Bozeman News

Western Book Roundup

Contest Winner, Google eBooks, and News from CutBank, Craig Lancaster & Whitefish Review

By Jenny Shank, 12-15-10

First, I want to thank all the readers who participated in last week’s book giveaway contest by leaving a comment on one of the three Best Books in the West posts.  I wrote everybody’s names on slips of paper and my daughter drew the winner from a bowl--she can’t read, so she couldn’t cheat.  Congratulations to Liz Clift of Ames, Iowa.  Your copy of Benjamin Percy’s The Wilding is on its way.  It’s convenient that she lives in Ames, because Percy lives there too, and she can track him down to sign her book.

And I have to say that I think New West Books & Writers readers and commenters are the best in the web—you are all so smart, well-read, and polite.  Even when I make a stupid mistake, you let me know with such tact.  It’s not like this everywhere on the web, compadres—for proof, just click over to the comment threads on any of New West’s articles about wolves or wilderness management.  Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts.  I hope to do more book giveaways soon.  Okay, enough with the mushy stuff!

• The biggest news in the book world last week was Google’s announcement that its eBookstore opened for business.  Many indie bookstores had been sitting on the sidelines while Amazon and its Kindle and Apple and its iPad duked it out for digital book supremacy.  Google’s eBookstore allows indie booksellers to get in the digital book game because it provides e-books that are not formatted for a particular device (they work on most browsers, e-book readers, and iPhones), and Google allows individual bookstores to sell these e-books from their websites. 

I received press releases from Boulder Book Store, Denver’s Tattered Cover, King’s English Bookshop in Salt Lake City, and Fact & Fiction in Missoula announcing they are now selling Google eBooks.  According to the Tattered Cover’s press release, “A Google eBook is a new form of cloud-based digital book that allows readers to access their libraries on almost any device from one single repository, regardless of where the e-book was purchased.” Head to any of these stores’ websites, or to IndieBound.org, the collective indie bookstore website, to browse the catalog of available Google eBooks.

Publishers Weekly had the full scoop.  Robert Gray of Shelf Awareness spoke to some regional booksellers about what Google’s announcement will mean for their stores. Anne Holman of the King’s English Bookshop told him:

“Being an e-bookstore means we have one more tool to do the thing we do best: read and recommend great books. It means we can provide access to the same reading materials at the same price and format as our competitors. So many of our customers have told us how convenient the e-reader is for traveling but they’re loyal to us and they’re committed to shopping local so they dislike shopping on Amazon. Now they don’t have to! They can purchase an e-book and keep dollars in their community.”

But is the Google eBook a good app?  My husband has an iPad, and of all the available formats, he prefers reading Kindle books for iPad on it--he said Google eBooks don’t include all of the same features, such as the ability to switch the text to white on black for reading in the dark.

• Last week The Denver Post announced it was reducing its book coverage, and The New Yorker took note via its Book Bench blog.  It’s getting lonely covering books out West--was that a tumbleweed I just saw blow by?

• Billings-based writer Craig Lancaster, author of the Montana Book Award Honor Book 600 Hours of Edward, has thought of a novel to raise some money for hungry Americans.  He is writing a Christmas-themed short story, and everybody who donates $1 through his website to Feeding America will receive a copy of the story, delivered via email on December 15.  Which is today.  But it’s not too late to donate.  Lancaster’s second novel, The Summer Son, will hit bookstores January 25.

• The Whitefish Review will celebrate the publication of its eighth issue at Crush Wine Bar in Whitefish on December 17 at 7 p.m.  Some guy named Rick Bass that I pay no attention to, whatsoever, will be reading from his latest novel, Nashville Chrome.  According to a press release, “The evening will also showcase Whitefish High School senior Stella Holt reading a story about being airlifted from Glacier National Park’s Mount Gould, as well as poetry by Lowell Jaeger, Cedar Brant, and Henry Real Bird, Montana’s Poet Laureate.”

• One other lit mag note: CutBank in Missoula currently accepting submissions for its 2011 Montana Prize in Fiction, Montana Prize in Creative Nonfiction, and the Patricia Goedicke Prize in Poetry.  Submissions will be accepted through February 28, 2011. Winners receive $500 and publication in CutBank 75.

• Occasionally I’ve heard grumblings from those of you who like your western literature old-fashioned, with cowboys and such in it.  Have I got the columnist for you—Dr. James Work, editor of Prose and Poetry of the American West, past-president of the Western Literature Association, and author of eight novels set in the West, will be filling in over the next two weeks with a couple of essays that discuss western writers of the past such as Owen Wister and Jack Schaefer.  Check for those on the next two Mondays, starting with an essay about classic Western Christmas stories.

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