It’s amazing to realize that there was a time before consulting firms and endless talk about business strategy. The former editorial director of the Harvard Business Review writes about how we got here in Lords of Strategy. It’s currently rising on Amazon (now at #308), even though the listing indicates it won’t be published for three more weeks (the publisher listing, however, shows a 3/3/10 pub date).

It was just reviewed in the The Wall Street Journal, “Big Think In the Boardroom“;

…a clear, deft and cogent portrait of what the author calls the most powerful business idea of the past half-century: the realization that corporate leaders needed to abandon their go-it-alone focus on their company’s fortunes and instead pursue policies based on a detailed study of the competitive environment and of broader business trends.

The author was interviewed earlier in Business Week; “Lords of Strategy: A Talk with Walter Kiechel.”

The Lords of Strategy: The Secret Intellectual History of the New Corporate World Walter Kiechel Retail Price: $26.95 Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: Harvard Business School Press – (2010-03-03) ISBN / EAN: 1591397820 / 9781591397823

Check your holdings; it wasn’t review prepub and the libraries we checked have not ordered it yet.

Harry Markopolos, a Boston deratives analyst, was asked by his boss to look into a very successful hedge fund and try to figure out why it was doing so well. He instantly realized that it was a fraud and tried many times to blow the whistle on it. He wasn’t subtle; in 2000, he sent a memo to the SEC  titled “The World’s Largest Hedge Fund is a Fraud.” Fittingly, his book about the experience is titled No One Would Listen.

That fund was, of course, Bernie Madoff’s. In an interview with Jon Stewart on Monday night, Markopolos was clear about his distain for the SEC, causing Stewart to burst out, “You are an angry dude; you’re just rippin‘ these guys.”

The book rose to #18 on Amazon (it’s now at #21) and has heavy holds in libraries.

———-

No One Would Listen: A True Financial Thriller Harry Markopolos Retail Price: $27.95 Hardcover: 376 pages Publisher: Wiley – (2010-03-02) ISBN / EAN: 0470553731 / 9780470553732

ebook available from OverDrive

In a first novel by award-winning short story writer Eric Puchner, a California real estate developer is going broke and hiding that fact from his family. Alan Cheuse reviews the book, Model Home, on NPR’s All Things Considered (listen here), saying,

I came to feel so deeply for [the characters] that the book now and then became almost excruciating to read: the feckless parents, the desperate kids struggling to stay alive and in love with a home world crumbling around them.

People gave it their highest accolade, 4 of a possible 4 stars. It was also reviewed by,

• SF Chronicle ‘Model Home,’ by Eric Puchner
• NYT Nightmare on Easy Street

Model Home Eric Puchner Retail Price: $26.00 Hardcover: 368 pages Publisher: Scribner – (2010-02-09) ISBN / EAN: 0743270487 / 9780743270489

Audio from Tantor:

On Sale Date: 04/05/2010
Trade 9781400116522 12 Audio CDs $39.99
Library 9781400146529 12 Audio CDs $79.99
MP3 9781400166527 2 MP3-CD $29.99

The movie based on Neil Gaiman’s Coraline was nominated for an Academy Award, but did not win. CBS Sunday Morning must have expected a different outcome; they ran a piece about Gaiman the day of the awards.

The author’s characteristic charm is on full display.

Watch CBS News Videos Online

As we noted Monday, an Amazon computer glitch caused some pricey comics titles to drop precipitously in price and sales to skyrocket (the Amazon Top 100 were all comic titles at one point).

Publishers Weekly reported yesterday that some buyers received their purchases, while others received cancellation letters. Distributor Diamond Comics is in discussions with Amazon; “No doubt, they are also discussing who will take the economic hit if they honor some of these orders, a hit that could amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars,” says PW.

As Terry Gross says in her interview with Melissa Febos on NPR’s Fresh Air last night, “this may be the first memoir by a dominatrix who grew up listening to NPR,” a reflection of her obvious intelligence which is behind the book’s clever title, Whip Smart (listen to the interview here).

Why did she become a dominatrix? She couldn’t get a job in publishing.

The book rose to #77 (from 10,630) on Amazon.

Whip Smart: A Memoir Melissa Febos Retail Price: $24.99 Hardcover: 288 pages Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books – (2010-03-02) ISBN / EAN: 0312561024 / 9780312561024

Three books are the reviewers’ darlings of the moment. Oddly, they all have extremely short titles; Surrendered by Chang-rae Lee, Infinities by Jon Banville and The Ask by Sam Lipsyte.

Leading the pack in number of holds is The Ask. It was ordered in the lowest quantities, so it also has the highest ratio of holds, averaging 8:1 in libraries we checked. Booklist starred this “darkly humorous story.” It received equally strong reviews from Kirkus and PW, but LJ felt that, despite being a “A treasure trove of brilliant asides and one-liners,” it “never really comes together as a coherent novel.”

