'd be willing to "take a look" at such and such a title by such and such an author, even though some of these pitches are tempting and I think I could manage to fit in some time to read and review the work. Yet, it seems that when I do agree, by the time I get the thick, padded envelope in the mail, I realize that I'll quite likely be unable to get to it in any reasonable time, and it's certainly not because I don't enjoy reading or reviewing. The thing is, since I carry a mortgage, I must first put my energy into the paying gigs.

See, I'm in front of my computer all day critiquing manuscripts, publicizing and marketing other authors, and doing my own writing. By the time early evening rolls around, an hour when many others make time to read, my eyes and brain need a break. The shame of it is that there are fewer places to have one's book reviewed, thanks to so many publications eliminating the position or having folded altogether. So when I first began writing about books that I'd read from my own library, I was surprised, not to mention honored and willing, when the queries for reviews began to come across my desk. Well, I'm still honored and willing, but simply find that I need to put my energy into working for my clients, since that is what pays the bills, which leads me to wonder, is paying someone to review a book still considered unethical, as it had been in the past? Meaning, it would be easier to make the time during the day if I knew I'd be yielding something in return beyond a free book, not to mention the possibility of discovering a delightful story.

There are places that do require payment for reviews, but, overall, there is still a stigma about the practice. To make it clear, however, I'm not suggesting paying someone to give a book a good review, but rather paying someone for their time to read and review a book. The question is, who pays? The publisher? The author? Or should the system remain as is, and have it be a matter of crossing one's fingers and hoping that the reviewer finds the time to follow through.

That said, the next blog you'll see from me will quite likely be a review for a novel I'm very much looking forward to reading. I just hope I can get to it in a timely manner. You know the saying, so many books, so little time.

Read more: Book Reviewing, Books, Book Reviews, Book Publishing Industry, Book Publishing, Book Publishing Economics, The Economics of Book Publishing, Books News

This long post is a primer on what’s happening / happened to publishing, and also some models for revenue going forward… The models, of course, are based on the same grey / black market economies that predict most major economic shifts — thus the title.

Read more: Soft Skull Press, Book Publishing, Thomas Pynchon, Phillip K. Dick, Steven King, Oprah, Future of Literature, Future of Publishing, University Press, Cyberterrorism, Books News

The 2011 edition of BookExpo America, or as we call it in the trade “BEA,” has just concluded—the industry’s annual hoedown where booksellers, authors, agents, and publishers gather in the uninspiring setting of New York’s Javits Convention Center to talk shop, promote new books, and of course gossip.

Read more: Book Promotion, Bea, Book Publishing, BookExpo America, Javits Convention Center, bea2011, Bookexpo, Books News

As The Oprah Winfrey Show ends its 25-year run on Wednesday, its host says Oprah's Book Club will follow her to her fledgling cable network, OWN. Without offering details, she vows, "I'm going to try to develop a show for books and authors."

Read more: Oprah Book Club, Oprah Publishing, Oprah Winfrey, Book Publishing, Oprah, The Oprah Winfrey Show, Books News

Many thousands of years ago, when I was still a whelpish newspaper reporter in Chicago, I did a short profile of a retired television repairman who’d written a memoir entitled “The Perilous Life of Boris B. Gursky.”

Read more: Book Publishing, Stephen King, Amanda Hocking, Self-Publishing, The Plant, Writer's Digest, Barry Eisler, The Perilous Life of Boris B. Gursky, Books News

Co-written with Amy Edelman.

This is part three in a series about what authors who are self-publishing need to know -- not sugar coated and not exaggerated.

Part One is here, you might want to peruse it first. We covered: First you need to Write a Great Book and Self Publish for the Right Reasons. In Part Two, here, we covered Damn It, Learn the Business, and Watch for Pickpockets.

What's next?

5. No One Owes You Anything

Like we said -- and it bears repeating-- even if writing is an art, publishing is a business. Even self-publishing. So you need to act like a business person, with all the people you deal with, and treat everyone with respect.

From the copy editor, to the people the people you try to get reviews from -- don't act as if anyone owes you anything. They don't. Yes, you may be broke. And yes, your book may be the best thing since Harry Potter. But everyone has to make a living. Don't ask for favors from strangers. Don't ask them to lower their prices for you for no good reason. Even if you are in your bedroom wearing bunny slippers and pjs -- when you email the cover designer you need to treat her right if you want her to treat you right back.

There's an old saying ... you get what you pay for. And if you aren't willing to pay for things that are important (an editor, a cover designer, pinpointed advertising, a publicist to help you get reviews) you may as well file the book into a folder on your desktop and get a job at the Gap.

6. Embrace the control

One of the biggest differences between you and a traditionally published author is that a self-pubbed author is responsible for everything. Not just writing the book -- but cover design, editing, producing, distribution and publicity as well.

An author can look at that as either a good or a bad thing. There are many traditionally published authors who have hated the cover their publisher's decided on. Or the title or the marketing or the advertising. But there was nothing they could do about it.

As a self-published author you have the choice. Embrace the power to create a book that is truly yours. Don't be a whiner or a copycat. Remember, for every author who gives you his tried and true method of how to do it, there will be another author who did it exactly opposite and succeeded too. Learn what you can but be true to your vision.

Money is tight and books -- especially these days -- are bountiful. People don't buy books --even $.99 ones -- without reading an excerpt or a few reviews on the page at the online bookstore. Ten thousand people may click on your book, but not one will hit "buy" if it doesn't grab their attention, intrigue them, amuse them, or move them.

Writing a book is a creative process. Think of publishing and selling your book as an extension of that process.

7. Not Everyone is Amanda Hocking

Amanda Hocking is one in a million. Literally. Over a million books were self published last year. No one else even came close to the number of copies she sold.

In fact you might be surprised to know how few authors sold more than a thousand copies.

In a recent article in the Washington Post, Smashwords founder Mark Coker said, "We have less than 50 people who are making more than $50,000 per year. We have a lot who don't sell a single book."

Amazon's Jeff Bezos concurred: "There are a lot of books, even low-priced, on Kindle that are not selling at all."

As we've said in Part One and Part Two, you shouldn't self publish because you are impatient. Or because you don't like rejection.