TODAY'S NEWS

S&S Signs with Global Reader
By Craig Morgan Teicher
Simon & Schuster and Macmillan Publishing Solutions subsidiary MPS Mobile announced a partnership today through which MPS will distribute over 500 S&S e-books through its Global Reader platform, which makes digital book content available over any Web-enabled mobile phone. Among the titles Global Reader will immediately make available are The Secret, and Star Trek books. Excerpts of both will be given away as a promotion to introduce the service. Other titles available at launch include Nancy Drew mysteries and books by Ernest Hemingway. Eventually, all S&S e-books will be made available through the service.

Since BEA last spring, MPS has made several other announcements, such as the adoption of ePub and an interface redesign for Global Reader, plus a distribution deal with the e-book-only imprint E-Reads. Global Reader is available in over 160 countries.

Great Lakes, Great Reads Promo Launched
By Claire Kirch
The Great Lakes Independent Booksellers Association is launching a regional title promotion program, calling it “Great Lakes, Great Reads.” The program, similar to the highly successful “Midwest Connections” program launched by the Midwest Booksellers Association two years ago, will include public relations and merchandising campaigns spearheaded by GLIBA, as well as author tours to the approximately 400 GLIBA member stores in the five-state Great Lakes region the association serves. Read on »

Murder and Mayhem in Baltimore
By Jordan Foster
Over 1,300 crime fiction fans and 300-plus authors flocked to Baltimore October 9-12th for the 39 Annual Bouchercon World Mystery Convention for a weekend of panels and interviews featuring some of the biggest names in the genre. In a fitting tribute, this year’s American Guest of Honor was Laura Lippman, whose award-winning series featuring PI Tess Monaghan is set in her native Baltimore. British author John Harvey, best known for his gritty U.K. police procedurals featuring Nottingham detective Charlie Resnick, was the International Guest of Honor. Read on »

PW Review: The Shadow Factory
The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America
by James Bamford. Doubleday, $27.95 (416p) ISBN 978-0-385-52132-1

Revisiting the signals-intelligence leviathan that was little understood until he profiled it in his bestselling The Puzzle Palace, Bamford’s exhaustive study examines why the National Security Agency’s post-9/11 performance is so controversial. Drawing on interviews with NSA officials and operatives, Bamford explores the mechanics of the notorious warrantless wiretapping program, in which NSA staffers listened in on “incredibly intimate and personal conversations between Americans” and installed telecom taps that can copy most of America’s e-mail traffic. Bamford considers such excesses illegal and unnecessary; his lengthy reconstruction of pre-9/11 intelligence failures finds incompetence, not legal restrictions, to be the main obstacle in pursuing terrorists. Neither have looser post-9/11 restrictions on intelligence-gathering helped the NSA sift the exploding volume of cell-phone and Internet communications for traces of terrorists, Bamford concludes. In fact, the NSA is “drowning in useless data” mined by a “surveillance-industrial complex” of private contractors, ushering in “a society where everyone’s words and actions are screened by secret surveillance machines.” Some readers will share Bamford’s concern. But his meandering presentation poses a slight data-mining challenge itself, and because he explores only briefly what concrete harm the NSA’s domestic surveillance does to U.S. citizens, readers not already convinced it poses an Orwellian threat won’t change their minds after reading this often illuminating study. (Oct. 14)

The Monday Interview: Robert Osborne
By Dick Donahue
An interview with author and Turner Classic Movies host Robert Osborne, whose 80 Years of the Oscar: The Official History of the Academy Awards will be published later this month by Abbeville Press. Read on »

Blogs

MORE STORIES

Web Exclusive Reviews: Week of 10/13/2008
Friedman returns! Plus: five reasons not to dread the future, death of a Great Books series salesman scheme, awaited memoirs from a rambunctious Louisiana shrimper and a long-time indie music darling, post-Katrina high school football underdogs storm the state champs, another attempt to nail down time and two general purpose category-killer cookbook/references--one focusing on science, the other on dogma. Also: true stories of cancer survival, baby procurement and bad dogs. Read on »

AUTHORS ON THE AIR

Authors on the Air: Making Jack Falcone; Michelle; Hip Hop Speaks to Children
On today’s Early Show, retired FBI special agent Joaquin “Jack” Garcia, author of Making Jack Falcone: An Undercover FBI Agent Takes Down a Mafia Family (Touchstone, $24.95; Tantor Media unabridged CD, $34.99), which pubs today. Last night he appeared on 60 Minutes. After the jump: Nikki Giovanni, Richard Belzer and George Soros. Read on »

PICTURE OF THE DAY

Smaerd Come True
On Saturday, October 4, Books Inc. in Alameda, CA was the first stop for Bryn Barnard's tour as illustrator of Andrea von Botefuhr’s The Land of Smaerd (Know Wonder Publishing). He is pictured here with a fan who bought two books and also asked him to sign several postcards. “Smaerd” is “dreams” spelled backwards. Submit your pictures here »

JOB OF THE DAY

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