Finland Jumps on the Bandwagon

The practice of demanding that publishers send cash to bookstores along with the books they wish to sell seems to be rapidly spreading. Word comes from Finland that the largest bookstore chain there is adopting the Waterstone's "pay or perish" scheme.

In an attempt to maximise their profits, some bookstores have started to put price tags on their display space even in Finland, following the example set by Waterstone's, the largest bookstore chain in Britain.

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For example, Suomalainen Kirjakauppa, the largest Finnish bookstore chain, is selling prominent display spots to publishers in the same way as it is selling them advertising space. Premium promotion spaces include for instance the reservation of a front-of-store table or a display window at each outlet. Another alternative is to buy a display stand outside a shop.
"The promotion spaces at our stores are not automatically subject to a charge. We discuss them separately with publishers", notes Director Kristiina Rantanen, who is in charge of purchasing at Suomalainen Kirjakauppa.

However, certain premium spots have definite prices. For example, the hiring of a display spot for two weeks at the bookstore’s outlet in the Kamppi shopping centre cost EUR 700 in 2006.

Other chains have not taken up similar charges as yet. However, for example the Academic Bookstore (Akateeminen Kirjakauppa), which is part of Stockmann, does not regard the idea as out of the question.

"If the publishers start to prioritize online stores as distribution channels, I see no reason why we should not set a price on our display spots.

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Suomalainen Kirjakauppa, with its 62 outlets, is the biggest bookstore chain in Finland, and some individuals interviewed by the paper said they were afraid of potential retaliation by the retailer.

The publishers feel that the new marketing practice is part of the development pursued by bookstores in order to minimise their risks and to shift the responsibility for sales on to the publishers.

Surely, this is headed to North America if it hasn't already arrived. Does anyone know if Barnes & Noble and Borders demand cash for store displays or even for just having books added to the shelves? This may turn into a cash cow for bookstores but it is destined to limit the choice for book buyers because only the biggest and most financially healthy publishers are going to be able to come up with this kind of money. This is a real threat to the existence of those small publishers who publish more than just the mainstream fiction that can be found at my local grocery store.

So now this scheme has spread from the U.K. to Australia and Finland. Not good.

Australian Bookstore Chain Demands Money from Publishers

I love receiving discounts on books just as much as the next guy and I'm betting that most of you feel the same way. The good news about discounted books is that it makes it possible for us to buy more books than we would be able to add to our collections if we had to pay the full retail price for them. The bad news is that independent bookstores, because they can't compete with the national chains on price, have become an endangered species, and even the large chains are feeling pressure from the biggest discounter of all, Amazon.com.

In June, Waterstone's rightly received a lot of negative publicity in the U.K. for demanding that publishers pay special fees if they wanted to see their books featured in prominent displays in Waterstone's stores. Now it appears that a similar tactic is being tried in Australia by the Angus & Robertson chain.

AUSTRALIAN publishers are outraged at a demand by Angus & Robertson that they pay to have their books stocked by the chain.

The Australian Publishers' Association said yesterday its members were angry and distressed by the demands, which range from $1500 to more than $45,000.

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Publishers have until August 31 to pay up, or A&R will stop ordering their titles.

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A&R general manager Dave Fenlon said: "As a commercial business, we have the right to make decisions about which suppliers we do business with. "In our negotiations with suppliers, we are the customer. Unfortunately we cannot work with every publisher in Australia, particularly if the relationship is not commercially viable for us."

It is not unusual, of course, for large retail chains to squeeze manufacturers for the lowest wholesale price that they can get. Wal-Mart is notorious for doing exactly that in the United States and some companies have been squeezed so close to selling to Wal-Mart at cost that they now refuse to supply that giant retailer.

It is unlikely to ever happen, but it would be fun to see what would happen if every publisher in Australia refused to pay these fees to Angus & Robertson and the chain suddenly found itself with empty shelves. That brings up the key question of whether book buyers are willing to pay a little more per book in order to help sustain a healthy publishing industry. I doubt that the average book customer thinks much about the link between publisher and retailer when he stands at the cash register holding the latest masterpiece from James Patterson or Danielle Steele.

But readers of book blogs are not average book customers. Do you think this kind of thing is right? Would you be willing to pay a little more per book purchase if it would help to end the spread of this practice?

The Tin Roof Blowdown

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita were a deadly one-two punch to the gut of the Texas-Louisiana Gulf Coast and the aftermath of those storms has been well-documented by newspapers, magazines and non-fiction books. But James Lee Burke, with his 16th Dave Robicheaux novel, The Tin Roof Blowdown, has accomplished something that none of that writing was able to do. Burke gives his readers a sense of what it must have been like to be trapped in the chaos of New Orleans during the long hours before help reached the city, days during which civil authority largely disappeared and it was up to each individual to see to the safety and survival of himself and his family.

