Book News
Amazon introduces e-book reader
Inc. is hoping to invigorate a nascent market for electronic books by introducing its own e-book reader.
The announcement comes as e-books remain a sliver of overall book sales, partly because they lack the comfort and intimacy of bound paper.
Officials said Amazon designed Kindle, below, with the e-book’s strengths in mind. It is thinner than most paperbacks and weighs 10.3 ounces. It can hold some 200 books, along with newspapers, magazines and an entire dictionary.
Kindle sells for $399; bestsellers and new releases will typically go for $9.99.
The Associated Press
Book sales up in September
Book sales tracked by the Association of American Publishers for September saw an increase of 5.7 percent for the month; yearly sales were up, as well, with an increase of 9.9 percent.
The adult hardcover category was up by 23.6 percent in September while year-to-date sales were up by 14.8 percent. Adult paperback sales were down by 10.7 percent for the month and down 1.8 percent for the year.
The children’s/young adult hardcover category saw a decrease of 12.8 percent for the month, yet sales year-to-date were up by 63 percent.
Association of American Publishers
First Line
The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold
“When all is said and done, killing my mother came easily. Dementia, as it descends, has a way of revealing the core of the person affected by it. My mother’s core was rotten like the brackish water at the bottom of a weeks-old vase of flowers. She had been beautiful when my father met her and still capable of love when I became their late-in-life child, but by the time she gazed up at me that day, none of this mattered.”
Books most borrowed at libraries
FICTION
1. You’ve Been Warned, by James Patterson and Howard Roughan
2. A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini
3. The Quickie, by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge
4. Playing for Pizza, by John Grisham
5. The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
NONFICTION
1. Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert
2. 90 Minutes in Heaven, by Don Piper
3. Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer
4. Natural Cures “They” Don’t Want You to Know About, by Kevin Trudeau
5. The Secret, by Michael Berg
libraryjournal.com
