I remember when Giant Robot magazine was born in 1994, a scrappy little black and white 'zine. The early- to mid- 90s were a great time for magazines, but almost all of them -- including the one I worked on -- folded long ago.

Not Giant Robot. Its focus on Asian American and Asian crossover culture, both pop and underground, made it increasingly popular. It quickly went glossy, becoming a fantastic showcase for new artists working in a variety of media. Its celebration of toys, T-shirts, books and art compelled it to go retail, opening brick and mortar shops in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York. Next to one store, on Sawtelle Boulevard in West L.A., they even opened a diner, GR/eats.

But the magazine, which is the lifeblood of Giant Robot, is in trouble. Our economic slump has hit it from all sides:

In addition to several distributors cutting out small press or folding altogether, paper has become more expensive and postage has skyrocketed exponentially. And while there has also been the support of loyal advertisers, the middle class of supporters has dropped, creating peaks and valleys in income that force us to live issue to issue. Complicating matters, store revenues and art show sales have suffered along with the economy, depriving the magazine of resources that allowed it to operate freely and thrive without the benefit or constraints of being part of a large publishing house....

We have done the math, and an infusion of $60,000 (hopefully more) will ensure another year of full, unfettered operation with no strings attached to a shifting media paradigm, advertising climate, sketchy distributors, and the economy -- each of which we are not ignoring but addressing straight-on. In concert with the other measures (not to mention the realignment and recovery of our shops), we feel that Giant Robot’s future and its continuing impact of society will be secure.

Longtime editors Erik Nakamura and Martin Wong ask for help in the video above. Many donor levels come with prints, books or original art -- and one comes with a GR/eats free lunch.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

President Obama's budget, which upped education funding by 6.2% to $400 billion, has eliminated the Improving Literacy Through School Libraries grant program, so there will be no federal funds specifically set aside for school libraries. School librarians, upset by the move, say it will leave poor schools vulnerable.

“I’m shocked,” Cassandra Barnett, president of the American Assn. of School Librarians, told School Library Journal.

“[Obama] is proposing to take away the last access to literacy for these kids in high-poverty areas,” says Barnett, whose own school qualifies for the grant program. If Congress approves the proposal, Barnett’s says her library budget will suffer and her district won’t rehire a library supervisor as planned.

Federal funding for libraries has been frozen at this year's levels -- as has most other non-security discretionary spending. Obama promises to keep the freeze in place for three years.

Library Journal reports that three bright spots for libraries are funds set aside for expanded broadband, the jobs for Main Street plan and increased funding for leadership grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

This is happening as state and local governments are also looking to close budgets as revenues decline. The City of Los Angeles faces a budget shortfall of $212 million this year and one of $484 million or more in the fiscal year that starts July 1. Libraries may be confronted with tightening budgets from funders on all sides.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Shoshone Hue at Los Angeles' Helen Bernstein High School library in 2008. Credit: Annie Wells / Los Angeles Times

When South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford went missing in June 2009, aides said he was unreachable because he was "hiking on the Appalachian Trail." That would have been funny enough, but then to have the conservative Republican turn up in Argentina with his mistress -- well, that was hysterical, right?

Not to Jenny Sanford, his wife of 20 years and the mother of their four sons. She's getting a divorce. And she's got a book, "Staying True." We've got an early review:

The former first lady, a one-time investment banker with Lazard Frères, is smart, focused and very angry. For all the pious references to forgiveness stitched throughout the narrative, revenge is a barely concealed subtext.

And revenge she gets, but there's a good bit of collateral damage in what's just as obviously unintended self-revelation. In fact, by the time we get to the affair late in the book, it's a bit of a relief, since this is about the first normative impulse either of the Sanfords seems to have had during their marriage. ...

The man she describes is driven, self-absorbed, pathologically cheap and 360-degrees weird. She runs his political campaigns, puts up with his habitual absences and bears him four sons.

Jenny Sanford will appear on ABC's "20/20" on Friday night to talk with Barbara Walters about "the heartbreak behind the headlines," being a political spouse and the meaning of "Staying True."

