Author: Randall Williams

Kindles, Sony Readers, Nooks, and other forms of ereaders have been prominently in the news during 2009. The long-heralded arrival of ebooks as a significant factor in the publishing industry finally seems to be here. We pondered the implications recently in Manhattan over coffee and tea with Chris Kerr, the senior partner in the Parson Weems sales group that represents NewSouth in the northeast. (We have sales reps in each region of the country to call on bookstores, chains, and wholesalers.) Chris is a 30-year veteran of book publishing and is one of the smartest, savviest book people we know. He asserts that this time around, the ebook is real …

Normally, I’d say it’s just wrong when a raunchy blues standard is covered by a group of white suburban teenagers whose greatest life deprivation has probably been on the order of running out of cell phone minutes … except that they sounded sooo good. The occasion was the annual Blues Extravaganza at Tuscaloosa’s Bama Theatre on Friday night, May 1, 2009. The evening marked the conclusion of the 11th annual Alabama Blues Project spring camp and featured the Blues Camp Kids and special guest star Bobby Rush …