The consumer press is also divided,

• NYT BR, 3/7, Lydia Millett; “Lipsyte is not only a smooth sentence-maker, he’s also a gifted critic of power…What makes The Ask work so well is the way it dovetails its characters’ self-loathing with their self-consciousness…And that’s why this book is a success: not only the belly laughs but also the sadness attendant upon the cultural failure it describes.”

• LA Times, Misery loves company: Sam Lipsyte’s LipSite; “The Ask delivers its articulation of class rage in a sometimes mean-spirited package.”

The author is also being featured in interviews,

• WSJ, Slouching Toward Success; “Having made failure the signature theme of his fiction, Mr. Lipsyte seems especially unprepared for the critical success of his new novel, The Ask.”

• The Daily Beast, The Slacker Generation’s Swift

• New York magazine, “The Loser Chronicles: With his new novel, The Ask, Sam Lipsyte finds the funny in failure.”

The Ask: A Novel Sam Lipsyte Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 304 pages Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux – (2010-03-02) ISBN / EAN: 0374298912 / 9780374298913

BBC Audio; UNABR; 9780792770794; 7 CD’s;  $89.95

Audio available from OverDrive

————–

The Surrendered is the second in number of holds, but, because of an average of twice as many copies on order, hold ratios are less than 3:1. Michiko Kakutani gives it a strong review in the NYT today, ending with a Michiko-style back-hand compliment,

If the reader stops and thinks about it, there are lots of infelicities of craft in this novel…But Mr. Lee writes with such intimate knowledge of his characters’ inner lives and such an understanding of the echoing fallout of war that most readers won’t pause to consider such lapses — they will be swept up in the power of The Surrendered and its characters’ aching and indelible stories.

The Surrendered Chang-rae Lee Retail Price: $26.95 Hardcover: 480 pages Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover – (2010-03-09) ISBN / EAN: 1594489769 / 9781594489761

ebook available from OverDrive

——-

Infinities, by John Banville has been reviewed nearly everywhere but is described most memorably by Laura Miller in Sunday’s NYT BR,

If The Infinities has the bones of a novel of ideas, it’s fleshed out and robed as a novel of sensibility and style. Its drapery is velvet and brocade — sumptuous and at times over-heavy.

Other reviewers agree with her assessment that,

Fortunately, lavish demonstrations of literary virtuosity don’t bog down The Infinities, as they often did with The Sea, the novel that won Banville the Man Booker Prize in 2005.

Library holds, however, are modest.

The Infinities John Banville Retail Price: $25.95 Hardcover: 288 pages Publisher: Knopf – (2010-02-23) ISBN / EAN: 0307272796 / 9780307272799

RH Audio; UNABR; 9780307706652; $35

More national press is arriving for Letters to Jackie (see our earlier story).

The AP ran a story that was picked up by many news outlets today. Author Ellen Fitzpatrick and two of the letter writers in the book will appear on CBS Evening News tonight and the New York Times is running a story in the “National” section tomorrow. The book rose to #195 on Amazon today.

Letters to Jackie: Condolences from a Grieving Nation Ellen Fitzpatrick Retail Price: $26.99 Hardcover: 384 pages Publisher: Ecco – (2010-03-01) ISBN / EAN: 0061969842 / 9780061969843

ebook available from OverDrive.

On Sunday, the Amazon Top 100 list suddenly was all graphic novels in expensive hardcover versions. Our GN contributor, Robin Brenner, discovered that a pricing glitch suddenly caused prices to drop. Word traveled via Twitter and blogs, and fans began snapping them up.

Sorry, the “sale” is over; the glitch has now been fixed.

Lots of authors on tap for the week:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

Mon, 3/8 — Harry Markopolos — the man who led an investigation that brought down Bernie Madoff.

No One Would Listen: A True Financial Thriller Harry Markopolos Retail Price: $27.95 Hardcover: 376 pages Publisher: Wiley – (2010-03-02) ISBN / EAN: 0470553731 / 9780470553732

ebook available from OverDrive

Tues, 3/9 — Marc Thiessen who says, “Barack Obama did arguably more damage to America’s national security in his first 100 days of office than any president in American history.”

Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack Marc A. Thiessen Retail Price: $29.95 Hardcover: 376 pages Publisher: Regnery Press – (2010-01-18) ISBN / EAN: 1596986034 / 9781596986039

Wed, 3/10 — Eamon Javers on the world of business warfare.

Broker, Trader, Lawyer, Spy: The Secret World of Corporate Espionage Eamon Javers Retail Price: $26.99 Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: HarperBusiness – (2010-02-01) ISBN / EAN: 0061697206 / 9780061697203

ebook available on OverDrive

The Colbert Report

Tues, 3/9 — Annie Leonard. Her video, The Story of Stuff has been downloaded millions of times.

