Based on surveys with 4,000 book-buying consumers, BookNet Canada pegged paperback sales in 2012 at about 58 per cent of the market, while hardcovers accounted for 24 per cent and ebook sales made up 15 per cent.

BookNet Canada president and CEO Noah Genner says early sales data from this year shows ebook sales are steady and no longer growing.

Digital sales peaked at an estimated 17.6 per cent of the book market in the first quarter of 2012 before sinking to 12.9 per cent in the last quarter of the year.

BookNet Canada suggests book sales are strongly tied to gift giving.

Consumers who received an e-reader over the holidays likely drove ebook sales higher at the beginning of 2012. But ebooks are not commonly given as gifts, so paperbacks and hardcovers did better at the end of 2012 leading up to the holiday season.

The report found most consumers still preferred to buy their books in stores rather than shopping online. About 37 per cent said they made their purchases at book stores, 34 per cent chose other retail stores (including Costco and Walmart), and 25 per cent went online to buy books.

“I haven’t stopped jumping, screaming and pinching myself because I still don’t believe it,” Santa Rosa told The Associated Press Monday. “I am as anxious as one can be ahead of a project like this one: super-astonished, super-surprised and all the supers you can imagine.”

The revival of Luis Bravo’s show opens July 9 at the Walter Kerr Theatre and Santa Rosa, the singer of such salsa hits as “Medias negras,” ”Perdoname” and “Amor mio no te vayas” will spend three weeks as a guest vocalist. Future vocalists will be announced later.

“Forever Tango” originally opened on Broadway 1997 and earned multiple Tony nominations. It returned for a limited four-month engagement in 2004.

While the world knows he can definitely dance salsa, many mightwonder if Santa Rosa can do the famous South American dance.

“I took tango lessons many years ago and it is one of the most difficult dances that there are,” he said. “I did it for a show we were doing in Puerto Rico and it was a crash course. I had a lot of fun but it was very hard.”

With 16 dancers and an 11-member orchestra, Santa Rosa hopes he doesn’t disappoint. “I will give my all so us salsa-singers will be well represented in this tango environment,” he assured.

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Online: http://www.forevertango.us

“I kind of freaked out,” said 16-year-old Iris Wu, describing her reaction to the recent news. “I was like: ‘This is not real life.’”

The early shock now fading, the choir sounded relaxed and polished during a recent run-through of the performance ahead of the May 25 engagement to sing with the British rock titans.

The 24-person choir will be split in two for the gig, stationed at opposite sides of the stage with the Stones in-between and two conductors leading the separate singers in tandem. They were told to wear black, and not to take pictures of the band.

Of course, the talented youngsters making up the choir — most of whom were born in the mid-late ’90s — might not be uniformly starstruck by the rock legends.

“I actually knew of them through ‘Glee,’” said 17-year-old Grade 12 student Nicholas Cunha. “After I found out I was singing with them, I went and looked up all of their songs and I actually started to become a fan, because I really do love their music.”

Choir director Bob Anderson, who will conduct the teens along with Sherri Collins, was a little more familiar with the rockers’ well-loved oeuvre.

“The Rolling Stones, right now, are my absolute favourite group in the world,” he said with a smile, noting that in fact he mainly listens to choral music but grew up dancing to the Stones.

Still, he relates that the choir pretty much went berserk after he gradually teased out the details of the performance.

“They were on the floor, they were on their chairs, they were all over the place,” he said.

Many of their parents might have had a similar reaction.

“Both of my parents, they were born in the ’50s, so they definitely grew up with them and they knew all their songs,” Cunha said. “I texted them (when I found out), and they texted back with gibberish, because they were so excited.”

Yet not all those families are going to be able to witness the show in person.

The tour, which has been dogged by reports of slow sales and accusations of price-gouging, is still a bit pricey even for many proud parents.

“I’m pretty sure it’s like $900 a ticket,” said 18-year-old Grade 12 student Natalie Panacci, a “really big Stones fan” who whipped her water bottle to the ground and burst into tears when she heard the news that she was going to get to join them onstage.

So will she aim for a word or two with her heroes?

“I don’t want to be that fangirl to go up screaming at them because they’re probably going to be in a different world focusing on the show and everything,” Panacci said. “I would be very mature about it, or at least I’d try to be.”

Cunha, meanwhile, planned a similarly cautious approach.

“I would say hi,” he said. “I don’t think I’ll be all buddy-buddy with them because I’d be afraid of being taken away by a bodyguard.”

Mally the Monkey was seized by German customs March 28 when Bieber failed to produce required vaccination and import papers for the animal after landing in Munich for a European tour. He had until midnight Friday to produce those documents.

Customs spokesman Thomas Meister said after offices opened following a holiday weekend that officials received no documents. He said the customs authority issued an order later Tuesday formally transferring ownership of the animal to the German state.

Bieber, 19, has six weeks to contest the decision if he wants to do so. Germany’s Federal Agency for Nature Conservation said the monkey would be sent to a zoo somewhere in Germany, but officials declined to say exactly where to avoid security problems.

Mally, a capuchin monkey, has been cared for at Munich’s animal shelter since being taken into quarantine. The shelter’s manager says Mally, who is now 20 weeks old, has fared well and gained weight in its care.

