Maggie Helwig’s Girls Fall Down named Toronto Public Library’s One Book for 2012

If the Toronto Public Library has its way, this spring’s must-read book will be Maggie Helwig’s Girls Fall Down (Coach House Books).

The 2008 novel has been selected for this year’s One Book initiative, a city-wide book club that is part of the TPL’s Keep Toronto Reading Festival, which takes place every April.

Published by Coach House Books, the novel, set in 2002, looks at the effects of post-9/11 mass paranoia when a high school student collapses on a Toronto subway car after smelling something “like roses.” Girls Fall Down will be at the heart of community discussions and events hosted by the TPL throughout the month-long showcase of Toronto-based literature and literary culture.

*In an interview with the Toronto Star, Helwig says she will participate in a panel discussion with Anglican archbishop Colin Johnson “on occupying public spaces, and another on marginalized communities in Toronto.”

The festival will also include appearances by local authors such as Ray Robertson, Philippa Dowding, Mahtab Narsimhan, Eva Stachniak, and David Rotenberg.

Radio host Matt Galloway revealed the pick Tuesday on CBC’s Metro Morning. The festivities kick off with a launch party on April 2 at the Toronto Reference Library.

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*Correction, Feb. 22: Based on incorrect information that appeared in the Toronto Star, the archbishop Colin Johnson was misidentified in an earlier version of this story.

Slave Lake Library reopens after fire

In May, wildfires ravaged the town of Slave Lake in northern Alberta. The community of 7,000 residents returned from an evacuation notice to find the town’s library, municipal government buildings, and radio station destroyed, plus many homes and businesses gutted.

As demolition, cleanup, and reconstruction efforts continue, the town had good reason to celebrate last Saturday as the Rotary Club of Slave Lake Public Library welcomed the community to the grand opening of its temporary location. The reopening of the library, which had been moved to a brand new facility adjoining town hall in 2009, comes largely thanks to a donations campaign mounted by the Slave Lake Regional Library Board and the Peace Library System in the days after the forest fires. Appeals for nearly new books and cash gifts have led to the library acquiring more than 14,000 materials, including books, audio books, DVDs, and computers. The temporary location will be in place for 18 months to two years while the original site is rebuilt.

In a press release, library board members and staff thank publishers, libraries, and individuals across Canada for their generosity, and acknowledge the impact their contributions have had on the town.

“A library helps link together members in a community,” says librarian Anne Moore. “This is a very busy library and many visitors see the temporary location as a beacon of hope.”

BookNet bestsellers: romance

Revving up for Valentine’s Day? One of these best-selling romance titles may be just what Cupid ordered. For the two weeks ending Feb. 5:

1. The Next Always, Nora Roberts
(Penguin, $18.50 pa, 9780425243213)

2. A Lady Never Surrenders, Sabrina Jeffries
(Pocket Books/Simon & Schuster, $9.99 mm, 9781451642452)

3. Bennett and Camilla, Nora Roberts
(Silhouette/Harlequin, $9.99 mm, 9780373281558)

4. The Capture of the Earl of Glencrae, Stephanie Laurens
(Avon/HarperCollins, $9.50 mm, 9780062068620)

5. The Summer Garden, Sherryl Woods
(Mira/Harlequin, $9.99 mm, 9780778313090)

6. You … Again, Debbie Macomber
(Mira/Harlequin, $9.99 mm, 9780778312994)

7. Love in a Nutshell, Janet Evanovich and Dorien Kelly
(St. Martin’s Press/Raincoast, $29.99 cl, 9780312651312)

8. Once a Ferrara Wife …, Sarah Morgan
(Harlequin, $5.99 mm, 9780373130498)

9. The Lone Wolfe, Kate Hewitt
(Harlequin, $5.99 mm, 9780373130481)

10. Gabriella and Alexander, Nora Roberts
(Silhouette/Harlequin, $9.99 mm, 9780373281541)

11. Born in Ice, Nora Roberts
(Jove/Penguin, $8.99 mm, 9780515116755)

12. Table for Five, Susan Wiggs
(Mira/Harlequin, $9.99 mm, 9780778313823)

13. Fiancée for One Night, Trish Morey
(Harlequin, $5.99 mm, 9780373130511)

14. Lucky Penny, Catherine Anderson
(Signet/Penguin, $8.99 mm, 9780451236036 )

15. Spirit Bound, Christine Feehan
(Penguin, $8.99 mm, 9780515149562)

16. Lothaire, Kresley Cole
(Pocket/S&S, $19.99 pa, 9781451664232)

17. Princess from the Past, Caitlin Crews
(Harlequin, $5.99 mm, 9780373130504)

18. Next of Kin, Sharon Sala
(Mira/Harlequin, $9.99 mm, 9780778313120)

19. Forever Buckhorn, Lori Foster
(Harlequin, $9.99 mm, 9780373776474)

20. Secrets of the Lost Summer, Carla Neggers
(Mira/Harlequin, $9.99 mm, 9780778313113)

Penguin pulls out of OverDrive, stops ebook sales to libraries

Penguin Group has announced it will no longer provide ebooks to OverDrive, effective immediately. With the termination of the relationship between the publisher and the U.S. digital content distributor, public libraries are effectively cut off from acquiring and lending out Penguin ebooks and e-audiobooks.

The Digital Shift reports:

Penguin is negotiating a “continuance agreement” with OverDrive, which will allow libraries that have Penguin ebooks in their catalog to continue to have access to those titles.

But since the company does not have a contract with 3M, the still fledgling but growing competitor to OverDrive, the practical effect of the decision will be to shut down public library access to additional Penguin ebook titles (not physical titles) for the immediate future.

The news is not entirely unexpected. In November of last year, Penguin Group stopped selling frontlist ebook titles to OverDrive and other digital distribution platforms, and stopped offering new e-audiobooks to library distributors last month.

Penguin is not the only major publisher to demonstrate an unwillingness to provide digital content to libraries. Even as circulation numbers for ebooks grow at libraries, multinational publishers have tightened the reins on providing ebooks and e-audiobooks to these institutions. In March, HarperCollins capped library lending of its e-titles at 26 loans. Random House held off providing digital content to libraries until spring of last year (the availability of Canadian backlisted titles has been notoriously limited). Simon & Schuster and MacMillan have so far refused to provide e-titles to libraries. Now, HarperCollins remains the only large multinational publisher to provide digital titles to OverDrive.

In each of these cases, publishers have cited concerns over piracy and the potential for a loss of consumer sales. Canadian publishers such as House of Anansi Press, Douglas & McIntyre, and Orca Books do presently deal with the distributor.

This latest development with Penguin strengthens the argument for a Canadian-made solution to e-content distribution, championed by groups such as the Canadian Urban Libraries Council, the Association of Canadian Publishers, and the Canadian Publishers Council (of which Penguin Canada, Simon & Schuster Canada, HarperCollins Canada, and Random House of Canada are members).

[This post was updated Feb. 10.]

Carmen Aguirre wins CBC Canada Reads

Carmen Aguirre came out victorious at this year’s CBC Canada Reads. The B.C.-based author and playwright’s memoir, Something Fierce: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter (Douglas & McIntyre), about growing up in the underground among South American revolutionaries during the 1970s, beat out Ken Dryden’s The Game (Wiley Canada), the former Habs goalie’s recollections of pro hockey and a very different version of the ’70s.

Something Fierce defender Shad had his work cut out for him, winning three votes to two against The Game’s champion, Alan Thicke, Thursday morning at the CBC studios in Toronto. The hip-hop artist was backed by Arlene Dickinson and Anne-France Goldwater (one of the rare instances when these two panelists agreed), while Thicke was seconded by Stacey McKenzie. The final showdown proved to be one of the tamest panels yet in a contest that included allegations of lying, bullying, terrorism, and lots of tears (we’re looking at you, Stacey).