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Jenny Sanford, left, with Barbara Walters. Credit: Donna Svennevik / ABC

In an unorthodox, hilarious interview, The Awl talks to Harper's Magazine's associate editor Paul Ford, who runs the magazine's website, about their content paywall. The Awl editor Choire Sicha asked, "what are the goals of the Harper's website? By which I mean: is it to drive subscriptions? To be self-supporting? To get attention? To be considered cool by the kids? Or some other, heretofore unthought-of idea?"

Paul: Okay! Let's talk about the paywall. People are very curious about paywalls.
Choire: Oh yes. It is an obsession in this time!
Paul: So, for strangers to harpers.org, if you want to read the current issue of the magazine–the one on newsstands–you have to be a subscriber, which costs $16.97 a year.
Choire: That is outrageous.
Paul: IT IS INSANITY! It is the END OF THE INTERNET AS WE KNOW IT!
Choire: I mean, what incentive do people [have] to pay that kind of money! What do they even GET for that! (Annnd… end sarcasm.)
Paul: But…
Paul: But…
Paul: We're really into the idea of subscribers giving us money in exchange for our product.

It sounds so logical! But paywalls haven't been widely used by media organizations. The New York Times once had a paid-only area that it abandoned; in January, the company announced that would implement a paywall in 2011. Mediawatchers of all stripes were circumspect; maybe paywalls are making a comeback.

Harper's made headlines recently when it suddenly parted ways with Roger Hodge, who'd been editor since 2006. The details of his departure remain murky, but the paywall wasn't part of the problem. Publisher John MacArthur told the N.Y. Times:

"I’m more confident about the future because of the Guantánamo piece and the paid model of the Web site, and I think I’m seeing a little bit of uptick on the newsstand."

So not only was the paywall a success; Paul Ford notes that Hodge even added a little xml to his literary editing skills to get involved in the website at a higher level.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Was it the crazy headgear? The cage-like dresses? The sculptural hairdos? The multiple Grammy Awards?

Something got the attention of the Overlook Press, which has announced it will publish the first (if unauthorized) biography of Lady Gaga. The book "Lady Gaga: Behind the Fame" will tell the story of 23-year-old Stefani Germanotta, Catholic school girl turned go-go dancer.

Due to hit shelves early next month, the book will be 288 pages, 32 of which will be devoted to photos.

The news release states that this "inspiring story" will be an "intimate look into the music, fashion, art and life of the first Lady of pop."

Don't tell Madonna. Or Beyonce. Or any other contenders for pop's first Lady.

The Overlook Press has published many biographies, focusing on creative types as diverse as William Faulkner, Ewan McGregor, Virginia Wolfe and British singing phenomenon Susan Boyle.

How will its Lady Gaga bio compare? 

All I know is I hope it comes in a sparkly, lightning-bolt cage.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Lady Gaga with the Grammy Awards she won this week. Credit: Andrew Gombert / EPA

"For me, if there's a piece of writing that I care about, I want to have the physical object," says Brigid Hughes, editor of the literary journal A Public Space. "There's a permanence to it, a different kind of permanence than if you find it on a website. You're bringing together these different voices and pieces, and the way those pieces interact between those two covers is essential."

The print form of the literary journal has a long history. But does it have a future?

Hughes is a literary journal veteran -- she worked at the Paris Review from 1995 to 2005 -- she's second from left in the photo of key staff, taken in 2003. The Paris Review was founded by George Plimpton (center), Peter Mathiessen and others in 1953, and it became an essential cultural voice. But what direction it might take is uncertain -- it's currently searching for an editor to replace Philip Gourevitch, who will leave in April.

Hughes is certain about how to put her magazine together, but she admits that audiences are harder to figure. Founded five years ago, A Public Space has published some of today's best writers: William T. Vollmann, Marilynne Robinson, Charles D'Ambrosio, John Wray, Richard Powers, T.C. Boyle.

"I don't think it's the quality of the work so much as that readers aren't finding the work." Hughes says. "I think literary magazines need to figure out a way to be better advocates for the work that they're publishing."

