Postscripts

In the good-citizen-getting-something-back dept.: BookPeople's Web partnership program is making news (Publishers Weekly, Jan. 22 issue). Online book buyers at www.bookpeople.com can contribute 5% of their purchases to local nonprofits, schools, and even other independent businesses by clicking on the "Support Your Community" link. The luxury of contributing to nonprofit organizations in the easy form of shopping isn't unique anymore; what's newsworthy in this case is the store's use of Web sales to forge solidarity among local nonprofits and independent businesses, which must be Austin-based in order to join the program. In return, BookPeople gets a lot of free publicity (not to mention sales) when the 25 nonprofits, 12 schools, and two businesses that are currently participating (Animal Trustees of Austin, the Griffin School, S.O.S., and ABCD's, for example) ask their customers or constituents to purchase their books on the site. If everything works as it should, the money that is spent online stays in Austin, and that's something that makes Steve Bercu, co-owner and general manager of BookPeople, quite happy. Bercu is working on forming the Austin Independent Business Alliance based on a similar organization already up-and-running in Boulder (which explains why BookPeople is willing to give 5% of sales to other independent businesses).

BookPeople asks each organization that participates to recommend a list of titles they endorse or that are relevant to the organization, but online shoppers can purchase anything on the site and specify that the 5% donation be contributed to the organization of their choice.

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Upcoming

Don't go to the A.C.E.S. building on the UT campus tonight, Thursday, Feb. 1 for Michael Cunningham's reading because he won't be there due to a family emergency. The Michener Center, which was bringing Cunningham to Austin, hopes to reschedule his visit soon... Elmer Kelton, who was recently chosen as the posterfigure for this year's Texas Writers Month (which is May), will be at BookPeople on Thursday, Feb. 1, at 7pm, to read from his latest Western, The Badger Boy (Forge, $23.95)... Red Salmon Arts presents John Ross, Mexican author, poet, correspondent, and activist, with his latest work, The War Against Oblivion: Zapatista Chronicles, 1994-2000 (Common Courage Press, $18.95), a season-by-season, six-and-a-half-year saga of the rebellion of Chiapas. Monday, Feb. 5, at 7pm, at Resistencia Bookstore (1801-A S. First). Call 416-8885 for more information... Dennis Lehane, who has been called "the hippest heir of Hammett and Chandler" and praised by no less than Michael Connolly for transforming the hard-boiled detective novel into "an elegiac treatise on the corruption of the soul," has written his first stand-alone novel, Mystic River (Morrow, $25). Lehane will be at BookPeople on Monday, Feb. 5, at 7pm... The Writers' League Radio Collective, a group of Writers' League of Texas (formerly the Austin Writers' League) members who feature writers every week on Writing on the Air, a new program that airs every Saturday at 4pm on 91.7 FM, will feature screenwriter Tim McCanlies (Dancer, Texas, Pop. 81, The Iron Giant) this Saturday, Feb. 3.