Matt Martz has been promoted to associate editor at St. Martin's, continuing to report to Kelley Ragland, editorial director of Minotaur.
 
Brigid Pasulka won the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for her debut novel A LONG LONG TIME AGO & ESSENTIALLY TRUE.

Columbia University awarded the Bancroft history prize to three books: Linda Gordon's Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits; Woody Holton's Abigail Adams; and Margaret Jacobs's White Mother to a Dark Race: Settler Colonialism, Maternalism, and the Removal of Indigenous Children in the American West and Australia, 1880-1940.

Penguin Children's announced a one-million-copy first printing for the May release of John Grisham's children's book THEODORE BOONE: Kid Lawyer, along with releasing the cover.
 
Ingram Publisher Services will distribute a variety of imprints from music publisher Omnibus Press, including Omnibus, Schirmer Trade Books, Bobcat Books, Vision On Publishing, Gramophone Publications and Rogan House.

EBSCO has agreed to purchase the assets of OCLC's NetLibrary division, including its Boulder, CO operations, along with the rights to license a select number of vendor-owned databases currently available through the OCLC FirstSearch service.
Announcement

The Internet Archive has announced the soft launch of their new version of the Open Library.
New site
Blog post

BEA officially announced their plans for the "New York Book Week" concept that has been under formulation for some time, designed "to expand on the presence of BEA in New York by making even more authors available to the community" at "a wide range of author events at various literary venues." The idea is to help connect many of the authors who come to New York for the convention to readers and fans as well as to members of the trade.

Participating authors already include Lee Child, Jonathan Franzen, Ira Glass, Sara Gruen, David Means, Edmund Morris and Scott Turow. And partner organizations and venues so far include Times Talks, the 92nd Street Y, The New York Public Library, The Brooklyn Public Library, Symphony Space, Barnes & Noble and selected member stores of IBNYC (Independent Booksellers of New York City) including Housing Works, PowerHouse Arena and Book Culture.
BEA info page

Sally van Haitsma has formed her own agency, van Haitsma Literary, after six years at the Castiglia Literary Agency and, before that, the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency. She represents commercial and literary fiction, narrative non-fiction, current affairs, pop culture and business.

The PEN American Center reelected its officers to new one-year terms, including the reappointment of president Kwame Anthony Appiah.

Bookforum editor Chris Lehmann has joined the new Yahoo News team, the Observer reports.

Further to yesterday's story on Grove/Atlantic's upcoming release of the anticipated novel MATTERHORN, the publisher says that El Leon Arts never published their edition last April. It was pulled right before publication in concert with Grove's interest (and Grove worked with the author on a complete revision that the reduced the still-big 592-page book by 20 percent), so their version will be the "one and only published edition."

We noted short items in the past regarding how the Boulder Bookstore charges all the self-published authors who want to connect with the store rather than sending them away empty-handed, and now a Nieman Journalism Lab piece offers more details.

The fee structure ranges from $25 to stock five copies and $75 to feature a book in the Recommended section, up to $255 for an in-store reading and book-signing (plus website and newsletter mention). Our first instinct was that they are charging too little for the more elaborate plans, knowing what third-parties are charging for marketing plans--and indeed, head buyer Arsen Kashkashian says "mst people will come in at one of the higher fee amounts." The store even has a two-page consignment brochure explaining the program and giving other tips to authors.

But here's the real payoff, as we've discussed before: not only does the store turn what was drudge work into something that generates cash, but they also reinforce a truly local connection that chain stores and online stores can't match. That's what Local Loyalty is all about--making the most of what your community wants from you, rather than making your community guilty that they don't want to spend full price for commodity goods.

"Kashkashian says, have been generally grateful for the opportunity to sell and promote work that might otherwise be seen and appreciated only by their friends/spouses/moms: 'I want the marketing, I want the exposure. I worked so hard on this project, and you guys are the only ones who could help me with it.'" That's worth a lot, and it turns grateful, paying authors into the store's own viral marketers when they bring in friends and spread the word. They pay you for the privilege of promoting your store!
Nieman Lab

We've also long been fans of experimentation with new types of subscription plans--from Powell's Indiespensable selections, Roxanne Coady's Just the Right Book venture, and Safari Online to Disney Publishing's new subscription website, Bloomsbury's growing library subscriptions, and publisher Open Letter's "season subscriptions."

In that mode, Unbridled Books announced yesterday subscription plans for 3 and 6 books from the house, shipped pre-publication, at $60 and $100 respectively. Plus they throw in a free backlist title and a discount on the other books.
Info page

The Chicago Tribune reports on Borders' initiative to host book club gatherings within their stores. "Signs and posters telling shoppers to bring their book group to the store have gone out from corporate headquarters in Ann Arbor." Spokesperson Mary Davis says, "We're encouraging stores to reach out to the public to say, 'We're here.' It's a way to drive traffic to the stores."
Tribune

Over a year after first announcing John Grisham's intention to release his backlist in ebook editions, today Knopf Doubleday put on sale ebook versions of all twenty-three of Grisham's titles. They are available in the US and Canada. The publisher also confirmed that Grisham's new book, coming this October, will be another legal thriller.

