Daily book biz round-up: Borders closure; B&N closure; and more

Special death-of-bookselling edition:

• Borders closes major San Fran location!
• B&N closes major New York location!
• Borders cuts price of Kobo e-Reader to $129!
• Staples to start selling Kindle!
• And finally: Dick and Jane and Vampires

Bookmarks: Going Rogue mistakes, aliens and werewolves, Xbox Bibles, and more

A few bookish links from around the Web:

• Sarah Palin’s much-anticipated memoir hits shelves today. Palin tells Oprah in an unused clip from yesterday’s interview that “logistically speaking, practically speaking, it wasn’t a real difficult exercise to write the book” (via GalleyCat) 
• The Associated Press has compiled a list of the errors found in Going Rogue
• Stephenie Meyer, author of the wildly popular Twilight empire series, also sat on Oprah’s couch in a rare public appearance last Friday. In an unused clip (via Entertainment Weekly), Meyer admits to being “a little burned out by vampires” and says that she “may go spend some time with … aliens.” 
• For those of you sick of everything vampire, Bookgasm offers a werewolf alternative in David Wellington’s Frostbite 
• The New Oxford American Dictionary‘s Word of the Year is “unfriend,” which is defined as: “to remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook.”  Runners-up for the title included “hashtag,” “sexting,” “teabagger,” and “tramp stamp”
• The future is digital: the National Post reports that students at Toronto’s Blyth Academy will all receive a Sony Reader to replace those stuffy old textbooks of yore 
• How would you like your Bible?  Handwritten or on your Xbox? 

Bookmarks: Generic Wizard Nights, a feline Humbert Humbert, and more

Sundry links from around the Web:

• The Ontario Library Association has announced the nominees for the 2010 Forest of Reading Program. Votes can be cast for your favourite authors at the OLA’s website. Participants have between now and April 23 to read a minimum of 5 of the 10 titles in their chosen category
• Classic literature meets lolcats with LOLerature. Who knew what we were missing?
• A U.K. fan who was forbidden to throw a Harry Potter-themed dinner party throws a “Generic Wizard Night” instead
• Stephen King taps into vampire mania by writing his first comic book, American Vampire. The most terrifying fact, as pointed out by AbeBooks, is that the vampire bears an uncanny resemblance to Kid Rock
• For people who have too much time on their hands like dressing up their pets as literary characters, The New Yorker has been holding an online Critterati Contest. The contest has closed and the winners will be announced later today, but the gallery is still available for your browsing pleasure. (While there are a plethora of adorable Moby Dicks and Hestor Prynnes, this Quillblogger has money on the feline version of Nabokov’s Humbert Humbert, caught in flagrante delicto with an unwitting Barbie Lolita)
• The woman who gave us Lestat de Lioncourt is swapping vampires for angels, the National Post reports

Bookmarks: Fall blockbuster books, vampires, and “glowy magic”

Sundry links from around the Web:

• Proof the world is going to hell: rapper 50 Cent writes “motivational philosophy” in a new book sporting an eerily Biblical cover
• Atwood, Munro, and Coupland, oh my!  The National Post predicts the fall 2009 book season will be a blockbuster
• Long live the undead: Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan on why vampire mania will never die 
• This just in: swords and “glowy magic” dominate fantasy covers; or: how to keep your summer intern busy with meaningless work
• Haagen-Dazs with your Hemingway? Author Betsy Lerner asks publishers what they eat when they read

Stephenie Meyer a biter?

According to gossip site TMZ.com, Stephenie Meyer is being accused of stealing parts of the fourth Twilight novel from a book by an author named Jordan Scott. TMZ links to the letter from Scott, detailing the similarities between the two books.

Meyer’s people are denying the whole thing, and while one should always wait for all the facts before drawing a conclusion, the excerpted Meyer scenes in question, seen side-by-side with their supposed sources, really only confirm that all schlocky writing pretty much reads the same.

Twilight fans invade sleepy U.S. town

From The Guardian:

Residents of Forks, Washington State, are still stunned by what a piece of assiduous Googling from Twilight author Stephenie Meyer has unleashed on their town. Looking for the US’s rainiest location in which to set her vampire series, she lighted upon the small town, population 3,221.

Fans of the books and film, based around Bella Swan and her dreamy vampire love interest Edward Cullen, began pouring into Forks. Today hundreds visit the town daily; its visitor count for June was more than 8,000 – around the number who used to come in a year. Restaurants have Twilight-themed menus with dishes such as Bellasagne, shops sell Twilight items, and tours cover the books’ locations.

Sorta like when all those fans of A Complicated Kindness swarmed Steinbach, Manitoba.

Bookmarks: historical vampires, Nabokov’s last work, and forgotten Pulitzers

Sundry links from around the Web:

• The New York Times looks at established authors who write well into old age.
• The co-author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies announces his next book: Abraham Lincoln, vampire hunter.
• The Wall Street Journal shines a light on the battle against the Comic Sans Serif font. Oddly, while the article provides excellent examples of the detractors’ ire, it doesn’t really establish why they hate the font so much. (Besides, we all know that if it weren’t for Comic, Ransom would take over.)
• Coming soon from Random House: the e-book equivalent of DVD special features.
• Vladimir Nabokov’s final book to be published in November.
• Proving the seven-figure book deal isn’t dead – in Asia, at least – a debut novelist receives a sizable advance from Penguin India.
• The top-ten forgotten Pulitzer-prize winners.

Depressed economy not all bad news for publishers

The economic turmoil in global financial markets is making a lot of folks depressed (ha!), but it apparently hasn’t stopped one mega-publisher from handing out generous bonuses to staff. The same week that Houghton Mifflin announced it was temporarily suspending new manuscript acquisitions, Hachette Book Group revealed its holiday munificence. As Motoko Rich writes in The New York Times:

As first reported by Publishers Lunch, an industry newsletter, Hachette is giving bonuses equal to one week’s salary to every employee in the company, in addition to the regular bonuses for which staff members are eligible.

Hachette, which recently opened a Canadian office, can afford to throw a little money around. Its Little, Brown and Grand Central Publishing units publish superstar authors James Patterson, David Baldacci, and Stephenie Meyer, whose Twilight series has begun to outsell even J.K. Rowling.

Houghton Mifflin, on the other hand, publishes writers like Philip Roth and Günter Grass. It can claim literary superiority, but clearly doesn’t have the same clout at the cash register. In times of economic hardship, teen vampires are a better draw than Pulitzer Prize-winners.