BTW News Briefs

USPS Offers New Direct Mail Service for Retailers

The United States Postal Service is offering a new direct mail service called Every Door Direct Mail (EDDM). The service allows retailers to:

• Use the USPS’ online tool to target areas to saturate with your mailing. Choose routes by neighborhood, ZIP Code™, or city.
• Send mailing to every mailbox along the chosen routes delivered by letter carriers with the day’s mail.
• Spend as little as 14.2 cents per piece on postage.

To qualify for entry at a Business Mail Entry Unit (BMEU), mailpieces must be standard mail — flats, irregular parcels, periodicals, or bound printed matter flats. Flats are the most popular mailpiece used with Every Door Direct Mail (EDDM). For detailed requirements, go here.

To participate in the program, retailers must obtain a permit either at the local post office or online. Learn more at USPS.com/everydoordirectmail.

BAM to Buy 14 Borders Leases

On August 24, Bloomberg News reported that Books-A-Million will acquire the leases of 14 Borders Group superstores and specialty stores, including locations in Portland, Maine; Canton, Ohio; Concord, New Hampshire; and Mays Landing, New Jersey.

The agreement for lease sale must be approved by the bankruptcy court by August 29, according to this week’s court filing.

Books-A-Million, which also runs stores under the names Books & Co., Bookland, and Joe Muggs Newsstand, operates 230 stores.

Midwest Booksellers Association to Add “Independent” to Name

 At its September 22 - 23 trade show, the Midwest Booksellers Association will officially change its name to the Midwest Independent Booksellers Association (MIBA).

 “Adding ‘independent’ to our name will underscore our value within the bookselling industry and serve as a constant reminder to everyone we work with that our mission is to support independent bookstores,” Carrie Obry, the association’s executive director, said in an e-mail. To reflect these changes, MBA is developing a new logo (to be revealed soon) and a new website (expected by the end of the year).

SIBA Upgrades Circle of Sites

The Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance announced this week that it was upgrading its Circle of Sites to promote book sales that directly benefit participating stores. Beginning August 18, SIBA said, the website’s banners will be programmed to link directly to the hosting store’s own shopping cart or to a specific product page on the store’s website.

“We think this is an original approach to online marketing,” said SIBA Executive Director Wanda Jewell. Until now SIBA’s Circle of Sites program, which sells ad space to publishers on its member bookstore websites, did not allow posted banners to be hyperlinked at all — citing the need to keep their member stores’ customers on the stores’ own websites. “We are trying to drive traffic to our stores, not drive it away,” said Jewell.

There are currently 75 stores participating in the Circle of Sites program, representing each of the 11 Southern states in SIBA territory.

 Dayton Literary Peace Prize Shortlist Announced

On  August 24, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize announced the finalists for its 2011 awards. The prize, awarded in the categories of fiction and nonfiction, celebrates the power of literature to promote peace, nonviolent conflict resolution, and global understanding.

The winners, to be announced on September 20, will receive a $10,000 honorarium and runners-up receive $1,000.00. They will be honored at a gala ceremony in Dayton, Ohio, on Sunday, November 13.

Also honored will be author Barbara Kingsolver, who will receive the 2011 Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award.

The 2011 Dayton Literary Peace Prize fiction finalists are:

• The Surrendered by Chang-rae Lee (Riverhead Books)
• How to Read the Air by Dinaw Mengestu (Riverhead Books)
• Beneath the Lion’s Gaze by Maaza Mengiste  (W. W. Norton)
• The Gendarme by Mark Mustian (Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam)
• Kapitoil by Teddy Wayne (HarperCollins Publishers)

The 2011 nonfiction finalists are:

• Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978 by Kai Bird (Scribner)
• Little Princes by Conor Grennan (HarperCollins Publishers)
• Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand (Random House)
• For Us Surrender Is Out of the Question by Mac McClelland (Soft Skull Press)
• In the Place of Justice: A Story of Punishment and Deliverance by Wilbert Rideau (Alfred A. Knopf)
• The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson (Random House)

Thurber Prize Finalists Named

On August 22 in Columbus, Ohio, the Thurber House national literary center named the three finalists for the 2011 Thurber Prize for American Humor:

• Mike Birbiglia for Sleepwalk With Me and Other Painfully True Stories (Simon & Schuster)
• David Rakoff for Half Empty (Doubleday/Random House)
• Rick Reilly for Sports From Hell: My Search for the World’s Dumbest Competition (Doubleday/Random House)

This year’s award, which includes a $5,000 prize and a commemorative crystal plaque for the winning author, will be presented at a ceremony at New York’s famed Algonquin Hotel on October 3. The 2011 Thurber Prize honors an outstanding book of humor writing published in the U.S. between January 1, 2010 and December 31, 2010.