When Detective Dave Robicheaux's New Iberia police department was asked to take on some of the work that could not be handled by the New Orleans police he was shocked by the destruction he found there as he made his way through the city he knew so well. He came to realize that the city he loved had probably received a death blow from which it might never recover and he grieved as if he had lost a member of his family. But even worse, not long after being assigned to work a case involving the shooting of two young black looters in a wealthy New Orleans neighborhood, Robicheaux found that the chaos of New Orleans had followed him home to New Iberia.

The four looters had made the biggest score of their short and violent criminal career. But, unfortunately for them, they made it by inadvertently robbing and destroying the home of one of the most powerful mobsters in the city, a man who wanted both revenge and his property back and who had the means to accomplish both goals. Robicheaux, searching for the surviving looters while trying to identify the person who shot two of them, soon came to realize that the case was much more complicated than the one he had anticipated.

Dave Robicheaux is a man in constant battle with his own demons. He still dreams of his days in Viet Nam and of his own violent past. He is a recovering alcoholic, a disgraced ex-New Orleans cop who was eventually hired in New Iberia, and a man who has paid the price of having a wife killed by one of the criminals he was trying to bring to justice. When he finds his new wife and grown daughter threatened by men who will do anything to get their hands on what was stolen in New Orleans, Robicheaux struggles mightily to contain those demons even while knowing that he will ultimately do whatever it takes to protect those he loves.

James Lee Burke has done the near impossible. He has kept his Dave Robicheaux series as fresh as the day he started it sixteen books ago, and he has used Robicheaux and all the characters that fill those books to tell what amounts to a classic tragedy. The Tin Roof Blowdown is much more than a book for Dave Robicheaux fans, offering a glimpse into the human soul and forcing readers to wonder just what they would do if confronted with a similar version of hell. Read this book.

Rated at: 5.0

Greatest Love Story Ever

From the Guardian Unlimited website comes the results of a poll commissioned by the UKTV Drama people to "find the greatest love story." I'm not sure whether or not all the votes came from the U.K., but the results show that such a list is still pretty much dominated by the classics of that type.

The top 20

1 Wuthering Heights Emily Brontë, 1847

2 Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen, 1813

3 Romeo and Juliet William Shakespeare, 1597

4 Jane Eyre Charlotte Brontë, 1847

5 Gone with the Wind Margaret Mitchell, 1936

6 The English Patient Michael Ondaatje, 1992

7 Rebecca Daphne du Maurier, 1938

8 Doctor Zhivago Boris Pasternak, 1957

9 Lady Chatterley's Lover DH Lawrence, 1928

10 Far from The Madding Crowd Thomas Hardy, 1874

11 = My Fair Lady Alan Jay Lerner, 1956

The African Queen CS Forester, 1935

13 The Great Gatsby F Scott Fitzgerald, 1925

14 Sense and Sensibility Jane Austen, 1811

15 = The Way We Were Arthur Laurents, 1972

War and Peace Leo Tolstoy, 1865

17 Frenchman's Creek Daphne du Maurier, 1942

18 Persuasion Jane Austen, 1818

19 Take a Girl Like You Kingsley Amis, 1960

20 Daniel Deronda George Eliot, 1876

Since I don't consider myself to be much of a judge of what constitutes a good "love story," I'm not going to argue with the rankings other than to say that I found the most recent of the novels to make the list, The English Patient, to be one of the "yawners" of all time, including the film version. Maybe I'm just not cut out to read "love stories."

Summer Reading Lists

I'm a bit late mentioning summer reading lists for students, but if students are the same as I was at their age, they're probably just starting to worry about the required reading about now anyway. I've noticed that both the Barnes & Noble stores that I frequent have separate tables set up to display the reading list contents of the various high schools in the area, and I find it interesting to compare the contents of the displays set up for the different schools. There is some variation even among the schools within the same districts, but the most noticeable differences come when comparing the tables at a district level.

Some lists seem still to be emphasizing the classics and other books that were on the list when I was in high school about 100 years ago. Others have moved toward being dominated by books written in the last two decades. According to The Christian Science Monitor, the inclusion of recent books is becoming more and more common.

"Most teens spend the summer doing whatever, and then cram the reading in during the last two weeks," says 2007 high school graduate Henry Qin of Boston.

Precious summer minutes spent poring over Shakespeare or Nathaniel Hawthorne may seem less than appealing to teens, but some experts say there is a slowly growing trend to infuse more modern literature into summer reading. As a result, the revered literary canon, which includes such classics as "Hamlet," "The Grapes of Wrath," and "The Scarlet Letter," may be due for a shake-up. Glance at high school summer reading lists across the United States and you are likely to find more recent authors such as Alice Sebold, Walter Dean Myers, and even Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong alongside Dickens and the Brontë sisters.