In the current issue of Mother Jones, Ted Genoways points out many ways in which literary journals have been losing their cultural foothold. Genoways is the editor of the 85-year-old Virginia Quarterly Review, which considers long-form nonfiction, such as its piece on the Mumbai attacks, an essential part of reviving interest and relevance.

To Los Angeles readers, though, fiction still has an appeal. Melissa Reakers, who runs the newsstand at West Hollywood's Book Soup, says its most popular literary journals are Tin House, Granta, the Paris Review and McSweeney's.

McSweeney's has its frequently updated Internet Tendency, and a few literary journals -- including the Paris Review and Granta -- are trying to exploit the Web in interesting ways. Are video, audio, interactivity and Internet-speed content the way of the future for literary magazines? Or is there something special about print literary journals -- can they get by with informational websites, directing readers to the print product for a complete reading experience?

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Members of the Paris Review staff in 2003, from left: Oliver Broudy, Brigid Hughes, editor George Plimpton, Fiona Maazel, Charles Buice and Tom Moffett. Credit: Jennifer S. Altman / For The Times

What do Charlotte Brontë, Marcel Proust and Charles Darwin have in common? They were all hypochondriacs, according to Irish author Brian Dillon. In our pages today, Heller McAlpin reviews "The Hypochondriacs: Nine Tormented Lives"; the book, she writes:

... is an intriguing, suavely written blend of medical history and literary criticism, a book that adds to the growing (or metastasizing) field of pathological biography.

Be warned, however, that Dillon's subjects don't neatly fit our modern notion of hypochondria as neurosis. Alice James, Charles Darwin and Marcel Proust were all chronic invalids who obsessed about their health and defined themselves through their illnesses. But they also suffered real pain and organic, if undiagnosed, ailments. ...

Reading Dillon's account of the battles they fought with their minds, bodies and imaginations, one doesn't envy their heightened sensibilities.

Read the complete review here.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo credit: Genista via Flickr

Got a chief aide? Don't abandon him for your mistress. That's the chief lesson that powerful, philandering men can take from "The Politician" by Andrew Young. For all its finger-pointing and salacious details, this online bestseller is really about a bromance gone bad. "Where he once called several times a day, he now never dialed my number," Young writes. "When I got through to him, he kept the calls brief and guarded what he said."

"He," of course, is John Edwards, who did push Young's loyalty far; when Edwards' affair with Rielle Hunter hit the press -- and she was pregnant -- he convinced Young to say the child was his. Then Young, his wife, children and Hunter all trundled off together to a series of resort-like rentals and vacation houses -- the last one with a $20,000-per-month price tag -- until she had the child.

Young had been working closely with Edwards for close to 10 years. Initially a volunteer fundraiser on Edwards' successful Senate campaign, Young used his lawyer connections to help find a place on Edward's North Carolina staff. He was an important player in Edwards' 2004 race for the Democratic presidential nomination, and he was also a close friend. Edwards and Young had brought their families on vacation to Disney World when Edwards learned that Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry had picked him as his vice presidential running mate. According to Young's account, Edwards would say things like, "I love you. You are like a brother to me."

Which makes passages like this, in which Young describes being a trusted witness to Edwards' affair, all the more sad. Does he really have to go there?

Whenever Rielle called me, she tried to talk explicitly about her relationship with the senator. For obvious reasons, she couldn't talk about these things with anyone else, so I figured I was serving as a sort of safety valve, letting her blow off steam. When the details about specific sexual acts, love bites, or the condition of her vagina got too graphic, I cut her off, but my attempts to set limits on Rielle were only partly effective.

Hunter, who produced webisodes for Edwards' campaign, is portrayed as a loose cannon with sex on her mind. Her affair with Edwards lasted, according to Young, for many months before a story about it appeared in the tabloid the National Enquirer. Young details the affair from behind the scenes: He carried a special phone for Edwards to use when talking to Hunter; he was there during a visit she made to North Carolina when Edwards' wife Elizabeth was away on book tour; and he caroused with Edwards, Hunter and others on the road during a night of rowdy drinking. Young even lays the groundwork for his version of events to be denied, describing in a near-discovery of Hunter in Edwards' hotel room in Florida, following it with Edwards seeming to forget the entire incident.

