LISNews: Librarian News

Worried about their industry's carbon footprint, publishers in Britain are considering tossing the sale-or-return system by which they have traditionally supplied bookstores with books and going to a practice of firm sale, at least with older titles.

"Can we really justify sending books all over the country, only to send them back on the same journey to be destroyed?" Victoria Barnsley, CEO of HarperCollins UK, recently asked in the trade journal The Bookseller.

Her counterpart at Hachette UK, Tim Hely Hutchinson, agrees. "It's pretty silly to send backlist shuttling back and forth - it's a waste of time, money and resources."

Never hesitant to try something that will bring about a boom in their business, Amazon.com is offering customers access to two new programs: previewing publishers galleys and the opportunity to publish their own works.

Publishers Weekly reports (but I wasn't able to find anything on the Amazon.com site): Through Project Vine, readers with a history of posting accurate and helpful book reviews are being invited to receive advance copies for review purposes. And, through CreateSpace, a division of the company that already provides CD- and DVD-on-demand services, Amazon has added book publishing options.

The NYTimes Takes A Look at the Amazon.com sales rankings. When Amazon created the system 10 years ago, it could hardly have known how greatly its list would change the dynamics of the publishing business (much the way the company itself did) or how hard writers and industry executives would work to game the system. Today the Amazon rankings list and, to a lesser extent, a similar list on the Barnes & Noble Web site is the subject of great microanalysis and some mystery.

Amazon.com is experimenting with selling and delivering fresh produce and other grocery items to customers on Mercer Island, near its Seattle, WA headquarters, according to the AP and the Seattle Post Intelligencer. Offerings do not include books.