Separately, when David Baldacci's new book DELIVER US FROM EVIL is released on April 20, Hachette Book Group's editions will include an "enriched" electronic version they're calling the Writer's Cut eBook. In the release, HBG ceo David Young says, "For David Baldacci's fans, this is a chance to see his creative process revealed, and deepen the connection with an author they love to read.  This enhanced eBook is the perfect marriage of innovation and great storytelling."

Baldacci tells the AP, "I want people to have a great experience and give them a behind-the-scenes look at what I do, the way you would have it on a DVD." Priced at $15.99, a dollar above the starting list price of the regular ebook (which would go to $12.99 after hitting the bestseller list), the enhancements include an alternate ending to the story, deleted passages, an audio interview, video of Baldacci at work, and research photos taken by the author. Thus it will work on ebook platforms that handle video and color, but "Hachette is still working on the enriched version and is unsure of its availability" on eInk screens.

Baldacci also indicates that, though he received some negative online reader "reviews" last when when the ebook of FIRST FAMILY was selling initially for more than $15, sales followed the general increase in the market: "I just saw the royalty statements for 'First Family,' and sales for the e-book were up 400 percent over the e-book of my previous novels. It was a very vocal minority that was upset and at the end of the day it didn't have any impact."

In an online interview with Charlotte Abbott on Friday, Young and HBG svp of digital Maja Thomas indicated that the company is working with many of their biggest authors--including Stephenie Meyer, James Patterson, Michael Connelly, Brad Meltzer and others--on a variety of experimental enhanced ebooks. Thomas noted "some of it is platform-specific, and some of it is platform agnostic," adding, "we'll have to see in the next few months how much the consumer loves what we have done." Calling it "a very exiting and dynamic time," Young emphasized the importance of now "having direct feedback from our readers," adding that "boy, do we hear from them."

In the interview, they also said that the company has digitized and made available as ebooks 90 percent of the books on their list that lend themselves to current electronic formats. When it come to electronic rights and royalties, Young said "we certainly have one or two issues around that, but it is literally a handful of authors where we are still having to negotiate those rights with agents." He also noted that "some of our authors do not want to appear in this format, and that's absolutely their prerogative." For more quotes and reflections from the interview, Mike Shatzkin writes about it on his blog.

At Grand Central, Ben Greenberg has been promoted to senior editor. He currently has two books on the New York Times bestseller list: I AM OZZY, and ABRAHAM LINCOLN, VAMPIRE HUNTER.

Editor of Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson & the Olympians series and many other titles Jennifer Besser will join Putnam's Children's on April 12 as vp and publisher, reporting to Penguin Children's president Don Weisberg. She was most recently Executive Editor at Disney Book Group.

At Dutton, Jamie McDonald has been promoted to senior publicist.

Unbridled jumped the ABA's announcement of May's Indie Next picks, celebrating the selection of Emily St. John Mandel's second novel THE SINGER'S GUN as the No. 1 pick.

Alan Bradley's THE SWEETNESS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PIE has won the 2009 Dilys Award, given by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association to the book their members most enjoyed handselling.

C-Span has converted nearly all of its video archives into digital video, available for free through their web site. Though the focus is on 23 years of Congressional sessions, the ambitious initiative also includes 8,842 BookTV episodes and clips and 812 Booknotes episodes. The presentation includes the most recent clips and the most watched programs, as well as organization by topic.
BookTV listing

With strong buzz for Grove/Atlantic's reissue of Karl Marlantes' MATTERHORN later this month, Barnes & Noble celebrates the role of their Discover Great New Writers program in building attention for the book. Originally published last year by Berkeley's El León Literary Arts, the book was submitted to BN's Discover program, and "the Discover program shared their enthusiasm for the novel with the publisher of Grove/Atlantic."

Grove/Atlantic publisher Morgan Entrekin says in the release, "I'm grateful to the booksellers involved with the Discover Great New Writers program who are open to good works from any source. Without them, this amazing book would never have gotten the chance it's getting." And Marlantes notes, "Matterhorn has had a lot of lucky breaks on its road to publication, and I'm incredibly grateful to everyone who has gotten behind it, but the simple truth is that none of it would have happened without the support of Barnes & Noble and its Discover Great New Writers program."
Release

Follett is joining the stampede to online textbook rental offerings, partnering with BookRenter.com.
Release

Noblesville, IN children's bookstore The Wild is closing after the owners were unable to complete a deal with new buyers for the store.
IndyStar