In 2008, Edwards had dropped another attempt at the Democratic nomination but was angling, again, to be selected as the vice presidential running mate. Elizabeth Edwards' well-publicized cancer had gotten worse, and Hunter had a baby daughter. In one of the more incredible details of Young's tale, he says that Edwards asked him to steal a diaper so he could do a DNA test; Young never did.

Young was packing up a house that Hunter had briefly shared with his family, he found a box of her things, including:

...a number of videotapes, including one marked "special," which had the tape pulled out and seemed intentionally broken....I couldn't resist. With scissors, a pen, and some scotch tape, I fixed the cassette.... As I pressed play, we saw an image of a man -- John Edwards -- and a naked pregnant woman, photographed from the navel down, engaged in a sexual encounter. The images were recorded with the somewhat steady assurance of a professional, and the senator's performance was ironically narcissistic.... As compromising images of a former presidential candidate and current contender for vice president flashed on the screen, [Young's wife] Cheri and I dropped to the floor, and watched, speechless.... We debated turning it off, but neither of us could actually press the button. It was like watching a traffic pileup occur in slow motion -- it was repelling but also transfixing. 

Is the book transfixing? Not exactly -- it's more of a whinge. Young is harshly critical of everyone around him but doesn't take responsibility for his own decisions. He went along with saying Hunter's child was his, but he could have said no; he never wrestles with moral issues. Instead he casts judgments.

Edwards' women get particularly harsh treatment. Hunter is portrayed as a sex-crazed loose cannon; once she has the baby, she's too attached to it (what does he expect from a single 42-year-old woman who's been packed off by the famous father of her child to give birth on her own?). Elizabeth Edwards fares no better -- in Young's telling, she's a controlling, vindictive harpy who leaves cruel phone messages for people who incur her wrath.

This is a far different image than Elizabeth Edwards projected in her 2009 book "Resilience," in which she wrote about love, loss and forgiveness. That forgiveness may have given out: last month, after John Edwards acknowledged that he is the father of Hunter's child -- prompted, many said, by the impending publication of Young's book -- Elizabeth Edwards announced their separation. 

If John Edwards did everything that Young describes in the book, he was selfish, deceitful and willing to go to extraordinary lengths to cover up an affair he shouldn't have been carrying on in the middle of a race for his party's presidential nomination. So it is remarkable that he comes out not seeming all that bad. 

Not that Young has forgiven him. He had been gathering ammunition for a long time; when he discovered the dirty videotape, he immediately decided he "now possessed something powerful" and locked it up in a safe deposit box. This does not engender sympathy, and every effort that Young makes to portray Elizabeth Edwards unkindly reflects back on him. Young feels John Edwards owes him. "The Politician" is payback.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: John Edwards and wife Elizabeth share the stage in New Hampshire in October 2007. Credit: Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times

Publishing watchers have been riled up by the fight that erupted Friday evening, when Amazon.com suddenly stopped selling books by Macmillan, one of the (smaller) big six parent companies of publishing, over an e-books pricing dispute. On Sunday, in a message board announcement, Amazon said it would "ultimately...capitulate" to Macmillan's new pricing plan.

Yet here it is Tuesday afternoon, and major Macmillan titles are still not for sale on Amazon.com. Although the titles can be found on the site, they can only be purchased from third-party vendors, and there are no e-book/Kindle versions available. Notably unavailable titles are Andrew Young's John Edwards tell-all, "The Politician," which is topping Barnes & Noble's bestseller list; "Wolf Hall" by Hilary Mantel, which won the Man Booker Award; and Atul Gawande's "The Checklist Manifesto."

Publishers Lunch, which requires paid registration, found one Macmillan book that had surfaced on Amazon full-force: "Winter Garden" by Kristin Hannah, "one of the few Macmillan books you can buy right now from Amazon for your Kindle."