The Story of Stuff: How Our Obsession with Stuff Is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health-and a Vision for Change Annie Leonard Retail Price: $26.00 Hardcover: 352 pages Publisher: Free Press – (2010-03-09) ISBN / EAN: 143912566X / 9781439125663

S&S Audio; UNABR; 9780743599153; $26

Wed, 3/10 — Sean Carroll; ideas from the cutting edge of theoretical physics

From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time Sean Carroll Retail Price: $26.95 Hardcover: 448 pages Publisher: Dutton Adult – (2010-01-07) ISBN / EAN: 0525951334 / 9780525951339

Tantor Audio:

Trade; 9781400115655; 13 Audio CD; $39.99
Library; 9781400145652; 13 Audio CD; $79.99
MP3; 9781400165650; 2 MP3-CD; $29.99

Thurs, 3/11 — David Aaronov on conspiracy theories.

Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History David Aaronovitch Retail Price: $26.95 Hardcover: 400 pages Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover – (2010-02-04) ISBN / EAN: 1594488959 / 9781594488955

Tantor Audio

Trade; 9781400115921; 12 Audio CD; $39.99
Library; 9781400145928; 12 Audio CD; $79.99
MP3; 9781400165926; 2 MP3-CD; $29.99

Happy Monday!

Since your mind may be a little clouded from Oscar night (see our roundup of Oscar tie-ins), here’s a quick wrap-up of what else you need to know from the weekend:

Hurrah! This Book Is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All by Marilyn Johnson gets a great review in the 3/7 NYT Book Review and rises to #150 on Amazon (it’s now at #170 and, dare we say, that’s an amazingly high position for a book about a profession generally not considered that fascinating by the general public. We may actually see it on the 3/21 NYT Nonfiction best seller list).

The cover of the NYT BR features Angelology by Danielle Trussoni; remarkable because the BR rarely features a new popular-interest title with marketing muscle behind it (in what may be a first, both the NYT BR AND the People book section lead with a review of the same title). Despite some serious reservations, reviewer Susann Cokal calls it a “rousing story.” The book rose to #44; it’s destined for bestsellerdom.

In a brilliant move, the Book Review assigned Alexander McCall Smith to review Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson. Perhaps it’s no surprise that he loves this updating of the English village novel (too bad about the goofy illustration). The book has been receiving accolades from all over (we’re expecting it to be a sleeper success).

Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland topped the box office and Dorling Kindersley’s Disney’s Alice in Wonderland: The Visual Guide hit the 3/17 NYT BR Childrens Picture Books best seller list. Another Alice-related title rising on Amazon is The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition by Lewis Carroll, Martin Gardner, John Tenniel (W.W. Norton). Interest is coming from a different source; last week Lost featured the book. The original has been featured many times before on the show.

Making Toast by Roger Rosenblatt (Ecco) hits the 3/17 NYT Nonfiction list at #14. It has been bringing tears to many reviewer’s eyes; including this one in Sunday’s L.A. Times.

Little Bee goes to #1 on the Paperback Trade Fiction list, surging ahead of The Last Song by Nicholas Sparks (although it’s still at #1 on the Paperback Mass-Market Fiction list). Congrats to Santa Monica for making it their One City pick.

The NYT Magazine cover story “Building a Better Teacher” mentioned the following books, which rose on Amazon as a result:

Teach Like a Champion: 49 Techniques that Put Students on the Path to College Doug Lemov Retail Price: $27.95 Paperback: 352 pages Publisher: Jossey-Bass – (2010-04-26) ISBN / EAN: 0470550473 / 9780470550472

.

The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education Diane Ravitch Retail Price: $26.95 Hardcover: 296 pages Publisher: Basic Books – (2010-03-02) ISBN / EAN: 0465014917 / 9780465014910 ebook available on OverDrive

The following titles also rose over the weekend on Amazon (this information is from Saturday; on Sunday, a computer glitch caused graphic novels to dominate the list):

#2 (now at #23) — Now Eat This!: 150 of America’s Favorite Comfort Foods, All Under 350 Calories by Rocco DiSpirito (Ballantine Books)

#11 (now at #35) — Courage and Consequence by Karl Rove (Threshold Editions)

#21 (now at #52) — The Quants: How a New Breed of Math Whizzes Conquered Wall Street and Nearly Destroyed It by Scott Patterson (Crown Business). It was featured on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Thursday.

#50 (was 962; now at #107) — Whirlwind: The Air War Against Japan, 1942-1945 by Barrett Tillman (S&S) — WSJ review

#59 (now at #190) — The Coming Insurrection
As Publishers Weekly reports, Glenn Beck has been giving unwitting support to this book since he began ranting against it in July.