"The natural evolution of these lists is that they expand and include voices that are underrepresented," says American Library Association (ALA) president Loriene Roy. "If you don't include authors like Amy Tan or Virginia Woolfe, what does that mean? A lot of discussions have come up over the last 20 years over what one needs to know. [The question is], 'Who do you bump off?' "

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Practical concerns such as budget and time cause administrators to resist including recent young adult literature, or literature geared toward 12- to 18-year-olds, on required lists, says Beth Yoke, executive director of Young Adult Library Services Association, which is the fastest growing division of the ALA. But Ms. Yoke says she sees a trend to include more diverse literature in required reading. "Kids want books that they can identify with," she says. They want to see an African-American character, or a Muslim character, or a strong female character."

Yoke says that it often takes at least a generation for a new young adult book to make required lists.

"If you're doing required reading in schools, you've got to buy a bazillion copies of these books and you have to have developed the lesson plans of all that supplementary material," she says by telephone. "Teachers have been teaching 'To Kill a Mockingbird' forever and a day, and they don't want to have to develop all new materials."

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But not all novels take a generation to catapult to required summer reading lists. Some new staples in summer reading lists: "Life of Pi" by Yann Martel, "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini, "Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time," by Mark Haddon, "Monster" by Walter Dean Myer, and "The Lovely Bones" by Alice Sebold.

"Ten years ago, these reading lists didn't have new books like that," says Alleen Nilsen, Arizona State University English professor and co-author of the textbook Literature for Today's Young Adult. "These are really popular new books."

So what catapults "Life of Pi" and "The Lovely Bones" to the elusive reading list club? Both are bildungsromans, or stories of young people coming of age. Ms. Nilsen says this theme is crucial for reading list inclusion, as youth need to feel a connection to the literature.

The article includes bits of sample reading lists from high schools around the country and, for the most part, I don't have much of a quarrel with what the school systems have chosen to include. I do find it a little discouraging to see a Dan Brown book on the Old Bridge, New Jersey, list and to find a political book from Barack Obama on the Dallas list. I was also a bit surprised to see Freakonomics on the Dallas list but I can imagine how many lively discussions will grow out of that one, so I think it's a good choice. Take a look at the sample lists at the end of the article and you'll see quite a bit of diversity in the choices made by educators around the country.

Colorado Library Bandit

Library shelves, that are just as likely to be filled with the latest DVDs these days as with books, have become tempting targets for thieves who see them as easy targets. In fact, one such dimwit has just been nabbed in Colorado , but only after he managed to walk away with several thousand items that he hoped to sell at online sites such as Craiglist.

Thomas Pilaar, 33, obtained seven library cards from the Denver Public Library by using different names, CBS4 investigator Brian Maass learned.

The library says Pilaar then checked out as many as 300 items on each card, selling many of them via the Web site Craigslist.com.

A woman who recently bought books from Pilaar through Craigslist noticed the library identification stamps and alerted authorities.

"It appears his intent was to sell 2,100 (items) from the Denver Library collection," said Jackson, who estimated the losses at about $35,000.

Denver is hardly alone. Librarians from Aurora, Arapahoe County and Douglas County say they too have been victimized in recent months by Pilaar. Arapahoe County library administrators said Pilaar obtained three different library cards and checked out between 250 and 300 items.

James Larue, Douglas County's head librarian, said Pilaar checked out more than 300 items from two Douglas County libraries, mostly DVDs and pricey coffee table books. He says the library system's losses stand at $11,000.

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"Just like any other system, it's possible to abuse it. And this guy, if he is who he claims to be, shows up at some of the libraries and developed very quickly a pattern of just not acting like an ordinary patron and checking out way too many DVDs."

The Denver District Attorney's Office is investigating the library thefts and is considering filing criminal charges against Pilaar.

What went wrong here? I can easily understand how someone could use a false identity to obtain a library card. After all, thousands of illegal aliens are wandering around this country with false Social Security cards and driver's licenses, so how hard can it be to obtain a fake library card? But don't libraries have some kind of limit in place that would prohibit a new patron from checking out 300 items at a time, especially when most of the items are DVDs? Now that almost all library systems track everything via computer systems, how could they so easily be ripped off? Why aren't there better controls in place to protect the public's investment in its libraries?

I have, at times, had as many as twelve or thirteen items checked out of the Harris County library system and I figured that I might be approaching the limit of what they would let me have out at one time. In fact, I was hoping that was the case because I find it so irritating to walk up to near-empty DVD shelves just as one patron walks away with a dozen DVDs in her hands. How many movies can one person watch in seven days?

Perhaps it's time for libraries to put some common sense limitations on just how many items one person is allowed to cart off without returning some of the loot. Hey, I'm just saying...