BTW News Briefs

NEA Announces 72 Organizations to Receive Big Read Grants

On October 31, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) announced that 72 organizations would receive grants to support Big Read programs between January and June 2007. The Big Read is a new national program by the NEA, in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and Arts Midwest, which encourages literary reading by asking communities to come together to read and discuss one book. The organizations selected to participate in the Big Read will receive grants ranging from $5,000 to $40,000 to promote and carry out month-long, community-based programs.

After executing a successful pilot Big Read program with ten communities in 2006, the Arts Endowment announced in May that it would take the Big Read nationwide. In July, First Lady Laura Bush joined the Big Read as its Honorary Chair. Modeled on successful "city reads" programs, the Big Read is meant to address the national decline in literary reading as documented in the NEA's 2004 landmark survey Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America. The survey showed that less than half the American adult population now reads literature.

BEA Names New Marketing Director

On October 26, BookExpo America (BEA) announced that Kelly Hartman had been named the trade show's marketing director. Most recently, Kelly was marketing manager for Reed Exhibitions New Business Group, where she was responsible for the launch of trade shows in a variety of consumer and trade industries, including pop-culture, jewelry retail, interior design, and health. She will now devote her time exclusively to overseeing the marketing for BEA and for New York Comic Con.

Bookseller David Unowsky Makes Plans to Run for City Council

The St. Paul Pioneer Press recently reported that David Unowsky, the former owner of Ruminator Books, founder of the Metro Independent Business Alliance, and current bookseller at Magers & Quinn Booksellers, is planning to run against 3rd Ward St. Paul City Council Member Pat Harris next year. The 3rd Ward principally covers Highland Park and part of Macalester-Groveland.

"I have been thinking about this for a long time. I think it's time for a change," Unowsky told the Pioneer Press on the Monday after he filed paperwork for his "Unowksy for Council" Committee Although he would not elaborate on his reasons for running, Unowsky told the Press that he was looking for endorsements from both the Democratic-Farmer-Labor and Green parties.

Study Finds Visa/MasterCard Processing Fees Exceed Actual Costs

According to the National Retail Federation, a recently released independent report shows that only a small fraction of the $30.7 billion in credit and debit card interchange fees Visa and MasterCard collect from merchants and consumers is actually necessary to cover the cost of processing card transactions.

A New Business Model for Card Payments, issued by Chicago's Diamond Management and Technology Consultants Inc., shows that only 13 percent of interchange fees go toward transaction processing costs. The remaining 87 percent goes to Visa/MasterCard banks to cover a wide range of expenditures including reward programs for some cardholders (44 percent) and card issuers' cost of funds and profit margins (35 percent), according to the report.

"This report corroborates the data and messages that merchants have communicated to lawmakers over the past year," said NRF Senior Vice President and General Counsel Mallory Duncan. This is important research that will help the public understand how much Visa and MasterCard are needlessly charging them. Among other things, this fee is fueling the flood of credit card offers stuffing consumers' mailboxes."

In related news, Visa recently released a list of the credit and debit card interchange rates it charges retailers, but didn't answer why the fees are so high or address allegations that the rate-setting process violates federal antitrust laws, the National Retail Federation reported. Visa and MasterCard collected $30.7 billion in interchange fees last year, up 85 percent over the past five years, according to MPC figures.

On October 17, Visa released a five-page document listing a total of 79 combinations of interchange rates charged to merchants, ranging from as low as 0.55 percent to as high as 2.7 percent. The document offered no averages, dollar amounts, or other indications of which rates are most prevalent. Interchange is a percentage of each transaction that Visa and MasterCard banks collect from retailers every time their credit or debit cards are used to pay for a purchase.