TODAY'S NEWS

Bookstore Sales Down Again in April
Bookstore sales fell 2.6% in April, to $969 million, according to preliminary estimates released this morning by the U.S. Census Bureau. Bookstore sales have fallen every month this year and the April decline was slightly higher than the 1.4% drop reported in March. Through the first four months of 2009, bookstore sales declined 3.8%, to $5.21 billion. For the entire retail segment, sales were down 4.0% in April and 9.9% for the four-month period.

Quebecor Rejects Donnelley Offer
Quebecor has rejected the latest unsolicited offer from Donnelley and is moving forward with plans to have its reorganization plan voted on by creditors June 18. In a filing with the bankruptcy court, Quebecor said that after reviewing the revised proposal, the printer’s independent board had concluded that the reorganization plan offers “a superior recovery” than the Donnelley offer, while also posing fewer risks to completion. Quebecor expects to re-emerge from bankruptcy by mid July.

HC Children's Does Mobile Promotion for Lauren Conrad Novel
HarperCollins is launching viral mobile content, accessible by scanning 2D barcodes, for a promotion for Lauren Conrad's forthcoming YA novel, L.A. Candy.

The promotion coincides with the book's release on June 16 and through it, readers/fans can download book-related content--among other things Conrad in a video and answering a Q&A--by downloading an application at m.harpercollins.com to their smartphones. Users can then access the content directly at lacandy.mobi, or, if they're out and have access to the book--at a bookstore or event--by taking a picture of a 2D barcode placed on the title's back jacket. Read on »

Bunch of Grapes is Back
by Judith Rosen
After being gutted by a fire last year on the Fourth of July, Bunch of Grapes Bookstore is scheduled to reopen with a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Saturday morning at the Main Street location in Vineyard Haven, Mass., that has been home to a bookstore on Martha’s Vineyard for the past 45 years. In the intervening months the bookstore has changed hands and is now owned by its former events coordinator, Dawn Braasch, who kept it going at a temporary site nearby. Read on »

HC Children's Inks Series Deal with Grogan
HarperCollins Children’s Books has acquired world rights to 13 children’s books featuring the Labrador John Grogan wrote about in his bestselling memoir, Marley & Me. The deal is an expansion on the children's book program HC has already built around Marley with the middle-grade Marley: A Dog Like No Other (an adaptation of Grogan's adult title) and the picture books Bad Dog, Marley! and A Very Marley Christmas. Read on »

Blogs

MORE STORIES

Page to Screen: A P&P&Z-like Series Goes Out & Sony Nabs The Familiars
This week in Page to Screen—PW's weekly column tracking film rights circulating and sold in Hollywood—Holly Frederick is out with a Pride and Prejudice and Zombies-like trilogy and The Familiars gets optioned by Sony.

Although we hear very few manuscripts have been sent out, business is chugging along in the book-to-screen market. Holly Frederick at Curtis Brown is shopping film rights to Jane Bites Back, which Ballantine bought at auction last summer. The book, the first in a trilogy, is by prolific YA/adult writer Michael Thomas Ford and follows a girl named Jane who runs a bookstore in a sleepy upstate New York town. Jane's quiet life is suddenly upset when she sells a novel, and her longheld secret—that she's actually the blood-sucking incarnation of Jane Austen, undead for two centuries—and figures from her past resurface, threatening to out her. Read on »

Brenda Burchard Wins Jan Nathan Scholarship
Brenda Burchard, executive director of the Safer Society Foundation, Inc., has won IBPA’s inaugural Jan Nathan Scholarship. Burchard will receive full tuition and housing costs at the Stanford Publishing Course. The award was created to honor longtime executive director Jan Nathan. It recognizes outstanding contributions to independent publishing by individuals and companies. Burchard manages Safer Society Press, an arm of the Safer Society Foundation, a non-profit that provides resources for the prevention and treatment of sexual abuse. Burchard said she plans to use the knowledge she gains at Stanford to generate revenue for the press and market titles using social media.

Comings and Goings
If you've been laid off recently, left your job or landed a new position and would like to pass along your contact information to others in the business, send details to pwletters@reedbusiness.com. Please include your full name and former title/company.

Andrew Malkin has joined interactive publishing products and services company Zinio in their New York office as v-p of book content. Malkin was previously v-p of trade book sales at Rodale and can be reached at amalkin@zinio.com. You can find a full list of all those who have appeared in Comings and Goings here.

The PW Morning Report: Thursday, June 11, 2009
A daily roundup of book and publishing news from across the Web: More Changes at Granta; E-Book Sales Up; One-Millionth Word; Shortcovers for Pre; New NF from Eggers. Read on »

AUTHORS ON THE AIR

Authors on the Air: Wildflower; The Peasant Prince; Joe Scarborough
Today, Good Morning America talked with Vanity Fair contributing editor Mark Seal about Wildflower: An Extraordinary Life and Untimely Death in Africa (Random House, 978-1400067367, $26), a biography of naturalist Joan Root. PW declared “Seal's effort is a seamless story redolent with adventure, passion and heartbreak; its beauty nearly eclipses the tragedy of Root's untimely — and unsolved — death in 2006.” Read on »

PICTURE OF THE DAY

Audie Winners Celebrate
On May 29, the Audio Publishers Association announced the winners of the 2009 Audie Awards for spoken-word entertainment at the New York Historical Society in New York City. From left to right: Audie winner in the humor category Bronson Pinchot; Blackstone Audio publisher Josh Stanton; Audie winner for Best Solo Male Narration John Lee; and veteran audiobook narrator and Audie winner in the mystery category Grover Gardner. Submit you pictures here »

JOB OF THE DAY

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