TODAY'S NEWS

Wal-Mart, Amazon Limiting Discounted Purchases
Plans by independent booksellers to buy the 10 November titles being offered at steep discounts by Wal-Mart, Target and Amazon have been foiled by the big box retailers who are limiting the number of books one customer can buy. According to the Wall Street Journal, Wal-Mart is limiting purchases to two copies per customer, Amazon has a three-copy limit and Target five. There has been lots of discussion in bookseller forums about buying quantities of titles at the big box retailers as a protest to the discounting policies, but also as way to get a better margin since the 10 books would be cheaper to buy from the stores than from the publishers.

San Francisco Panel Urges Publishers to Keep Experimenting
By Bridget Kinsella
A standing room only crowd of about 70 crammed into the small dining room at the Hotel Rex in San Francisco earlier this week to hear a few experts take on “Publishing in the Digital Age: Renaissance or Revolution,” the topic of this month’s meeting of the Northern California Book Publicity and Marketing Association. Technology journalist and SF Weekly’s web editor Alexia Tstotis moderated the panel that featured Dom Sagolla, co-creator of Twitter and author of 140 Characters: A Style Guide for the Short Form (Wiley); Matt Stewart, a public relations consultant who got a book deal with Soft Skull Press after publishing his novel The French Revolution on Twitter; and Kul Takanao Wadhwa, head of business development at Wikipedia. Read on »

BookGlutton Partners with O'Reilly for Bookstore
By Judith Rosen
Two-year old BookGlutton.com, the Web-based reading platform that allows members to read and annotate books and form online reading groups, launched a bookstore this week in conjunction with O’Reilly Media. Up to now, BookGlutton users could only read and share annotations for free public domain novels, cookbooks and narrative nonfiction. The social networking site has also offered some free samples of contemporary books. This summer it partnered with Random House to let readers preview four chapters of several new books, annotated by the authors. Read on »

Phaidon Opens Temporary Store in Manhattan
By Lynn Andriani
Phaidon Press is opening a “pop-up” store in Soho, New York City, next week. The 2,500-square-foot store, at 100 Wooster Street, will be open from November 2 through January 2010. Store hours will be 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., Monday through Saturday, and 9:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. on Sunday.

PHAIDON|STORE will offer same-day delivery in Manhattan, personalized concierge service, events and special offers. Hundreds of Phaidon titles will be for sale, including signed and numbered collector’s editions of certain art titles, cookbooks, children’s books and stationery. Read on »

Interlink Kilimanjaro Book Begins Climb
By Judith Rosen
For some, writing a book much less publishing it can seem a lot like climbing a mountain. That’s not necessarily a bad thing as far as Interlink Books founder Michel Moushabeck is concerned. In summer 2008 he scaled Africa’s highest peak, then wrote about the experience in Kilimanjaro: A Photographic Journey to the Roof of Africa, with photos by his partner, Hiltrud Schulz. The book, which is just out from Northampton, Mass.-based Interlink, is already starting to make its own climb. It has sold close to 4,000 copies, said Moushabeck, one of the few authors with no complaints about his publisher. Read on »

Blogs

MORE STORIES

'Lords of Finance' Wins FT, Goldman Business Book Award
Liaquat Ahamed won the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award 2009 for Lords of Finance: 1929, The Great Depression, and the Bankers Who Broke the World, published by The Penguin Press. The announcement was made last night at a dinner in London. FT editor Lionel Barber, one of the judges, called Lords, “a brilliant book, which brings to life the 1920s and the role of its great public servants in trying, but ultimately failing, to manage the world financial system. A must for anyone who wants to understand economics.”

Monday's Reviews Today: Stroby's 'November' & Batuman's Essays
In Wallace Stroby's "powerful" new thriller, Gone 'til November, the author of The Heartbreak Lounge introduces detective Sara Cross, and a potential new series, in a work that probes "the eternal mystery of why bright and capable women fall for dangerous losers." And stanford professor Elif Batuman, in her "scintillating" essay collection The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them, "gleans clues to the conundrums of human existence by recalling scenes from her grad-student days in academe and exotic settings like Samarkand." Read on »

Job Moves
Patti Ratchford is taking over as creative director at Bloomsbury Adult on November 9, replacing Amy King, who recently moved to Rodale. Ratchford had been a freelance designer for the past 10 years; prior to that, she was an art director at Redbook and Men’s Fitness magazine, and at illustrated book publisher Smallwood & Stewart.

The PW Morning Report
Donaghy Back in Headlines; Whiting Award Winners; Hemingway Papers From Cuba; Why Europe Is Safe From Book Pricing Wars; Elliott on Book Tours; Tolkein Among Biggest Deceased Earners; Black Sparrow’s Beauty. Read on »

AUTHORS ON THE AIR

Authors on the Air: I Am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil …; The Deadly Dinner Party; I Know How to Cook
On today’s Leonard Lopate Show, Emmy-winning co-executive producer of The Daily Show Josh Lieb discussed his new YA novel I Am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want to Be Your Class President (Razorbill, 978-1595142405, $15.99; Penguin Audio CD, $29.95). Read on »

PICTURE OF THE DAY

DiCamillo Online with NPR
NPR’s Michele Norris hosted author Kate DiCamillo for a book group discussion in Washington, DC on October 25. DiCamillo was on to discuss her new novel, The Magician’s Elephant (Candlewick). Nearly 100 bookstores and libraries registered to broadcast the event online and host their own remote book group discussions for local community members and DiCamillo fans. The webcast will be archived on www.themagicianselephant.com. Submit your pictures here »