Aguirre, who is currently touring her one-woman show, Blue Box, called into the studio from Ottawa after she heard the news. “It was a very interesting week for me because I’m alone in Ottawa right now,” she said. “I’d had to go every night to do my 80-minute monologue and then not sleep at night because I was waiting to see what will happen the next morning, but I’ve had a lot of virtual support.”

The Game and Something Fierce (a Q&Q Book of the Year for 2011), were the last titles standing after one by one panelists voted off Dave Bidini’s On a Cold Road (McClelland & Stewart), John Vaillant’s The Tiger (Vintage Canada), and Marina Nemat’s Prisoner of Tehran (Penguin Canada).

D&M is preparing for the expected increase in sales, often referred to as the “Canada Reads effect,” with a reprint of the book. As part of its participation in the contest, the publisher will make a financial donation to Frontier College’s Aboriginal Literacy Program.

Something Fierce will be released in the U.S. in August.

Bernadette McDonald wins American Alpine Club Lit Award

B.C. author Bernadette McDonald has won the 2012 American Alpine Literary Award.

McDonald, founding vice-president of mountain culture at the Banff Centre and the author of seven books, has received the honour for her book Freedom Climbers (Rocky Mountain Books, 2011), which recounts the true story of Polish adventurers who escaped Communist oppression after the Second World War and became the world’s foremost climbers of the Himalayas.

With the ACC award, McDonald has become the first writer to have scored the mountain lit hat-trick for a single title, having also won Grand Prize at the Banff Mountain Book Festival and Britain’s Boardman Tasker Prize. (McDonald is the first Canadian to receive the British honour.)

The ACC will present McDonald with the award at a benefit dinner in Boston on March 3.

In December, Vertebrate Publishing acquired U.K. and Irish rights to Freedom Climbers, which they will release it paperback and ebook formats later this month.

Slideshow: George Stroumboulopoulos and celebrity librarian Nancy Pearl at the OLA Superconference

More than 4,700 library professionals, authors, and exhibitors descended on the Metro Toronto Convention Centre last week for the 2012 Ontario Library Association Superconference – the largest library conference in Canada, which ran Feb. 1–4.

Innovation was the theme for this year’s gathering, which featured more than 200 sessions and presentations by special guests such as Guy Gavriel Kay, Jonah Lehrer, Catherine Gildiner, Neil Pasricha, Nora Young, George Stroumboulopoulos, celebrity librarian Nancy Pearl, and Ontario Minister of Education Laurel Broten.

Click through the slideshow for a peek at what professional development and partying down look like in “library-land” (as one speaker put it).

Former agent to launch international organization for self-published authors

Just in time for the spring book season, a non-profit organization for self-published authors is getting an international roll-out.

Headed up in London, England, by Orna Nass, an author and former literary agent, The Alliance of Independent Authors will represent the interests of self-published authors in dealings with booksellers, trade publishers, literary agents, and wholesalers. According to Nass, who is quoted by The Bookseller, the purpose of the group is to raise awareness among industry stakeholders of the “creative needs” of writers who take a DIY approach to book publishing.

“It requires a change of attitude both in writers and in other players. In the past, the author was a resource to be mined, but indie authorship is about meeting the publisher as a partner,” Nass says.

The alliance’s website should be live in the coming weeks, and Nass hopes to sign up about 500 members in the organization’s first year. She intends to offer “a biannual conference and monthly meetings for members, as well as providing a helpline, newsletters, and advice on issues such as payment and contracts.”

Though there are some organizations specifically tailored to self-published authors in Canada, they seem few and far between, and their activity levels are anything but regular. (For example, the Independent Authors and Illustrators of Canada, founded in 2008, recently lost its Web domain and has had its site taken down.)

In 2004, the Canadian ISBN Agency estimated 65 per cent of Canada’s publishing output came from self-published authors. Last year, an R.R. Bowker study found that self-published books in the U.S. had grown to more than 764,000 titles, up from more than 285,000 in 2008 and 134,000 in 2007.

