Citing people familiar with the situation, The Wall Street Journal reports this morning that Barnes & Noble is not interested in making a bid for Borders, which put itself up for sale in the spring. Rumors that B&N was going to acquire the ankle-biting second-largest-bookstore-chain-in-the-country freaked out everyone in publishing for a minute there, since a merger would almost certainly mean a lot of Borders stores would close and there would thus be way fewer places to sell books.

According to The Wall Street Journal's Jeffrey A. Trachntenberg and Matthew Karnitschnig, this might not be the end of the story since:

To be sure, Barnes & Noble could change tactics and return with a bid, but it would have to act quickly.  read more »

Last week, Barnes & Noble did a funny thing and classified David Sedaris's new book of essays, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, under fiction in the weekly best-seller list they send out to publishers. It was a strong move, because Mr. Sedaris had just told Time that he definitely considered it nonfiction. "I've always been a huge exaggerator," he said, "but when I write something, I put it on a scale. And if it's 97% true, I think that's true enough. I'm not going to call it fiction because 3% of it isn't true."

And so it sorta seemed like B&N was calling Mr.  read more »

David Sedaris insisted last week that his essays, which are famously full of embellishments, should be filed under non-fiction because only about 3% of what he writes is untrue. "I've always been a huge exaggerator,"he said in an online Q&A on Time's Web site, "but when I write something, I put it on a scale. And if it's 97% true, I think that's true enough. I'm not going to call it fiction because 3% of it isn't true."

   read more »

Artsy denizens of the embattled Chelsea Hotel turned out en masse to the not-so-bohemian Barnes & Noble on Sixth Avenue and 21st Street last night, as fellow hotel inhabitant Ed Hamilton read passages from his new book, Legends of the Chelsea Hotel.

"It's good he decided to dress up," one attendee joked as Mr. Hamilton took the podium dressed in jeans, a button-up shirt, and a blue baseball cap bearing the logo of a recent New York blogger summit. (Mr. Hamilton also operates a hotel-centric blog called Living With Legends.)

Painter Hawk Alfredson and photographer Mia Hanson (who's also pictured in the book) were among those present.

Before delving into the text, Mr. Hamilton waxed nostaglic for the hotel's old junky-friendly vibe and bemoaned its becoming "more and more of a fancy boutique hotel."

He described the book as part fact, part fiction. During the reading, Mr. Hamilton pulled from two chapters—"scary stories for Halloween," he said—one involving a druggie Dead-head zombie reanimated on the hotel's rooftop and another describing a seemingly personal encounter with the purported ghost of writer (and former Room 829 resident) Thomas Wolfe during the 2003 blackout:

"[A] large, hulking man," Mr. Hamilton described the phantom. "His broad back curved over a drafting table where an array of papers was spread out before him. He seemed to be working on some sort of outline... The man was wearing a starched white shirt, and the papers were white, which added to the brilliance of the scene."

Later, as the author autographed copies, this reporter asked him how much of the Wolfe ghost story was true.

"Well, it didn't happen during the blackout," Mr. Hamilton said. And, he added, "I don't know if it was him."