Have We Reached Peak Celebrity Audiobook Narration?

It was a town’s only Black-owned bookstore. It is now a refuge for those displaced by the California fires.

I was just in Pasadena over New Year’s to visit the Huntington Library and was reminded that it was Octavia Butler’s haunt. This story about Nikki High using her bookstore, Octavia’s Bookshelf, as a helping center is worth reading in full, but here is a snippet to encourage you to check it out:

“We packed up all of our books off the shelves and put them in the attic,” High explains. The books were replaced by the items people gave to victims of the fire. The donations poured in from as far away as Portland, filling the store with supplies like toothpaste, diapers, cat food and water. Volunteers from the community, including loyal customers, stepped in to help organize and distribute the items.

Amazon Threat to De-List Bloomsbury UK Titles Seems to Hasten New Deal

In a blast from an Amazon past moment, the biggest bookseller to have ever existed threatened to de-list Bloomsbury UK’s titles, rattling the publisher’s stock price and reminding all of us of what Amazon can do when it wants. A new deal was struck shortly after this announcement, and I cannot help but wonder if Bloomsbury signed a deal less favorable than they would like because the public threat was so potent. The two sides have been in negotiations for months, so a quick deal after a saber-rattle seems something more than coincidental. I haven’t heard of publisher/Amazon animosity in some time. That could either be a sign of publisher adaptation or the not-so-quiet hegemony I think we all know Amazon wields.