Book News
Booksellers see lumps of coal ahead.
Like many businesses across the retail sector, the publishing industry has been hit by a raft of doom and gloom in the past few weeks. Leonard S. Riggio, chairman and largest shareholder of Barnes & Noble, said in an internal memorandum predicting a dreadful holiday shopping season that “never in all my years as a bookseller have I seen a retail climate as poor as the one we’re in.”
HarperCollins reported that fiscal first-quarter operating income had slid to $3 million from $36 million a year earlier. A week earlier Doubleday Publishing group, a unit of Random House, laid off 16 people, a 10 percent cut in staff.
Now, almost everyone in publishing is bracing for a difficult holiday season while trying to remain optimistic about the enduring allure of books.
“A book is still this incredibly lovely, respectable gift,” said Jamie Raab, publisher of Grand Central Publishing, and is “a lot cheaper than the other luxury itmes that people tend to buy at Christmas. So we could get lucky and see that it really works in our favor.”
There still may be something to the theory, much circulated these days, that books can provide an escape from financial misery. When “Gone With the Wind” was published in 1936 during the Great Depression, it sold a million copies in its first year and stayed at No. 1 on best-seller lists for two years.
Then again, they didn’t have the Internet or television back then. But some publishing insiders suggested that readers might be looking for a respite from the digital world. nytimes.com
First Lines
Arctic Drift, by Clive Cussler and Dirk Cussler
“The cry rattled through the ship like the howl of a wounded jungle beast, a mournful wail that sounded like a plea for death. The moan incited a second voice, and then a third, until a ghoulish chorus echoed through the darkness. When the morbid cries ran their course, a few moments of uneasy silence prevailed until the tortured soul initiated the sequence again. A few sequestered crewmen, those with their senses still intact, listened to the sounds while praying that their own death would arrive more easily.”
Comics best sellers
1. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules, by Jeff Kinney
2. Naruto, Volume 31, by Mashashi Kishimoto
3. Dresden: Welcome to the Jungle, by Jim Butcher and Adrian Syaf
4. Rosario + Vampire, Volume 2, by Akihisa Ikeda
5. Dark Tower: The Long Road Home, by Stephen King, Peter David, Jae Lee and Robin Furth
6. Full Metal Alchemist, Volume 17, by Hiromu Arakawa
7. Vampire Knight, Volume 5, by Matsuri Hino
8. Bleach, Volume 24, by Titi Kubo
9. 100 Bullets: Dirty, Volume 12, by Brian Assarello and Eduardo Risso
10. Star Wars The Clone Wars: Shipyards of Doom, by Henry Gilroy and Matt and Shawn Fillbach
Publishers Weekly