The Coming Insurrection (Semiotext(e) / Intervention) The Invisible Committee Retail Price: $12.95 Paperback: 136 pages Publisher: Semiotext(e) – (2009-08-31) ISBN / EAN: 1584350806 / 9781584350804

#65 (was 215; now at #86)

The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything: A Spirituality for Real Life James Martin Retail Price: $26.99 Hardcover: 432 pages Publisher: HarperOne – (2010-03-01) ISBN / EAN: 0061432687 / 9780061432682

Martin was on NPR Weekend Edition Sat. (listen here) as well as on Comedy Central’s Colbert Report the week before (watch here). USA Today wrote about him on Wednesday — Jesuit priest James Martin moves in Mass, mass media.

The L.A. Times notes today that adults are reading Y.A. books; Young adult lit comes of age.

One telling, but unsourced stat:

Where adult hardcover sales were down 17.8% for the first half of 2009 versus the same period in 2008, children’s/young adult hardcovers were up 30.7%

Actually, the latest figures from the AAP show Adult Hardcover sales up 6.9 percent, year-end ’09 over the previous year and Children’s/YA Hardcover category down by 5.0 percent for the same period. However, that masks the fact that children’s and YA has been the bright spot in publishing for most of the decade.

Books and authors cited are:

• Stephenie Meyer, Twilight saga
• Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games trilogy
• Rick Riordan, Percy Jackson and the Olympians series
• Markus Zusak, The Book Thief and I Am the Messenger
• J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter series
• Judy Blundell, What I Saw and How I Lied
• Maggie Stiefvater,  Shiver
• Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
• Anne Brashares, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series
• Adult authors who also write for YA — James Patterson, Carl Hiaasen, Francine Prose and Terry Pratchett
• Garth Nix, Sabriel
• Cecil Castellucci, Boy Proof and Beige

The comics and manga blogosphere has been buzzing this week, and not in a good way: creator Nick Simmons, rock star Gene Simmon’s son, has been accused of plagiarism in the creation of his manga-style comic Incarnate.  Initially reported on the blog Robot 6, part of Comic Book Resources, the infringement appears to have first been identified by fans of Tite Kubo’s extremely popular series Bleach.  A post comparing scans of Bleach and Incarnate shows fairly damning evidence that Simmons did not just pay homage to Kubo’s work, as he claims, but lifted layouts and character designs directly off of the page.

The initial charges of plagiarism, however incendiary, quickly shifted into some fierce back and forth discussions between bloggers, fans, and industry commentators arguing plagiarism and the dangerous waters of copyright, artist’s rights, and fan entitlement.  Heated discussions lit up Twitter, blogs, and message boards, reported by About.com’s Deb Aoki, suggesting that plagiarism by a celebrity creator is a minor aspect of a much larger issue.

Scanlations have a long been a part of comics and manga fan culture here in the US. Scanlations are digital copies scanned from original Japanese language manga, translated by fans into English, and then posted online for anyone and everyone to read.  Scanlations arrive promptly after a story is published in Japan, often in a matter of days, compared to the years it often takes publishers here to license, translate, and print the same story.  Publishers have been tangling with this problem for years, especially in how the practice has created fans that want immediate access to titles.  Titles become old news, and fans move on to the latest hot series, and in the process the eventual print releases are left sitting on the shelves.

In the many discussions on the internet surrounding justifying scanlations (check out the comments on Deb Aoki’s initial post, if you dare), fans claimed that reading scans online was the same as reading manga from the library.  Both provide free, easy access to titles.  Several distinctions are lost on fans.  One, libraries pay for licensed translations, meaning the manga creators and publishers are compensated for their creations.  While libraries serve a specific community, scanlations are available to thousands of readers and can be downloaded and copied indefinitely.  Libraries lend out one copy to one person at a time, and the number of copies they purchase increases with the number of readers interested in a title.  At this time, it’s very difficult to judge what percentage of manga fans read scans.  At conventions and within fan circles online, it is a widely spread practice.  In the general public?  So far, no numbers have been authoritatively gathered.  Anyone who works with teenagers has undoubtedly seen it — I have as many teens sitting around reading stacks of manga as I do teens logged into our computers reading the latest chapter of Naruto.  It’s free, scans are easy to find, and readers have little reason to care that it is officially illegal.

Librarians are already contending with the problem of how to meet fan demand in their collections, and we should start thinking about how we might fit into a future scheme for online access.  If manga publishers start providing free access to manga before it arrives in print, as VIZ is already doing with their sites for IKKI (http://www.sigikki.com) and Shonen Sunday (http://www.shonensunday.com), how can we as librarians show our patrons the way to the sites that comply with copyright?  It may be as simple as maintaining a website which encourages readers to visit publisher sites, or it may eventually be a library model for gaining access to online editions for our patrons a la Overdrive.