BTW News Briefs

West Bend Library Receives Intellectual Freedom Award

The Office for Intellectual Freedom recognized the West Bend Community Memorial Library in West Bend, Wisconsin, as the recipient of the 2009 Robert B. Downs Intellectual Freedom Award. The West Bend Library was acknowledged for its steadfast advocacy on behalf of intellectual freedom in the face of an attempt to remove LGBT titles from its YA section that garnered national attention. While the library did not remove any of the challenged titles, subsequent to that decision the West Bend (Wisconsin) Common Council dismissed four members of the West Bend Library Board, one of whom was a part-time bookseller for Fireside Books & Gifts in West Bend.

The award is given by the faculty of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

A reception to honor the West Bend Library will take place during the midwinter meeting of the American Library Association in the Arlington Room of the Boston Park Plaza Hotel on January 16, from 5:30 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. The ABC-CLIO publishing company provides the honorarium to the recipient of the Downs Intellectual Freedom Award and also co-sponsors the reception.

National Book Foundation Offers Prizes for Inspiring Reading

The National Book Foundation will award a number of prizes of up to $2,500 each to individuals and institutions -- or partnerships between the two -- that have developed innovative means of creating and sustaining a lifelong love of reading.

Full details and an application can be found on the NBF website. The deadline for all materials is February 17, 2010.

Book Sales Up in October, E-Book Year-to-Date Sales Reach $130 Million

Book sales tracked by the Association of American Publishers (AAP) for the month of October totaled $725.8 million, an increase of 10.2 percent, and were up by 4.1 percent for the year. The Adult Hardcover category rose 6.3 percent for the month, with sales of $259.9 million; year-to-date sales were up by 3.9 percent. Adult Paperback sales jumped 37.5 percent (totaling $130.4 million) but were down by 4.8 percent for the year. The Adult Mass Market category was down 1.8 percent for October, with sales totaling $61.2 million; sales were down by 0.4 percent year-to-date. The Children's/YA Hardcover category declined by 0.5 percent, with sales of $87.9 million, but sales for year-to-date in the category increased 4.4 percent. The Children's/YA Paperback category was up by 20.2 percent in October, with sales totaling $52.7 million, reflecting a 4.1 percent increase for the year.

Publishers' net sales for e-books reached $18.5 million for the month of October, compared to $5.2 million in 2008. Year-to-date sales in aggregate for the period of January-October 2009, reached $130.7 million, compared to $46.6 million for the same period in 2008, a 180.7 percent increase. Currently, trade market e-books account for 3 percent of total trade sales, according to AAP.

Audio Book sales posted a decrease of 1.8 percent in October, with sales totaling $19.7 million; sales to-date decreased by 18.8 percent. Religious Books saw a decrease of 8.5 percent for the month, with sales totaling $60.3 million; sales were down by 10.7 percent for the year.

New Owner for North Carolina's City Lights Books

Joyce and Allen Moore, co-owners of City Lights Books, Sylva, North Carolina, have announced in a store e-mail that they are selling the bookstore to long-time employee Chris Wilcox. Joyce Moore noted in the update that "I cannot imagine anyone more suited to navigating the future of bookselling than Chris," adding "as I begin my 66th year and a new decade, I feel the need to slow and simplify my own life, but I believe that I am leaving the store in capable hands, well suited to dealing with the evolving complexities of the bookselling world."