NC NOVELIST CONVICTED IN WIFE’S DEATH
 
Durham, N.C. novelist Michael Peterson was convicted Oct. 10 of murdering his wife, Kathleen, whose body was found in a pool of blood at the bottom of a staircase in their home. Prosecutors said Peterson beat his wife to death in December 2001 to collect a $1.4 million life insurance policy. Defense lawyers argued she must have died in an accidental fall after a night of drinking.
 
Peterson will automatically be sentenced to life in prison without parole. His novels include “A Time of War” and “A Bitter Peace.” He is a former newspaper columnist and Durham mayoral candidate.
Source: Yahoo! News, U.S. National AP story by Estes Thompson, Oct. 10, 2003.
 
VERISIGN SERVICE CRITICIZED FOR CAUSING NET PROBLEMS
 
Technology experts issued a list of complaints Oct. 8 for the Internet’s chief oversight body over the controversial online search service launched by VeriSign, Inc, the company that oversees Internet addresses ending in dot-com and dot-net. Officials from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) met with technologists in Washington to review reports that VeriSign’s Site Finder service causes numerous technical problems.
 
VeriSign shut down the service the weekend of Oct. 4 after several requests from ICANN. Critics told an ICANN committee charged with Internet security that the service should be scuttled because it continues to threaten the Internet’s stability.
 
“The deployment did not cause a single, catastrophic pan-network problem (but rather) a large number of chronic problems,” said David Schairer, a vice president and software engineer at Reston, Va.-based XO Communications. “This has shown us how sensitive the Internet is to core infrastructure changes.”
 
E-mail spam blockers as a result of the Site Finder were rendered useless because Site Finder made it look like all domain names used for spam exist. Schairer said devices that allow blind people to read Web pages rely on specialized error messages that can be circumvented by Site Finder.
 
VeriSign said Scharier was raising criticisms outside of the security issues that ICANN raised when it ordered VeriSign to take down the service. They hope to have the service revived as soon as possible.
Source: Yahoo! News, Technology, washingtonpost.com, “VeriSign Service Spawns More Criticism,” by David McGuire, Oct. 8, 2003.
 
BORDERS WANTS PRICES OFF BOOK COVERS
 
Borders Group wants publishers to stop putting prices on books and plans to begin working with publishers toward that goal next year.
“Bookselling is one of the few retail environments where the price is fixed by the supplier of the goods and not by the seller,” said Borders spokesperson Anne Roman. “This is not the most advantageous environment for any of the key parties.”
 
Borders contends that if prices weren’t set by publishers, retailers would be free to price books strategically to give consumers more incentive to buy certain titles (such as offering books by new authors) at a lower price. Borders UK managing director Philip Downer used his keynote speech at the Borders management conference in Bournemouth earlier this year to blast the practice.
 
Borders plans to work toward this goal next year, but Roman said it’s too soon to say exactly how the company will pursue the change.
Source: Publishers Weekly Newsline, Sept. 30, 2003.
 
THOMAS NELSON BUYS WORLD BIBLE PUBLISHERS ASSETS
 
Thomas Nelson increased its stake in the Bible market earlier last month with the acquisition of certain assets from World Bible Publishers, a division of Riverside World, Inc. Nelson’s Vance Lawson said the company acquired about 1,000 titles from World Bible. About 70-80 percent of the titles are Bibles with the remainder books.
Source: PW Newsline
 
BARNES AND NOBLE ANNOUNCES ANOTHER ATLANTA OUTLET
 
Barnes and Noble has signed a lease for a 24,500 sq. ft. store in the Edgewood Retail District shopping center in Atlanta. The store will open in May 2005 and stock nearly 200,000 books, music, DVD and magazine titles. The shopping center is located at Moreland Avenue at Seaboard Avenue, on the DeKalb-Fulton county line east of downtown.
 
