The
Washington Post reports that the PEN/Faulkner Foundation will announce today that E.L. Doctorow has won its 2006 fiction award for
The March. Doctorow also won the award in 1990 for
Billy Bathgate.
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On Presidents' Day weekend, the AP proclaimed (via the
Boston Globe) the enduring value of the Abraham Lincoln Book Shop in Chicago, Ill., founded in 1938 and owned by Daniel Weinberg.
The store's clientele is exceptional. Doris Kearns Goodwin visited several times while doing research for
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln;
bought "several dozen books"; thanked Weinberg in her book; and did a
signing last November. Other visitors over the years have included Carl
Sandburg (who designed the store's hat and umbrella logo), Ken Burns,
William O. Douglas, Shelby Foote and Bruce Catton.
The store stocks 8,000 books and all kinds of photographs, documents
and John Hancocks (by everyone from Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth to most
presidents, Mark Twain and John Hancock himself).
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The
New York Times profiles
bestselling children's book author Kate DiCamillo as she begins a
publicity journey for her latest title,
The Miraculous Journey of
Edward Tulane. "One-twentieth of me is gratified; nineteen-twentieths
of me is horrified," she told the paper. "I keep thinking that the next
thing is going to be the thing that catches me out as the fraud I am."
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Wahrenbrock's Book House, the used, rare and collectibles bookstore in
San Diego, Calif., was damaged by fire last Friday, according
to local news reports. Fire caused an estimated $150,000 in structural
damage and ruined $75,000 worth of contents. The store was founded in
1935 and bills itself as San Diego's "oldest and largest bookstore."
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A 765,000-sq.-ft. retail-office-residential project at 270 Greenwich
Street in Tribeca in Lower Manhattan will include a Barnes & Noble
and Whole Foods Market,
Crain's New York Business reported. Ground was broken for the project last week.
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National Book Warehouse plans to open at least two new Book Warehouse
stores this year while scaling back--at least for a time--its temporary
Book Market stores, according to
Bargain Book News.
NBW president David Hinkle said that "a temporary concept gives a
retailer a great deal of flexibility but they are challenging to
manage--we'll be scaling back to five or six a year. However, we are
working on several variations and opportunities that could increase
that number as the year progresses."
Last year the company had plans to close as many as 17 of its stores (
Shelf Awareness, November 30).
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Happily Ever After, the children's bookstore in Homer, N.Y., founded in
2003 by Jennifer Jones and Diane Nachtrieb, is closing, according to
News10Now. The story commented: "It's a small shop in a small village that doesn't receive the everyday business it needs to stay open."
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The
Slidell Sentry profiles
Jerry Laiche, who with his wife, Beth, runs the Philosopher's Stone,
the "only locally owned secular bookstore" in Covington, La. Among rare
finds at the used and rare bookstore are several signed first edition
copies of Victor Hugo works (at least one of which seems to include an
inscription to his mistress), which a nun found in the trash after
Hurricane Katrina and brought to the store to repay the Laiches for
their help restoring her convent's library. The Laiches are trying to determine
the value of the find and contribute it to the convent.
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From Paris, the
International Herald Tribune
offers a revue of Lagardère, buyer of Time Warner Book Group, which
continues to diversify from armaments into publishing. As the
Trib puts it, "Rare is the season when a pen is mightier than an M51 ballistic missile."
Among bon bons in the story, Lagardère's main competitor in
the negotiations to buy Time Warner Book Group was HarperCollins's
parent, News Corp. Also while the company has to give up the name Time
Warner, Hachette Livre U.S. is an unlikely new moniker. "I doubt that
the name of the brand will be Hachette," Hachette Livre tete Arnaud
Nourry told the paper. "Hachette is so French. It's not well known in
the U.S."
Concerning further acquisitions in the U.S., Thierry Funck-Brentano,
the company's director of corporate communications, commented: "Why
not? Not today maybe, but one step at a time. We are looking at many
dossiers. There is the possibility to become bigger in the months and
years to come."
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ISBN-13 is less than 11 months away. For some 411 on it, go the Book Industry Study Group's
Web site,
which now has a recording of one of its Webinars on ISBN-13. The
Webinar covers everything from bar coding to educating staff. More live
Webinars to come.
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