Earlier today, the Kindle price was $29.99, which may have been in error; it has since dropped to $16.49. And while "Winter Garden" is available from Amazon.com in a large print edition, the standard hardcover version of the book is not available from the site.

What exactly is Amazon.com doing? Are the two parties still in negotiation? Who authorized the message board statement? And will no one at the company come forward, as Macmillan's Chief Executive John Sargent did, to address readers directly?

Several films nominated for best picture this year are based on books, which might be a literary accomplishment if there weren't so many darned pictures in the running. For the first time in decades, the Motion Picture Academy has chosen to nominate 10 films for best picture; four are based on books.

Let's start with the one I didn't grab the poster image of: "The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game" by Michael Lewis. Published in 2006 by W.W. Norton, the book is a revisionist analysis of football illustrated by the story of left tackle Michael Oher. Fans of the film who pick up the book may be surprised to find football analysis like "Offensive linemen were the stay-at-home mothers of the NFL: everyone paid lip service to their contribution yet hardly anyone could tell you what that was."

"An Education" is perhaps the most highly literary selection; it was based on a memoir by intimidating British journalist Lynn Barber and adapted by novelist Nick Hornby. Not yet available through a U.S. publisher, Barber's "An Education" details a youthful fling, her journalistic climb, her long marriage and her husband's fight with cancer. Does the movie cover so much ground? It wouldn't be right to say.

"Precious" is based on the 1996 novel "Push" by Sapphire; the easiest-to-find version is the new movie tie-in. The new edition has been renamed "Precious," although the book's cover, confusingly, reads "based on the novel 'Push,'" as if it weren't itself the novel. Sapphire was a remedial reading teacher in Harlem, where, she told NPR, "I encountered this. I had a student who told me that she had had children by her father." In 1993, Sapphire entered the MFA program at Brooklyn College and began working on the book. "I had the intense feeling that if I didn't write this book no one else would."

Walter Kirn's novel "Up in the Air," also now easy to find in a movie tie-in edition, came out in hardcover in July 2001. "Planes and airports are where I feel at home," narrator Ryan Bingham says. "To know me you have to fly with me." That characterization may have been a hard sell in the fall of 2001; perhaps it says something about our country that it isn't anymore. Or maybe it says something about George Clooney.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

In November and December, Sarah Palin's political action committee spent more than $60,000 to provide copies of her book "Going Rogue" to supporters. ABC News reports:

The former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate had her political organization spend more than $63,000 on what her reports describe as "books for fundraising donor fulfillment." The payments went to Harper Collins, her publisher, and in some instances to HSP Direct, a Virginia-based direct mail fundraising firm that serves a number of well-known conservative politicians and pundits.

The book, which is currently in hardcover, has a suggested retail price of $28.99 -- if that was the price paid by the PAC, more than 2,000 may have been sold. If the PAC paid wholesale, or the low $9.99 price-war price offered by Amazon and Wal-Mart, then far more books were purchased and distributed to Palin supporters by ... Palin supporters. 

Because Palin does not currently hold office, it seems that the book-buying and distributing expense is  legal. According to ABC:

Palin would not be the first politician to use a PAC to underwrite the purchase of a memoir. The Federal Election Commission has heard a number of cases on the question of whether it is an appropriate expense. The rules are somewhat complex, but because Palin is neither a candidate for office, nor a sitting member of Congress, her PAC is free to purchase the book under current law, according to Jan Baran, a campaign legal expert.

Palin's "Going Rogue," which held onto the top spot on Amazon's bestseller list for some time, has dropped to No. 60. Palin is expected to appear as a contributor on Fox News this year.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Sarah Palin. Credit: Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times

Author Greg Mortenson visits Southern California on Tuesday. His bestselling book, "Three Cups of Tea," and its sequel, "Stones Into Schools," chronicle his experiences building schools for girls in the remote mountainous regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In addition to writing, Mortenson, who began his fundraising efforts by working double shifts as a nurse and with one $100 check from Tom Brokaw, is heavily involved in two nonprofits: Pennies for Peace and the Central Asia Institute. Since opening his first school in 1997, Mortenson has been involved with establishing hundreds of schools in some of Afghanistan's and Pakistan's most remote regions. He has worked with tribal leaders, Islamic clerics and militia commanders, and survived an eight-day abduction by the Taliban.

