BTW News Briefs

Carl Lennertz Named NAIBA Legacy Award Winner

The New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association (NAIBA) has named Carl Lennertz, the newly appointed chief executive of World Book Night in the U.S., as the recipient of its 2011 NAIBA Legacy Award.

“Carl has been a champion for the independent bookseller in every publishing house and job he has been in. We need more people like Carl who understand the cultural importance of the locally owned bookstore,” said NAIBA President, Lucy Kogler of Talking Leaves Books, Buffalo, New York.

Lennertz, whose long career in the book business has included stints as a bookseller, sales rep, author, and editor, “has been a tireless cheerleader for authors and independent bookselling, “ said NAIBA.

“If a legacy means giving as well receiving, then my career has been thousands of legacies shared with me out of kindness and good will,” said Lennertz. “Whether your name is Drabyak or Cohen, Rockliff or Liebmann, Connelly or Colwin, you have given me the wellspring of your knowledge and words, and for that, I am eternally grateful. Whether at Random House or Harper, ABA or World Book Night, I believe I have been passing it along and intend to continue doing so — to booksellers, authors, publishers, and readers.”

Lennertz will be honored at the NAIBA Awards Banquet on Tuesday, September 20, at the Golden Nugget in Atlantic City, during the NAIBA Fall Conference.

Chronicle’s Jack Jensen to Receive Jack D. Rittenhouse Award

PubWest, a trade association of small- and medium-sized book publishers, has awarded its 2011 Jack D. Rittenhouse Award to Jack Jensen, the president of Chronicle Books. The PubWest Board of Directors is recognizing Jensen for “his extraordinary career and his lifetime of work with Chronicle Books that has shaped and inspired the book publishing community.”

Jensen will accept the Rittenhouse Award during PubWest’s Conference 2011 scheduled for November 3 - 5 at Green Valley Ranch Resort in Henderson, Nevada.

Putumayo World Music Enters Digital Market

On Tuesday, August 30, Putumayo World Music entered the digital market with the release of its African Beat and Latin Beat albums. Putumayo was “one of the last holdouts on digital music,” observed the New York Times, which reported that the company’s move to digital was driven in part by the closings in recent years of thousands of record stores and the recession’s effects on all kinds of retailers.

Noting that “the physicality of Putumayo’s products has been central to its success,” the Times said that, to adapt to a “market of ones and zeroes, where there are fewer opportunities for the last-minute impulse buy at the register,” the African Beat and Latin Beat album covers feature stylized close-ups of instruments rather than Putumayo’s traditional “multiple human figures and an appropriate location.”  Customers who want the albums’ full liner notes and other features, however, will still need to buy the CDs, as digital versions will feature only songs.

Unbridled to Be Distributed by PGW

Beginning October 1, Unbridled Books will be distributed to the trade by Publishers Group West, a division of the Perseus Books Group. Unbridled has also signed with Constellation, Perseus’ digital services provider, for e-book distribution.

Facebook Drops Local Deals Business

On August 26, the Wall Street Journal reported that Facebook was exiting the local deals business, despite the fact that Facebook Deals was expected to be a formidable competitor to Groupon and LivingSocial.

A Facebook spokeswoman said that for now the company would focus on other marketing services for local businesses. “We think there is a lot of power in a social approach to driving people into local businesses,” she said. “We remain committed to building products to help local businesses connect with people, like Ads, Pages, Sponsored Stories, and Check-in Deals.”

WSJ said, “Facebook’s move raises questions about the sustainability of the local deals business model — questions that have also dogged Groupon and LivingSocial.”

The paper cited data from Web traffic monitor Hitwise showing that “Groupon’s site visits last week had dropped by about 50 percent compared to its June peak, while LivingSocial’s visits increased 27 percent in the same period.” Although the whole deals sector saw visits decline by 25 percent,” WSJ noted, that “retail is a cyclical business, and summer can be a slow period even for traditional e-tail giants like Amazon and eBay.”