A&C Black, a division of The Bloomsbury Group and one of Europe’s premiere publishers and distributors of natural history titles, has recently updated their website and established a new blog – ACBWildlife’s Blog. The revisions to the site make it much easier to locate the firm’s many titles; it also highlights their Species Profile and RSPB Corner pages. The new blog, while still in its early stages, provides readers with in-depth essays on titles and topics relevant to the firm’s natural history publishing activities. Additionally, they have established a Twitter feed so that users of that social networking application can keep up-to-date with developments from the firm (although it must be noted that this feed is much more topically wide-ranging than natural history alone).

At long last the much anticipated second edition of the Collins Bird Guide: The Most Complete Guide to the Birds of Britain and Europe by Lars Svensson, Killian Mullarney, Dan Zetterstrom, and Peter J. Grant is now available in a jacketed hardcover edition with the paperback edition still scheduled for release in March of 2010. NHBS Environment Bookstore in the U.K. lists the hardcover edition as being in stock; however Powell’s Books in the U.S. is not yet showing the book as available through their own locations. As this book has been so long anticipated and will be in such high demand, it may take the distribution links outside the U.K. a bit more time to secure copies of the book for sale. As of this writing, The Well-read Naturalist has not yet received a review copy. Be assured that once we have, a review will be published in as timely a manner as possible.

Lee Welles, author of the award winning Gaia Girls novels, recently provided her readers with a sneak preview of the long-awaited third volume in the series. Ms. Welles read from the first chapters of the forthcoming book, titled Air Apparent, during the December 31, 2009 “Blue Moon Special” webcast of her Blog Talk Radio program. Judging from the portions of the work Ms. Welles read during the webcast, readers can expect Air Apparent to be just as captivating and enlightening as were the first two Gaia Girls volumes – Enter the Earth and Way of Water. No date for the publication of Air Apparent has yet been announced.

NHBS Environment Bookstore is reporting that the much anticipated publication of the second edition of the Collins Bird Guide: The Most Complete Guide to the Birds of Britain and Europe by Lars Svensson, Killian Mullarney, Dan Zetterstrom, and Peter J. Grant has been delayed until 2010. The website for Harper Collins UK now lists the publication date for the cloth bound edition as January of that year. They do not list the paperback edition at present but NHBS’ own website indicates that it is expected in March of 2010. The original Collins Bird Guide, published in 1999, is widely considered to be a cornerstone reference for the birds of Britain and Europe. This new edition has been much anticipated since word of its future publication was first made known. Those who have seen advance copies of it have indicated that the wait for the release of second edition is well worth it.

More bad news from the world of professional book reviewing: Publisher’s Weekly is reporting that Nielsen Business Media has announced that it will close the highly influential book review publication Kirkus Reviews as well as Editor & Publisher magazine. In publication since 1933, Kirkus Reviews publishes roughly 5,000 book reviews annually covering a wide variety of genres. Its closing will undoubtedly cause a significant decrease in the availability of professional, well-written book reviews. Editor & Publisher, the “bible of the newspaper industry” has been in print even longer; tracing its origins as far back as 1884.