Mortenson will speak about his experiences, with a focus on his humanitarian work Tuesday night at 7:15 p.m. at Loyola Marymount University's Gersten Pavilion.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Students at the July 2009 opening of the Pushghar Village Girls School, built by "Three Cups of Tea" author Greg Mortenson in Panjshir Valley, Afghanistan. Credit: Department of Defense via Flickr

In our pages on Sunday, novelist Matthew Sharpe looked at Don DeLillo's new novel (novella?), "Point Omega." In it, a filmmaker joins a former presidential war advisor at his desert vacation home, hoping to persuade him to be in a documentary.

Critics of "The Body Artist," "Cosmopolis" and especially "Falling Man" seem to want DeLillo to be the Babe Ruth of novelists, to keep writing "Underworld" and "Libra," those long, magisterial books about big American events. Such people will probably not regard his new novel, "Point Omega," which weighs in at not much more than 100 pages, as a literary home run.

Yet "Point Omega" is a splendid, fierce novel by a deep practitioner of the form.

Also in our pages: Essayist Brenda Miller talks to Dinah Lenney. Susan Salter-Reynolds reviews Eve Ensler's "I Am an Emotional Creature," "I Want To Be Left Behind" by Brenda Peterson and "Things We Didn't See Coming" by Steven Amsterdam. Salter-Reynolds also tackles the new collection by Sam Shepherd, "Day Out of Days." Also reviewed were the novel "Don Juan: His Own Version" by Peter Handke and T.C. Boyle's short story collection, "Wild Child." 

The wild world is the subject of two books; Lyanda Lynn Haupt looks at "Rewilding the World: Dispatches from the Conservation Revolution" by Caroline Fraser and "Coyote at the Kitchen Door: Living with Wildlife in Suburbia" by Stephen DeStefano.

Both books invite us to consider, and reconsider, the modern human relationship to other beings in a wild, wonderful and ecologically imperiled world, and to remember that our participation in this world involves not just guilt, worry, science and activism, but also a capacity for imagination.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: California's Saddleback Butte State Park at sunset. Credit: Annie Wells / Los Angeles Times

What is it with Amazon.com and weekends? It was Easter weekend when gay- and lesbian-themed books disappeared from the site. It was a Friday in July when George Orwell's "1984" was erased from the Kindles of some customers who'd purchased it. And on Jan. 29 -- Friday -- Amazon.com made its latest big move that stirred controversy. In a dispute over ebook pricing, Amazon.com stopped selling books by publisher Macmillan.

If the company had assumed everyone was out skiing -- or, around here, playing tennis -- that wasn't quite the case. After the New York Times reported on the story, observers sped to their computers (including BoingBoing, Publishers Weekly, Mashable, Galleycat and many on Twitter). What did the move mean? What role did the just-announced Apple iPad and iBook Store have in the negotiations? Was Macmillan, the smallest of the big six publishers, a vulnerable target?

Macmillan's CEO John Sargent thought he ought to make his position clear, so on Saturday, he ran an open letter as a paid advertisement in a special edition of the Publishers Marketplace email, which is widely read by those in the publishing industry.

Thursday I met with Amazon in Seattle. I gave them our proposal for new terms of sale for  ebooks under the agency model which will become effective in early March. In addition, I told them they could stay with their old terms of sale, but that this would involve extensive and deep windowing of titles. By the time I arrived back in New York late yesterday afternoon they informed me that they were taking all our books off the Kindle site, and off Amazon. The books will continue to be available on Amazon.com through third parties.

I regret that we have reached this impasse. Amazon has been a valuable customer for a long time, and it is my great hope that they will continue to be in the very near future.

