First the bad news. Analysts predict that 400 U.S. bookstores will close this year. That's a 500% increase from 2008, and a helluva lot of semi-social pseudo-intellectuals vying for magazine aisle positions at Wal-Mart.
Now the good news! With the release of Ted Kennedy's autobiography, Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol, and Oprah finally announcing her new book club pick, last week was a cash cow for the publishing industry. Hell, even the normally cash-strapped NPR agrees.
Booksellers looking to milk that cash cow a little longer might want to check out The Bookshop Blog's list of 10 Books to Give Your Customers After They've Read The Lost Symbol, The Book Launch Cafe's Fall to Winter Reading List, and BookFinder.com's list(s) of The Most Sought After Out of Print Books.TRAVEL
Twilight fans have descended like a swarm of sparkling, lip balmed locust on the small town of Forks, WA. Click here to read The New York Times' tale of the tween-based tourism boom.POLICE BRIEFS
An armed robbery at an adult bookstore in Iowa perfectly illustrates Sigmund Freud's old axiom: "Sometimes a gun is both a gun and a penis."Taking advantage of the bookselling industry's 100% literacy rate and abnormally advanced ability to picture in their minds whatever it is they read, a criminal in California held up a bookstore using only a note saying, "Gun."AT THE MOVIES
Juno screenwriter Diablo Cody is writing and producing a film based on the Sweet Valley High books. As much as I'd love to hate, this actually sounds like a promising pairing.
Hollywood hearts Stephenie Meyer. Variety reports that the screen rights to Meyer's non-Twilight book, The Host, have been bought, and that Gattaca writer/director Andrew Niccol has been hired to write and direct.AND NOW, THE NONSENSE
Cool covers categorized by color. (Waitaminute -- isn't that sorta...racist?)
A miniature menagerie of three controversial classics that have been given the 'manga makeover.'
Tuesday's Tips for Tipsy Writers -- for those of us who see inspiration, inebriation & imagination as a kind of Holy Trinity.