People

Daniel Clancy, director of Google Books, offered a keynote presentation at the Winter Institute's Technology Day that provided booksellers with insights into plans for Google Editions, launching later this year, as well as a deeper understanding of the challenges of the e-book marketplace.

Fran Howell, co-founder of the Raymar Book Company, died on Saturday evening, February 6. He was 85.

In the early 1960s, Howell and the late Stu Woodruff partnered to create Raymar, which would become the premier trade book wholesaler in the West. In 1976, Raymar was acquired by Ingram Book Company and the combined company began its current run as a national and global leader.

When author Wendy Smith looked at the charitable giving statistics related to the devastating 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, she was amazed to find that 45 percent of total giving from around the world came from "ordinary American citizens." Their contributions amounted to more than those from famous philanthropic foundations, from corporations, and even from the U.S. government.

Robert Ross "Bob" Simoneaux, 64, of West Chester, Pennsylvania, died on Monday, January 11, 2010, after a long illness. He was co-owner, with his wife, Kathleen Yates Simoneaux, of Chester Country Book & Music Company in West Chester, Pennsylvania.

Simoneaux's career in the book business, which began at age 18, included positions at Curtis Circulation Company, Pocket Books, Bayou News, and Fawcett Books. He also worked at one time as a police officer in New Orleans.

Steven Rosato has been named event director of BookExpo America (BEA). Rosato began working on BEA in 1998 and has served in a number of key sales and strategic positions. Most recently, as director of industry development and strategic accounts, Rosato played a critical role in helping to define and set BEA's goals for the future based on customer feedback.

During his five years as the New York Times restaurant critic, Frank Bruni was the most well-known and religiously followed food writer in New York City and, possibly, the country. Most readers were also probably familiar with his previous work as a Times reporter in D.C., his coverage of George Bush's 2000 presidential campaign, and his features in the Sunday Magazine.

John and Michelle Presta got their start in bookselling in 1991 as the founders of a small bookstore, Reading on Walden, in Chicago. They got their start in politics about a decade later working on the campaign of then-congressional hopeful Barack Obama.

Joel C. Turner, co-founder with his family of the former Under Cover Books in Shaker Heights, Ohio, died suddenly this past weekend. He was 58 years old.

In 1978, Turner, with his parents and siblings Philip Turner and Pamela Turner, founded Under Cover Books at Van Aken Shopping Center in Shaker Heights. The business grew to include a location in the historic Old Arcade of downtown Cleveland, and a shop also selling records and CDs in Chagrin Falls, Ohio.

At last night's National Book Awards Ceremony and Benefit Dinner at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City, one of the more optimistic themes of the night was expressed by nonfiction winner T.J.

Former bookseller, author, and publisher Robert Dike Blair died on Saturday, October 31, 2009. Known to all as Dike Blair, he was born in New Castle, Pennsylvania, in 1919.

S&S Launches Galley Grab

Simon & Schuster is now offering electronic galleys of S&S titles to reviewers and media, booksellers, and other key publishing trade contacts through Galley Grab, the company's beta launch eGalley program. The eGalleys offered by S&S are DRM protected PDF files that do not allow copying, and can be read using the Adobe Digital Editions desktop reader, on the most recent versions of the Sony Reader, the nook, and other devices that support Adobe Digital Editions.

To mark its first anniversary, IndieBound has drawn a winner for the IndieBound.org points contest -- Julie Hahnke of Marblehead, Massachusetts. Hahnke, author of The Grey Ghost, a Summer Kids' Indie Next List pick, won a $50 gift card to her local indie bookstore, Spirit of '76 in Marblehead.

Legendary Salt Lake City bookseller Sam Weller died on Wednesday, June 24, 2009. He was 88.

Sam Weller was born on April 23, 1921, in Schneidemuhl, Germany. His family immigrated to Salt Lake City in 1925, where his father, Gus, opened a secondhand furniture store. In 1929, spurred by the purchase of a collection of old Mormon books, Gus Weller transformed the secondhand furniture store on First South in Salt Lake City to Zion's Bookstore.