Booklist Online: Book Reviews from the American Library Association

Seattle’s influence in the world of books looms large of late, but Nancy Pearl can’t take all the credit–no, she has to share it with Amazon, Starbucks, and Costco. In the New York Times (”Book Lovers Ask, What’s Seattle’s Secret?”), Julie Bick examines the retail giants’ bookselling strategies: microlevel, one-book-fits-all, and by-the-pallet. Perhaps because it’s Seattle, the executives speak of “ideals,” “an [...]

More free-book madness. For the next month, you can read Neil Gaiman’s American Gods for free–as long as you don’t mind sitting at a computer with a live internet connection. On Boing Boing, Cory Doctorow (Overclocked) gives it a bad review (the interface, not the book). Gaiman responds to that and another charge, as well:
I was surprised by [...]

February must be Give Away a Book Month. Why, here’s another one: Charles Bock’s Beautiful Children (Random House). But is free publicity worth a potential drop in sales? And did I really just display their whole ad in my blog post? Why, it must be worth it!

Giving something away for free in order to help you sell [...]

Poor James Patterson. His last book for young adults, Maximum Ride: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports, only sold 192,000 copies. He doesn’t feel badly for himself, mind you–he feels badly for all the unfortunate youngsters who somehow didn’t get the opportunity to read his book. From the New York Times (”An Author Looks beyond [...]

So Internet use is allegedly dominating people’s time and causing them read fewer books. But an awful lot of people are using the Internet to buy books. (Although U.S. online shoppers don’t crack the top 10.) From BBC News (”Books ‘most popular online buy’“).
More books are sold on the internet than any other product and the number is increasing, [...]

In Slate, Garth Risk Hallberg asks, “Who Is Grady Harp?”
I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I had imagined Amazon’s customer reviews as a refuge from the machinations of the publishing industry: “an intelligent and articulate conversation … conducted by a group of disinterested, disembodied spirits,” as James Marcus, a former editor at the [...]

Before there was Radiohead, there was Jeff Kinney (”Crossover Dreams: Turning Free Web Work Into Real Book Sales,” by Motoko Rich, New York Times):
That a book derived from free online content has sold so well may allay some fears that giving something away means nobody will want to pay for it. It also encourages publishers [...]

More news about Amazon. The French have found a distinctly un-American way of protecting small bookstores (”Amazon Ordered to End Free Delivery on Books in France,” by Peter Sayer, IDG News Service):
Amazon.com may not offer free delivery on books in France, the high court in Versailles has ruled.
The action, brought in January 2004 by the [...]

So, if you’re curious about where that handwritten J. K. Rowling book ended up, now the truth can be told: it’s on Amazon. Naturally.

Clark Hoyt, the New York Times‘ public editor, offers an interesting look at how his paper’s best-seller lists are compiled (”Books for the Ages, if Not for the Best-Seller List“). Even if you feel that there is probably too much attention paid to best-seller lists and starred reviews (as I do), it’s worth reading the article to understand [...]