University of Alberta researchers track down province’s first publisher

A team at the University of Alberta has traced the province’s first book publishing enterprise to a Catholic missionary and polyglot.

In The Beginning of Print Culture in Athabasca Country (University of Alberta Press, 2010), researchers Patricia Demers, Naomi McIlwraith, and Dorothy Thunder examine the work of Bishop Émile Grouard, owner of the province’s first printing press. Gouard was also the author and translator of its first books: Catholic texts printed in the aboriginal languages of Cree, Dene, Beaver, Hareskin, and Loucheux.

In addition to the remarkable Belgian-made metal fonts in Cree syllabics, the historians, who included a reprint and painstaking translation of Grouard’s 1883 Cree prayer book, were struck by the missionary’s efforts to contextualize catechism to suit his 19^th–century aboriginal audience.

From the Edmonton Journal:

In Grouard’s version, for example, Adam and Eve are expelled from Eden for eating forbidden berries. Because Cree has no word for “descend,” Grouard had to be creative in finding a way to describe Christ’s descent to Earth.

“He has Jesus sledding down from heaven, tobogganing down to Earth,” Demers says, laughing.

In Grouard’s translation, even the Ten Commandments take on a more folksy, conversational tone. “Thou shalt not kill,” for example, comes out as: “Do not kill. Do not even think about how to kill.”

“Cree is entirely different from English,” McIlwraith says. “In English, the syntax is very rigid. Cree is more flexible and more fluid, more melodic.”

“He Cree-ized the Latin liturgy, with the intonation of Cree,” Demers says. “This document is a kind of living testimony to a hallmark of Cree identity. The loss of that language is what this project wanted to address and rectify.”

In 2011, The Beginning of Print Culture took home the Scholarly and Academic Book Award at the Alberta Book Awards.

Have “social” updates ruined the Kobo app?

It’s no secret that Kobo, the e-reading company formerly owned by Indigo Books & Music, is betting big on the “social in-book e-reading experience” to set it apart from competitors such as Amazon’s Kindle and Apple’s iBookstore.

Kobo made this much clear with the September launch of Kobo Pulse, a package of updates that effectively integrated social media within the company’s e-reader. The new features permit users to connect with other readers online, comment on an ebook’s content, view statistics about a title’s popularity, and post reading updates and passages to Facebook, among other functions. The new capabilities are in addition to Kobo’s long-established Reading Life program.

It seems, though, for some Kobo diehards, the updates have gone too far.

Just a year after naming Kobo’s e-reading iPad app the best on the market, digital publishing and tech blogger Chris Walters has come out swinging against it. In a post on his website, Walters says that, while he used to believe the Kobo app “ahead of the curve,” he now avoids using it altogether. Noting that the changes came about in response to restrictions against in-app purchases Apple began implementing last year, Walters says Kobo’s unrelenting attempts to make e-reading fun and connected have missed the mark and made the app unpleasant to use.

Regardless of whether or not users find the social features cumbersome, Walters’ main complaint is levelled against Kobo’s increasingly aggressive sales tactics. Now when the app is launched, it opens to a page of recommended reads that takes up much of the display screen. Moreover, Walters points out that when you do opt to make a purchase, the process has become much more time consuming and involves multiple website redirections.

Walters ends his post by putting these changes in context. From Booksprung:

Part of me wonders if this is the first sign of the New Face of Kobo, now that it’s been bought up by Rakuten. Software updates don’t happen overnight, so this was likely something Kobo had in the works for a while. Rakuten surely had enough time to kill this update but chose to release it anyway, which is a good sign that this is the way things will work with Kobo from now on. Who knows? By the time summer comes around the Kobo iOS app may be nothing but an impenetrable billboard of book samples, Facebook alerts, infographics, help screens, pop-up windows, slide-out sheets, and “share this” badges.

Has Kobo’s e-reading app gone too far, or are we asking too much of retail-based companies? What can Kobo do to win back Walters and other disgruntled readers?