GIFT MARKET DOWN FOR SECOND STRAIGHT YEAR
 
The gifts and decorative accents industry dropped slightly to $54.3 billion, down one percent from $54.7 billion in 2001 according to Unity Marketing’s new research report, “The Gifts and Decorative Accents Report, 2003.” After peaking in 2000, this is the second straight year that the gift industry has declined.
 
In key giftware categories, such as candles, aromatherapy, baskets, boxes, vases Christmas decorations, greeting cards and stationary and picture frames, a new survey of 1,000 U.S. households found that shoppers turned first to a discount department store.
 
HUDSON GROUP TO RENAME WHSmith STORES
 
As airports give approval for the assignment of the WHSmith leases to the Hudson Group, the bookstore will take out the Hudson name over the next two years. In the spring, Hudson, an affiliate of Hudson News Distributors, LLC, began using the new name and phasing out Book Corner. All new bookstores not connected with the deal will be Hudson Booksellers.
 
“Our bookstores are to be branded Hudson Booksellers (and) newsstands will obviously become Hudson News,” executive vice president Joe DiDomizio said. “Consumers, especially travelers, have recognized the Hudson name for its comprehensive selection of reading material.”
Source: Publishers Weekly Daily.
 
AMAZON, INTERNET COMPANIES, MAY SOON COLLECT SALES TAX
 
While Amazon.com and other Internet companies are not yet required to collect sales taxes, the day seems to be coming closer. States with budget shortfalls are craving more tax revenue and have made efforts to simplify the complicated crop of tax calculations. Congress is currently considering a bill that would allow states to force Internet companies to collect taxes. Amazon.com currently only collects taxes on products sold to customers in Washington and North Dakota.
 
Wall Street Journal reporter Lee Gomes said in an op-ed piece that Amazon is “stubbornly resisting collecting sales tax, maintaining that for all practical purposes, it is impossible for us to do so.”
 
Amazon has previously argued that it would take incredible amounts of software engineering to create a program that could fully integrate the more than 7,600 tax jurisdictions around the country. Gomes insists that Amazon is already collecting sales tax on its site, mainly for partners such as Circuit City and Toys R Us.
 
Bill Curry, a spokesman for Amazon, said that software used to calculate these taxes is proprietary, but based on tax collection information garnered from the partners’ physical store locations.
Source: Publishers Weekly, “Amazon.com’s Sales Tax Software Troubles,” by Edward Nawotka, Oct. 8, 2003.
 
HERITAGE BOOKS ACQUIRED BY WILLOW BEND BOOKS
 
Heritage Books, Inc. has been acquired by Willow Bend Books. Heritage Books, Inc., a 27-year-old history and genealogy publisher with 1,900 titles currently in print, became the largest publisher of these materials with the addition of Willow Bend Books’ 800 titles in print.
 
Customer Service organizations were consolidated in September into the Willow Bend Books bookstore, the largest genealogy bookstore in the world with more than 13,000 available titles from more than 150 different publishers. Heritage Books, Inc. consists of the publishing division located in Bowie, Md. and the bookstore division located in Westminster, Md.
Source: Heritage Books CEO and President Craig R. Scott.
 
DIRECTOR-WRITER ELIA KAZAN DIES AT 94
 
Director Elia Kazan, whose triumphs included the Broadway productions of “Death of a Salesman” and “A Streetcar Named Desire,” and the Academy Award-winning film “On the Waterfront” died Sept. 28 at 94. Kazan was at his home in Manhattan when he died.
 
Five of the plays he staged won Pulitzer Prizes for their authors. In Hollywood, Kazan won Oscars for “Gentleman’s Agreement” and “On the Waterfront.” He also directed the film version of “Streetcar” and the Andy Griffith film “A Face in the Crowd.”
 
Kazan appeared before the House Committee on Un-American Activities during the McCarthy era and named people who were former Communist Party members with him in the mid 1930s. While criticized for his action, Kazan said later he bore no guilt for his action.
Source: Yahoo! News, “Director-Writer Elia Kazan DIES at 94,” by Chaka Ferguson, Sept. 28, 2003.