PW is seeking nominations for our 14th annual awards for Bookseller of the Year and Rep of the Year. This year’s award winners will be profiled in the April 30 pre-BookExpo America issue of Publishers Weekly and will be honored in New York City during the BEA convention.

Nomination submissions should go to Donna Paz Kaufman at dpazkaufman@comcast.netor fax (904) 261-6742. Include your name, phone number and industry affiliation. Candidates cannot nominate themselves. Your nomination will be included with the packet of materials used by the jury to select this year’s winners.

Link to the Publishers Weekly article

Telegraph.co.uk reports:

A quarter of independent booksellers say that they will not stock the final Harry Potter book when it is published because they claim they cannot make a profit on it.

The survey, for The Bookseller magazine, found that the country’s dwindling number of small bookshops said they could not match the discounted prices on the Harry Potter titles offered by online outlets such as Amazon or big chains and supermarkets.

Some even claim they will have to buy the book from supermarkets because they will be cheaper than their usual suppliers.
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Charles Hampton of Boarderman’s bookshop in Bishop’s Stortford said: “We made a loss on the last one and I am not prepared to make a loss on this one.”

He claimed that some outlets were able to sell Harry Potter books for £3 less than he was able to buy them for.

Full story can be found here.

A machine that electronically stores 2.5 million books that can then be printed and bound in less than seven minutes is to be launched early next year. It prints in any language and has an upper limit of 550 pages. The ‘Espresso’ will be launched first in several US libraries. The company behind the project - On Demand Books - predicts that, within five years, it will be able to reproduce every book ever published.

Niko Pfund, a publisher at Oxford University Press, said the evolution away from traditional bookstores was natural: ‘For hundreds of years, the industry was unchanged, then audio came out. Now it’s time for digital.’ It is estimated that the books will cost less than 1p per page - but a machine of your own costs about £25,000.

It’s not clear whether “early next year” refers to 2007 or 2008 (since the article’s from Dec. 31), but it certainly sounds way cool.
Article from Guardian Unlimited.

Independent bookstores are finding it hard to compete with low book prices offered at supermarkets, chain stores and Amazon - all of whom, according to the indies, are offered huge discounts by publishers because they buy in bulk.

While the savings look good for the consumer, the benefits of these price wars may be short-term at best, according to Jonathan Spencer-Payne, who runs the Peak Bookshop. Independents carry a much greater range of titles, he says, so a greater diversity of authors and books are represented, including traditionally hard-to-shift first novels. “We support publishers with other titles, with the backlist,” he says. “The feeling in the independent sector is that publishers aren’t thinking about tomorrow. If independent bookshops disappeared, where would they sell the full range of their books? It would be a terrible indictment on society if one or two sellers sold a limited range of books and they basically picked and chose what people read.”

Some efforts are being made to level the playing field. Earlier this year an alliance was set up by a group of independent publishers, including Faber & Faber, to try to support independent bookshops. According to Will Atkinson, Faber’s sales director: “Publishers have a duty to do what we can, but we can’t change the way capitalism works.

Link to the Guardian article

A number of independent bookstores are closing nationwide this year. Publishers Weekly reports:

Nearing the end of 2006, a number of independent booksellers in various parts of the country have announced that this will be their last year in business.

Some cite the rise of internet retailing sites, others blame rising rent costs. But at least one author is up in arms about their plight.

Link to the Publishers Weekly article.

A children’s author has drawn attention to the plight of independent bookshops by demanding that his book abe removed from sale on Amazon’s UK website.

George Walker, author of Tales from an Airfield, was horrified to find that his new title was featured on the site without his permission, following good sales in bookshops.

Full story is available on Guardian Unlimited Books.

In an effort to draw attention to the small presses that it distributes, Sarasota, Fla.–based Bookworld launched smallpresscentral.com earlier this month. Consumers can purchase books from any of Bookworld’s 180 clients, which include one-book houses like Nutrition Times Press as well as larger houses for which Bookworld distributes Spanish-language titles.

“Small publishers aren’t getting enough attention,” Bookworld Companies chairman Ronald Ted Smith said. “I would love to find a way to spotlight more of them.” As part of that effort, smallpresscentral.com, which links to Bookworld.com’s shopping cart, is offering a free book with every order from a selected group of titles.

Link to the Publishers Weekly article, link to the Small Press Central site.

Mark your calendar! The Nineteenth Annual Independent and Small Press Book Fair - December 2 & 3, 2006

December 2 & 3, Independent and Small Press Book Fair hosts over 100 top-notch presses & leading authors from Nation Books, PEN American & New York’s literary & political scene, including: Pamela Aidan, Dore Ashton, Amiri Baraka, Jennifer Baumgardner, Colin Channer, T. Cooper, Michael Cunningham, Luis Francia, Steve Freeman, Matthea Harvey, Caren Lissner, Joe Meno, Jonas Mekas, Mark Crispin Miller, Eileen Myles, Greg Palast, Rachel Pine, Peter Plate, Katha Pollitt, Eyal Press, Paul Robeson, Jr., Martha Southgate, David Levi Strauss, Anne Waldman and much more. Free Admission ($1 suggested donation). For a complete list of panels and events please click here. To register as an exhibitor please click here

For more information, see the Small Press Center website. (Via Publishers Weekly)