TODAY'S NEWS

Capstone Teaches How to Get Stimulus Funding
By Calvin Reid
In a session that was equal parts game-planning and educational cheerleading, Capstone Publishers, a Mankato Minn.-based library market publisher, offered an audience of school library professionals a web-based seminar on how to organize to get funding for their libraries from the stimulus plan.

Capstone v-p of sales Eric Fitzgerald, along with Melanie Anderson from the American Library Association's office of government relations, exhorted school librarians to get their share of the funding available for education in the American Reinvestment & Recovery Act, or the stimulus package. Called “5 Steps to Advocate for Stimulus Dollars for Your Library,” the web broadcast event was free and attracted a live online audience of 160 out of more than 650 registered professionals. Registrants that did not logon to the live event can return to the site and listen to the archived presentation. Read on »

Wisconsin Historical Society Press on Record Pace
by Claire Kirch
While Minnesota Historical Society Press faces the prospect of laying off one-third of its staff and reducing its book production by 30% in the face of expected state budget cuts, the Wisconsin Historical Society Press in Madison is having a record sales year. Though Kathy Borkowski, WHSP’s editorial director, acknowledges that she’s not been able to fill two open positions at the press due to a state hiring freeze, the press gross revenues have already topped $1 million and should reach $1.1 million when the fiscal year ends July 1. This year’s sales are more than double last year’s revenues of $484,000, and five times the $210,000 the press grossed in 2004, when Borkowski took the helm. Read on »

Bookazine Gives $1,500 to Independent Booksellers of NYC
By Lynn Andriani
The Independent Booksellers of New York City has received a stimulus package of sorts: a gift of $1,500 from independent wholesaler Bookazine. It’s the first major contribution from a fellow industry independent and NYC-area business for IBNYC, which launched last fall with the goal of raising awareness about the city’s independent bookselling community. The non-profit organization says it will use the donation to promote the more than 75 alliance members to local consumers. Read on »

The Last Hurrah for Percy Jackson
By Matia Burnett
Fans have only five days left to wait for the May 5 release of The Last Olympian, the fifth and final book in Rick Riordan’s mythological fantasy series, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, about a boy with dyslexia and ADHD who discovers he is the son of Poseidon. The series has been in the news of late: the fourth book, The Battle of the Labyrinth, was released on April 7 with a print run of 500,000, and a feature film of the first book, The Lightning Thief, is in the works for February 2010. Given the popularity of the first four books (U.S. sales for the series have topped four million copies), the excitement for the final installment should come as no surprise. Here’s a roundup of the plans for The Last Olympian. Read on »

Job Moves
Jim McCarthy has been promoted to senior agent at Dystel & Goderich Literary Management. McCarthy started with the agency as an intern in 1999. Chasya Milgrom, who also started with the agency as an intern, has been promoted to royalties manager and agent. And joining the agency as Jane Dystel's assistant, is Alexandra Anne Brown.

Michael J. Oprins has been named vice president, merchandising for non-book products at Borders. Oprins has been with the company for more than 18 years and will be responsible in this newly created position for leading buying teams in the music, DVD, bargain, digital, newsstand, calendars, games, trend gifts and candy categories.

Liza Pulitzer Voges has opened her own literary agency, Eden Street LLC. She will represent authors and illustrators of children’s books, and can be reached at Lvoges@edenstlit.com and 845 825 7866. Voges was previously with Kirchoff Wohlberg for 25 years.

Blogs

MORE STORIES

Monday's Review Today: A Quirky Debut Novel & Henry Ford in the Amazon
In Jessica Anthony's "compulsively readable" first novel, The Convalescent, the author introduces us to a bizarre protagonist in Rovar Pfliegman, a mute, sout man who makes his living selling meat out of a bus. While Anthony makes literary nods to writers ranging from Kafka to Rushdie to Darwin, she sets herself apart with a style that is "funny, immediate and unapologetically cerebral." In NYU professor Greg Grandin's Fordlandia, the academic recounts how Henry Ford tried, from the early '20s through the mid '40s, to turn an area of Brazil into a rubber manufacturer and outpost of his automotive empire. The story offers Grandin "a fascinating vehicle to illuminate the many contradictory parts of Henry Ford," as well as "the follies of colonialism." Read on »

The PW Morning Report
O’Reilly Reinvents the Book; U.K. Confirms New Poet Laureate; Buy Indie Day; When Book Reviews Get Ugly; Poetry Month Ends. Read on »

AUTHORS ON THE AIR

Authors on the Air: Mary and Carol Higgins Clark; Ricki Lake; Bill Baker
This morning’s Today show hosted Mary Higgins Clark, whose newest novel is Just Take My Heart (S&S, 978-1416570868, $25.95; S&S Audio unabridged CD, $39.99), and Carol Higgins Clark, whose Cursed (Scribner, 978-1416562177, $25; CD, $29.99) is number 12 in her Regan Reilly mystery series. Read on »

PICTURE OF THE DAY

Going to the Wolves at MoCCA
On Wednesday night at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (MoCCA), Wolverine writer Chris Claremont and Wolverine: Inside the World of the Living Weapon (DK) author Matthew K. Manning spoke with Peter Sanderson, in front of a full house, about the Marvel superhero. Pictured here (l. to r.) are: Claremont; Karl Erickson, of MoCCA; Manning; Susan Stockman, of DK; and Peter Sanderson, of MoCCA.
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JOB OF THE DAY

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