The Chicago Tribune’s Books section, as threatened, finally showed up in the Saturday paper. As part of the general trend of declining book coverage in newspapers, this isn’t as alarming as the Atlanta Journal Constitution’s decision to eliminate the job of the books editor, but taking Books out of Sunday does seem like a turn for the worse.

The Trib, of course, is billing its changes as an evolution, even an enhancement of coverage. And while they have added more total column inches of book coverage, fewer people will see it, so there’s no net gain. But this section needed some kind of a shakeup, so maybe the charitable view is that some change is better than no change. We’ll see.

A few first impressions:

Saturday

Elizabeth Taylor’s note in the Sunday paper reminded “faithful readers” that Books would now be found on Saturday and touted the supplement’s “freshened features.” It looked like more of the same to me, however, albeit with a slightly redesigned layout (liberal use of horizontal rules) and maybe even a few more reviews than usual (the whole thing measures 16 pages front to back).

I didn’t spot any new features — “From the Precincts,” “Chat Room,” and “Theme Park” all looked about the same. The “Literary Events” section is still dominated by paid ads. Wouldn’t it be nice if they listed all noteworthy literary events free of charge but charged for photos and premium placement?

One item of concern: “Crime Watch” is written by Paul Goat Allen, not Dick Adler. Is Adler on vacation or is this permanent? I have no idea. Nothing against Paul Goat Allen, but let’s not go changing everything.

Sunday

Page 10 covers books the way the Tempo section covers the news: lite. Julia Keller, the Trib’s overworked cultural critic, now writes the “Lit Life” column. “In Brief” blurbs three items pulled from the wires, and “Reviews Online” seems to promise five web-only reviews — until you read the fine print and realize that the reviews ran on Saturday. The “Literary Directory” reprints Saturday’s stuff, minus photos, with a few library events thrown in.

Nothing against Julia Keller, but even her boundless reserve of interest in the world seems to have been put to the test by her assignment to tells us what every news event means. And it’s unfortunate that, instead of reaching out to someone with specifically literary credentials, they instead reassigned someone in-house to the beat.

If the switch to Saturday was inevitable, at least they didn’t leave it at that. The fact that they kept a page open for books in the Sunday paper — and added a new column — shows at least an attempt to add some value for BookPeople (TM). (Hopefully it’s not just part of a six-month plan to wean us off Sunday book coverage entirely.) But if the change presented an opportunity to try something truly fresh, it’s a missed opportunity. Here’s a radical thought: if you’re not getting enough readers and advertisers to support your Books section, why not try a radical new approach?

The TribBooks blog will be launched “this month” so I’ll be watching for that.

Simon & Schuster is trying to redefine “out of print” — much to its authors’ chagrin. From the New York Times (”Publishers and Authors Parse a Term: Out of Print,” by Motoko Rich):

When is a book out of print?

A change in standard contract language at Simon & Schuster could effectively alter the answer to that question, and the Authors Guild, a trade group that says it represents about 8,500 published authors, is urging writers and agents to exclude the publisher from book auctions because of it.

Basically, most book contracts allow authors to reclaim the rights to their works if the publisher isn’t making them available for sale. But now, thanks to print-on-demand technology, Simon & Schuster is claiming that books don’t fall out of print until they say so: even if they’re not printing and shipping books, as long as a customer has the option of ordering even a single book through a POD vendor, the book remains in print, and Simon & Schuster continues to hold the rights.

This deprives writers of the chance to re-sell their work to a new publisher who will put a meaningful sales effort behind the book. It also reminds me of baseball before free agency. Would that free-agent authors became multimillionaires as often as do baseball players.

Carlos Orellana, one of Booklist’s two production editors, sent me this great MetaFilter post (”things found written upon books,” by blahblahblah):

We’ve discussed odd bookmarks, but what about the humble inscription? Start with two lovely efforts to collect inscriptions, including the Book Inscription Project and Inscripticateded Dedicated to the One I Love, which tracks inscriptions found at used book stores. Read up on the history of inscriptions at the Library of Scotland’s wonderful Private Life of Books, and discover how inscriptions change the value of books. And pity the poor author, who often has to come up with interesting inscriptions for book tours. Have you seen or written any good inscriptions?

You can lose yourself in these links for a good long while. And if that’s not bad enough, the post leads you to an even better post (”things found in books,” by madamjujujive — if that is her real name):

Librarians and book collectors have many tales about ephemera left in books. While the legend of the bacon bookmark may be among the more pervasive reports of strange finds, a smallpox sample is probably the most bizarre. There are blogs and discussion boards that record other makeshift markers. Some readers prefer designated over spontaneous markers. Mirage Bookmark has an extensive collection of bookmark ephemera, with Bookmark of the Week and Bookmark Collector also offering noteworthy collections.

Hostess pies? Bacon? Smallpox? If those were all I had on hand to mark my place, I think I’d just try to remember the page number.

BookSwim. Which I learned about from Galleycat (”Another “NetFlix for Books” Idea“):

This time the company is BookSwim, and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune has more on the fledgling company based out of New Jersey. For $15 to $20 per month, the company will send your top five book choices. Return three books in a prepaid envelope, and your next three choices will be mailed to you.

Why would people pay to borrow books instead of getting them for free at their local libraries?

…”the big complaint is most libraries have working hours — they typically close at 5 p.m.,” Siddiqui said. And someone may have checked out the book you want.