The letter went on to explain the details of the dispute. Amazon has set a price point for ebooks for its Kindle -- $9.99 -- that many in publishing find unsustainable. Macmillan, which would prefer ebooks cost as much as $15, had proposed an alternative, Sargent explained. Amazon refused it, then stopped selling Macmillan's books. (Sargent's explanation of his proposal is after the jump.)

There were more questions. Publishers Marketplace kept track of how major Macmillan books were selling: They fell on the Amazon.com bestseller lists, while climbing the bestseller lists at Barnes & Noble. The site also rooted around and found a few Macmillan titles still being offered through Amazon. Authors blogged about their books disappearing, started switching buy links to other sites, and generally consternation bubbled.

Then, on Sunday, Amazon.com capitulated. That's what it said -- "capitulate." Who exactly said this is unclear. On a Kindle message board, the "Amazon Kindle Team," designated "Amazon official" by the site, posted an announcement:

Dear Customers:

Macmillan, one of the "big six" publishers, has clearly communicated to us that, regardless of our viewpoint, they are committed to switching to an agency model and charging $12.99 to $14.99 for e-book versions of bestsellers and most hardcover releases.

We have expressed our strong disagreement and the seriousness of our disagreement by temporarily ceasing the sale of all Macmillan titles. We want you to know that ultimately, however, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan's terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books.

The message immediately spread on the Internet: Amazon backed down, waved the white flag, "capitulated." But that's not the end of the story. Whatever is meant by "ultimately," Macmillan titles had not been restored by Sunday night.

It's worth mentioning that the text of Amazon.com's statement is somewhat irregular. Not only is "capitulate" a pretty strong word for a corporation, but the use of "monopoly" is entirely perplexing. A monopoly is exclusive control over a commodity or service -- what Macmillan has is ownership of a specific set of creative properties that they've bought, developed and produced. For any publisher to have a monopoly, they'd have to be American's only publisher and control all books. It's like saying I have a monopoly of the delicious scrambled eggs I made for breakfast; well, sure, I control my breakfast, but there are plenty of other eggs I don't control -- hence, no monopoly. As far as official statements go, this one seems unusual, but our request for an official comment was not returned.

If this Kindle message board statement becomes company policy and Macmillan titles are eventually sold again by Amazon.com, it is sure not to be the end of the story. It's not just ebook pricing that's in flux: The larger question is how publishing houses will survive. In recent years, many in publishing have said that parts of the system are broken -- the pressure of competing ebook readers and online retailers is leading to some surprising moves on the chessboard.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

For more about books, follow me on Twitter @paperhaus

T.C. Boyle's new collection of short stories, "Wild Child," is "loaded to the gills with dark humor, natural disasters and brushes with Botox," reviewer Mark Rozzo writes in our pages today.

Throughout this dazzling collection -- which veers from California to France, from the present to the past -- Boyle's stories have a habit of gazing back upon themselves with eyebrows cocked in wonder. And with good reason. Boyle is a master who has earned the right to be giddy about his bravura creations, which often turn on such pungent moments. Take for instance the mother of a Venezuelan relief pitcher in "The Unlucky Mother of Aquiles Maldonado." When she's spirited off by a band of grubby guerrillas and secreted in a jungle compound (her son's lucrative career in the States and his Hummer make their family a conspicuous target for kidnapping), she merely goes about doing what she does best: making arepas and taking care of boys. In the end, Aquiles' multimillion-dollar arm comes in handy during an explosive rescue attempt that, like so much of Boyle's work, good-naturedly toys with the limits of credulity.

Boyle has taught creative writing at USC for more than 30 years, but he isn't in class this week -- he's off in Chicago, Denver and other cities on a book tour. He returns to the Southland toward the end of February, taking part in the WordTheatre reading series.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: T.C. Boyle in 2003. Credit: Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times

If you want to buy Hilary Mantel's popular, prizewinning "Wolf Hall" from Amazon.com today, you'll be getting it from some third-party vendor. Same for Orson Scott Card's "Hidden Empire" and the Hungry Girl cookbooks. In the place where the Amazon price should be, you'll find only a double dash.

