BTW News Briefs

Jane Friedman Resigns as President and CEO of HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide

On June 4, Jane Friedman, president and CEO of HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide, announced she was stepping down after 10 years at the helm of HarperCollins.

"My 10 years at HarperCollins have been far and away the most rewarding of my career and so it was not easy to make the decision to step down," said Friedman in a statement. "I am extremely pleased to be succeeded by Brian Murray, an incredibly talented individual and executive, and a true lover of books, who is the perfect person to lead our team to continued success in the future. I wish Brian and the entire team at HarperCollins the best of luck."

Friedman joined HarperCollins in November 1997, overseeing HarperCollins worldwide book publishing including operations in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, and India. Under her leadership, the company achieved record revenues as well as countless publishing honors. Previously, she was executive vice president of Random House, Inc., executive vice president of the Knopf Publishing Group, publisher of Vintage Books, and founder and president of Random House Audio Publishing.

Lightning Source to Fill POD Orders for McClellan Memoir

To help meet bookseller demand for Scott McClellan's book What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception, PublicAffairs will supplement offset printings with POD by Lightning Source.

Intense media interest in the new title resulted in PublicAffairs' initial printings rapidly selling out. To supplement further offset printings, PublicAffairs has turned to Lighting Source Inc. for immediate supplies being shipped to accounts. "When facing this kind of extraordinary demand, the key to success is speed to market," said Susan Weinberg, the publisher at PublicAffairs. "Lightning Source's print-on-demand capability helped us reduce our turnaround time and ship more books to booksellers as quickly as possible."

The POD copies of the book will supplement large scale conventional offset reprints, which are underway.

20th Annual Lambda Literary Awards Announced

On Thursday, May 29, the Lambda Literary Foundation announced the winners of 21 Lammys, recognizing the best in LGBT books and authors.

Among this year's winners are:

• LGBT Children's/Young Adult: Hero by Perry Moore (Hyperion)
• LGBT Nonfiction: Gay Artists in Modern American Culture by Michael S. Sherry (University of North Carolina Press)
• Bisexual: Split Screen by Brett Hartinger (HarperCollins Children's Books)
• Transgender: Transparent by Cris Beam (Harcourt)
• Lesbian Debut Fiction: Among Other Things, I've Taken Up Smoking by Aoibheann Sweeney (Penguin Press)
• Gay Debut Fiction: A Push and a Shove by Christopher Kelly (Alyson Books)

See the complete list of winners at www.lambdaliterary.org.

ForeWord Announces 2007 Book of the Year Award Winners

ForeWord Magazine has announced the winners of its 10th annual Book of the Year Awards. At a ceremony at BookExpo America in Los Angeles, 212 winners in 60 categories were honored.

Two books were named Editor's Choice Prize winners, a distinction that comes with a $1,500 cash prize. The Editor's Choice Prize for fiction was given to The Folded World by Amity Gaige (Other Press). The nonfiction award went to Women of Courage: Intimate Stories From Afghanistan by Katherine Kiviat and Scott Heidler (Gibbs Smith).

ForeWord also named the first Independent Publisher of the Year: Kunati Books, a publisher of fiction and nonfiction, which released its first titles just over two years ago.

The complete list of ForeWord's Book of the Year Award winners is available at ForeWord's website (www.forewordmagazine.com/botya).

Audies Announced

On May 30, the Audio Publishers Association (APA) announced the winners of the 2008 Audies at a grand Gala at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles. The Audies are the only completely juried awards program covering audiobooks and spoken word entertainment. The original production Sweeney Todd and the String of Pearls (Blackstone Audio Inc.) by Yuri Rasovsky, read by Phil Proctor, Simon Templeman, et al., won in all three of its nominated categories -- Original Work, Audio Drama, and Achievement in Production.

Other winners included:

• Audiobook of the Year: The Chopin Manuscript (Audible, Inc.) by Jeffery Deaver, Lee Child, et al., read by Alfred Molina
• Biography/Memoir: Einstein: His Life and Universe (Simon & Schuster Audio) by Walter Isaacson, read by Edward Herrmann
• Literary Fiction: Tree of Smoke (Macmillan Audio) by Denis Johnson, read by Will Patton

For a full list, visit www.audiopub.org. Additionally, APA and AudioFile Magazine have joined together to provide an interactive way to listen to this year's Audies winners. The website, www.theaudies.com, allows listeners to read a review about the winning audiobook, as well as listen to a sample of the audiobook.

FedEx Kinko's Becomes FedEx Office

On June 3, FedEx Corporation announced that it will change the name of FedEx Kinko's to FedEx Office. The ABA Discount Shipping Program, which is managed by PartnerShip, will continue to offer the FedEx Office member benefit to ABA members.

"Kinko's was primarily a copy and print-service provider when it was acquired in 2004," said Brian D. Philips, president and chief executive officer of FedEx Office. "The name FedEx Office more accurately represents our broader role of providing superior information and services through our company-owned, digitally connected locations around the world. We are a back office for small businesses and a branch office for medium to large businesses and mobile professionals."

ABA Discount Shipping Program members will not have to re-enroll in the new FedEx Office, and the discounts and services users have come to rely on will remain the same. To enroll in the free program or to review your savings opportunities with all the services the ABA Discount Shipping Program offers, visit the website at www.PartnerShip.com/07aba.

Retailers Still Fighting Organized Retail Crime, According to NRF Survey

As organized retail crime continues to plague the industry, retailers are getting more serious about uncovering, dismantling, and prosecuting the responsible individuals and crime rings. The National Retail Federation's 2008 Organized Retail Crime report found that two-thirds of retailers (68 percent) have identified or recovered stolen merchandise and/or gift cards from a fence location, up from 61 percent last year. Much of the stolen merchandise also ends up online, being sold through third-party auction sites, where crime rings can maintain anonymity. The report revealed that nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of retailers experienced an increase in e-fencing activity in the past 12 months.

The survey found that these crimes are still a threat to retailers' bottom lines as more companies this year have been victims of organized retail crime activity within the last 12 months (85 percent vs. 79 percent in 2007). However the report also found that of the retailers who have identified organized retail crime as a problem in their stores, fewer reported an increase in activity within the past 12 months (66 percent vs. 71 percent). When it comes to how much retailers spend fighting organized retail crime each year, the survey found the average retailer spends approximately $230,000 per year on labor costs. Many larger retailers who are particularly affected by the problem can spend upwards of $1 million a year. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, organized retail crime accounts for as much as $30 billion in retail losses every year.

As a response to the growing problem of organized retail crime, NRF, along with the FBI and other industry associations, launched the Law Enforcement Retail Partnership Network (LERPnet) in April 2007. LERPnet was designed to track patterned crimes and criminals through a secure national database that will allow retailers to share information through its unique web-based design. With LERPnet, retailers and law enforcement will be able to fight back against illegal activity including organized retail crime, burglaries, robberies, counterfeiting, and online auction fraud.