This reminds me of those commercials where they try to sell you a new gadget by showing you how hard it is to do a task the old way — and when the old way is perfectly easy. The first one I remember seeing was when they started putting plastic screw-tops on milk and juice cartons. The “before” concept, always filmed in black-and-white, was illustrated by five-thumbed wonders who struggled to open old-fashioned milk cartons (granted, that’s some pretty challenging technology), dousing themselves with milk and juice in the process.

(There must be an industry term* for that kind of commercial. And there must be examples on YouTube. But I need help with my search strategy.)

I’m no businessman, but I always thought the idea was to find an unmet need and meet it rather than convince people their needs aren’t being met. But what do I know? Milk cartons have plastic screw-tops now.

*Just talked to my friend Carlos. He and his wife, Andie, call this the “black-and-white world — where everything goes wrong and insurance rates are through the roof.” See the Table-Mate II, for instance.

Well, even though the skies turned blue yesterday, I never did see any skywriting. And leave it to The Weekly Standard (”Wrong for 95 Years,” The Scrapbook) to rain on Studs’ parade:

But does a bilious radio DJ who turns a tape recorder on and off, and hires somebody to type up the transcripts, qualify as a “historian,” even an “oral” historian? And while we’re impressed by Studs’s longevity, and love skywriting, it’s worth pointing out that 74 of those 95 years were spent extolling the virtues of the Soviet Union, in print and on the air, at the expense of Studs’s native country.

Most of us will remember him for extolling the virtues of working-class Americans, a group The Weekly Standard isn’t too well acquainted with.

Frankly, I think they miss the blacklist.

It’s good to know I’m not the only one who gets behind on the news. Sometimes even newspapers get behind on the news. The Washington Post (”Writing Under the Influence,” by Bob Thompson), using Jonathan Lethem’s March-published novel, You Don’t Love Me Yet, as a peg, is just now getting around to talking to him about his great essay (”The Ecstasy of Influence“) in the February issue of Harper’s.

No, no, Jonathan Lethem concedes, he’s not really in favor of plagiarism. At least not the deceptive, thieving kind.

But he does want to spark an argument that will “explode the word.”

The Brooklyn-bred novelist (”Motherless Brooklyn,” “Fortress of Solitude”) is fascinated by what he calls “the mysteries of authorship — the idea that things arise in culture that don’t quite belong to anyone.” 

In The New York Sun (”How Not to Write a Best Seller“), David Blum asks whether good reviews actually sell books. It’s a good and obvious question, one worth asking even if we BookPeople (TM) prefer to focus less on money and more on the cultural conversation. (Money, we’ve learned, has a great effect on the cultural conversation.)

His conclusion? Maybe not so many. (Note that he’s talking about newspaper book reviews, not journals like Booklist — Booklist reviews sell a lot of books.) Who does he blame? Publishers, authors, newspapers — and bookstores:

Right now, bookstores place all their marketing muscle behind bestseller lists, meaning that prize positions get awarded to those who’ve already won the horse race. Even movie theaters operate according to more democratic principles than that. Shouldn’t good bookstore placement go to good books? Just a thought.

Sure, that works in theory, but in reality, the only place they have room for the piles of James Patterson books is right in the front of the store.

Whoops. It’s a win-win…or is it a lose-lose? From the Los Angeles Times (”Both sides in Cussler-Anschutz case claim victory,” by Kim Christensen and Glenn F. Bunting):

After a marathon battle of big egos and a long-winded 14-week civil trial, author Clive Cussler and billionaire industrialist Philip Anschutz both claimed victory Tuesday, but neither walked away with the huge financial win he’d sought.

So do I side with the tycoon who dreamed of playing movie mogul or the bestselling author who gave bloated sales figures for his bombastic books? Um, I’ll get back to you on that.

What was this really about?

Jurors deliberated for eight days to determine who was responsible for the financial failure of “Sahara,” which starred Matthew McConaughey and Penelope Cruz and has lost about $105 million to date.

I know who I blame: Matthew McConaughey and Penelope Cruz. Can’t someone sue them for something, too?

Studs Terkel (my neighbor, even though he doesn’t know it) is 95 years old today. His publisher is trying to organize the biggest cross-country party in history. Right here in Chicago they’ve hired a skywriter to — literally — laud him to the skies. It’s been cloudy all morning, but it looks like it might clear up just in time. I’ll have to poke my head out the window and let you know how it goes.

This is the first time I’ve heard of Alan Smithee working in the audiobook industry. From Publishers Weekly (”Narrator Takes Name off Mickey Mantle Audiobook,” by Kevin Howell):

The strange back story surrounding publication of Peter Golenbock’s 7: The Mickey Mantle Novel took another twist this week when Michael Viner’s Phoenix Audio released the unabridged audiobook version–the narrator’s real name does not appear on the product.

The reading is credited to Alan Smithee,  a well-known pseudonym that has been used in Hollywood for nearly 40 years by film directors who wanted their names removed from productions they didn’t want to be associated with. “Smithee” is actually the fourth narrator that Phoenix Audio approached about reading the book.

Apparently, third-choice John Larroquette recorded half of the book before quitting in disgust. I would have said that you can’t buy this kind of publicity — but, apparently, you wouldn’t want to even if you could:

When the hardcover was released last month, the press announced a 250,000-copy first printing and a $150,000 promotion/publicity budget. Figures from Nielsen BookScan show the novel has sold 3,000 copies since its April release.

For the sake of America’s forests, let’s hope that the announced first printing was more than a little bit inflated.

(Read the Booklist review here.)