That's because those books are all published by Macmillan, and Amazon has pulled all Macmillan books from its cybershelves. Macmillan, one of the big six publishers, includes publishing houses Henry Holt & Co., science fiction-focused Tor/Forge and the Tiffany of fiction, Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Apparently the dispute arose from tensions over e-book prices. Amazon likes $9.99 for e-books, but publishers do not. The New York Times reports:

A person in the industry with knowledge of the dispute, which has been brewing for a year, said Amazon was expressing its strong disagreement by temporarily removing Macmillan books. The person did not want to be quoted by name because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Macmillan, like other publishers, has asked Amazon to raise the price of e-books to around $15 from $9.99.

The $9.99 price is a loss leader for Amazon, which has used it to help gain e-book market share for its reader, the Kindle. Publishers are concerned about the downward pressure on prices.

Up until Tuesday, a publisher like Macmillan had no real alternative if it was unhappy with Amazon's e-book prices. But when Apple announced its iPad and an upcoming iBook Store on Wednesday, the e-book landscape changed. Five publishers were announced to be working with Apple; Macmillan is one of them.

The dispute between Amazon and Macmillan has bled beyond e-books, however. All formats of Macmillan books are now unavailable for purchase from Amazon. And that may be tough on the publisher.

Who loses? Will people seeking Macmillan hardcovers and paperbacks on Amazon buy from the secondary retailers? Will rival online retailers Barnes & Noble and the independent Powell's see a sudden bonanza? Will people leave their screens and walk into their local bookstores to get "Wolf Hall"? Or will they simply get "The Help" instead?

After the jump: on e-book pricing

Nathan Bransford is one of the new breed of literary agents who uses the Internet to be remarkably transparent about his process. Today he posted about what stacked up in his mailbox when he was on vacation -- 327 queries. That's in one week.

Whoa. That's a lot of queries.

What does it mean for writers who are hoping to land an agent? Mostly that there is a tremendous amount of competition: In this one week, Bransford received 73 young adult queries. How many could he possibly say yes to?

Turns out he responded positively to four out of all the hundreds of queries -- a little more than 1%. And that's not taking them on as clients -- that's just saying that he'll look at the manuscripts.

In such a scenario, it's got to help to know your stuff. At least those aspiring young adult authors learned that Bransford represents young adult fiction.

But not all picked up a dictionary: Out of the 327 submissions he received, two misspelled the word "query."

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo credit: Lylamerle via Flickr

In today's paper, books editor David L. Ulin looks at J.D. Salinger's life and work. Salinger, whose last published works appeared in 1965, retreated into seclusion in Cornish, N.H. Despite his literal absence, he remained a major figure on America's literary landscape. Salinger, Ulin writes, "was a writer who refracted his perspective into language, producing work that was personal and profound."

"As he once wrote to biographer Ian Hamilton (in the course of suing Hamilton for quoting from his unpublished letters), 'I think I've borne all the exploitation and loss of privacy I can possibly bear in a single lifetime.'

"For the last 45 years, this was the encoded story, Salinger's self-imposed silence, as readers debated whether he was still writing or off in some twilit oblivion of his own....

"In his books, we find the essence of a fully articulated worldview, in which silence and expression go hand in hand."

Read the complete remembrance here.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo credit: Amy Sancetta / Associated Press

In a video taken at the iPad launch, Steve Jobs told the Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg, "Publishers are actually withholding their books from Amazon, because they're not happy with them."

Jobs was responding to a question about the price of ebooks on the upcoming iBooks store. No specific price ranges were announced in the demo, so Mossberg asked about the price they'd seen demonstrated -- $14.99 -- versus Amazon's $9.99 cost for some ebooks. "The prices will be the same," Jobs said.

He didn't specify what price that would be, exactly. When the first iPads ship in late March, perhaps the iBook Store will open its online doors. Will that make publishers happy?

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Steve Jobs, in black, answers Walt Mossberg's questions. Credit: Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

The iPad isn't publicly available yet, but Pee-wee Herman seems to have gotten his hands on one. "I can use the iPad to read books!" he crows, only to have Magic Screen begin to read "Green Eggs and Ham" out loud for free.