Victoria

Here’s a good and positive story for these days of doomsaying and handwringing over the fortunes of bookstores. Munro’s Books in Victoria, British Columbia, founded in 1963 by Jim Munro and his then wife, Nobel laureate Alice Munro, is passing into the hands of its staff on the retirement of its founder. The thriving institution, […]

The post Alice Munro’s ex-husband gives away the store, hands Munro’s Books to staff appeared first on TeleRead: News and views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics.

Buzzfeed has gathered images of the most awe-inspiring, quirky, and just plain cool bookstores throughout the world. If you haven't visited these bookstores yet, you should definitely consider making a special trip. An international bookstore circuit might be just the way to close out the summer!

Very soon, in fact in the September/October issue of Book Business which we are currently putting to bed and which will arrive in your mailboxes in a few weeks, we will be announcing a new campaign all about reading habits.

Last month, I attended the London Book Fair and came home with new thoughts on the future of e-books. In particular, an in-booth presentation by DNL eBooks’ Peter Kent—author of many books including “SEO for Dummies” and “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Internet”—combined interesting statistics and Kent’s opinion on e-books’ future. Of course, Kent’s affiliation with DNL eBooks should be kept in mind, as the vendor provides a 3-D e-book technology (that incorporates Adobe Flash) through a software download for personal computers. (The technology was used in the Avon [a HarperCollins imprint] e-book release of “Lady Amelia’s Secret Lover,” which featured embedded video

The biggest news in book retailing so far this year may be Borders’ opening its first “concept store,” a new generation of superstores unveiled in February in the company’s hometown of Ann Arbor, Mich. At 28,900 square feet, the new store—the first of 14 planned to open this year—does not skimp on size, and a lot of that space is taken up by innovative features: shop-within-a-shop “destination zones” for travel, cooking, wellness, graphic novels and children’s categories; bold, new architectural designs; and a “digital center” offering services ranging from book downloading to self-publishing. “Our mission is to be a headquarters for knowledge

If you look at “Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography” as an equation—say, America’s most controversial A-lister + one of the world’s most titillating celebrity biographers + a secretive, litigious religion (+ as a bonus, a Writers Guild strike that has much of the entertainment biz on its heels)—you might guess that a publisher needs simply to sit back and let the money roll in. But that’s just never the case, is it? Yes, the book’s publisher, St. Martin’s Press, is reveling in the eye of what we’ll call a perfect storm of self-perpetuating buzz with the Andrew Morton-penned celeb-bio. Yes, prelaunch reports