The shelter has criticized Bieber for keeping such a young monkey as a pet, saying it shouldn’t have been taken away from its mother until it was a year old. Experts say capuchin monkeys also need to be kept in groups as they are very sociable animals.

German authorities now hope to reclaim the cost of Mally’s upkeep at the Munich shelter over the past two months, including care, food and vet visits.

Meister said a bill would be prepared and sent to Bieber. He put the cost at several thousand euros (dollars) but said authorities would not detail the specific amount.

Chechnya, a southern Russian province, has been in the spotlight since it emerged that the suspects in April’s Boston marathon bombing are ethnic Chechens.

The predominantly Muslim province was devastated by two separatist wars with Moscow, and its current Kremlin-backed ruler has been widely criticized for human rights violations.

The ruler, Ramzan Kadyrov, has been a gracious host to Depardieu, giving him an expensive apartment in the Chechen capital, Grozny, after the actor got Russian citizenship in January.

Depardieu said Tuesday that the drama, titled “Turquoise,” will be directed by French filmmaker Philippe Martinez and will also star British actress Elizabeth Hurley.

A new champion will be crowned Tuesday.

Football pro Jacoby Jones, Olympian Alexandra Raisman, singer Kellie Pickler and 16-year-old Disney Channel star Zendaya each did three dances on Monday’s episode of the ABC competition.

Zendaya performed perfectly, earning the maximum score for each routine. Pickler was a close second, collecting perfect 10s for her quickstep and freestyle dances, but finishing behind Zendaya in the cha-cha relay, which saw all four finalists perform to the same song.

Raisman finished third and Jones was fourth.

Each will perform one last dance during Tuesday’s season finale to add points to their totals. Judges’ scores combined with viewer votes will determine the new champion.

Bebe Emerman said Tuesday her father died of complications from pneumonia at the Miami Jewish Home for the Aged, where he had lived since his health began failing in 2004. The Criteria studio, which he opened in 1959 in North Miami, was sold in 1999 and is now operated by the Hit Factory.

Some 250 gold or platinum singles and albums were recorded at Criteria. These include “Layla” by Eric Clapton’s Derek and the Dominoes, James Brown’s “I Feel Good” and parts of “Saturday Night Fever” by the Bee Gees.

Then they met Oscar Isaac.

“It just didn’t happen until he walked in the room,” says Joel Coen. “There was a point at which we wondered if we’d written something that was essentially impossible to cast.”

The Coens have long been known for their casting acumen, but they may have outdone even themselves with Isaac, a 33-year-old, Juilliard-trained actor with a few notable credits to his name but nothing on par with a major Coen brothers release. The film was greeted ecstatically at the Cannes Film Festival at its Sunday premiere, with Isaac hailed as the festival’s breakout star and a possible Oscar nominee.

“I finally got the shot,” Isaac said in an interview. “And I got it in this context, which is more than I honestly could have ever imagined for myself.”

In the film, Isaac plays Llewyn Davis, a character very loosely modeled on folk musician Dave Van Ronk. Despite his evident talent for personal songs with traditional folk influences, he’s an artist just barely out of step with history. Bitter and increasingly frustrated, he’s a raging failure, missing his moment, one instead grabbed by Bob Dylan.

For many, Isaac’s story is kind of an inverse of Llewyn. He is a young actor who gets his chance — “his minute,” says music supervisor T Bone Burnett — and takes advantage of it.

“The whole story is about a guy who never gets there,” says Burnett, the frequent Coen collaborator. “And yet the actual person who’s playing that guy, does it. He seizes that minute like a motherf—–.”

Isaac isn’t as sarcastic or as antagonistic as Llewyn: “My energy toward people is very much like ‘I mean you no harm,’” he says. And he’s trying not to get too far ahead himself with his rousing success at Cannes. His instinct, he says, “is always to diminish any good thing, so as not to be devastated later.”

While Isaac says that he identifies with the role fortune and opportunity plays in catching a break, he more associates with the workmanlike attitude of both Llewyn and the Coens. For him, it was as much about gradually working toward “Llewyn Davis” as it was landing a single break.

“I remember when I was getting out of school, I was like, ‘If they just gave me one shot. If they gave me the one shot, oh man, I know I can do it,’” he says. “Then I got my first movie and it came and it went, and I was like, ‘If they just gave me one more shot, just another shot.’ Then I started getting work, and I realized it’s not about that. It’s not about the shot. It’s about work.”

Born in Guatemala and raised in Florida, Isaac grew up playing in a variety of bands as a guitarist and singer, everything from ska to a hardcore band in which he sported blue hair. But since coming out of Juilliard, the New York actor has found his musical talents valuable in Hollywood. He also played a musician in the direct-to-DVD high school reunion comedy “10 Years.”

His most notable previous credits include Madonna’s British period film “W.E.” and Nicolas Winding Refn’s neo-noir “Drive,” in which he played the formerly incarcerated husband of Carey Mulligan’s character. (Mulligan co-stars in “Inside Llewyn Davis,” along with Justin Timberlake.)

But when he heard about the Coens’ film, he knew that his combination of skills was perfectly suited to the part.

“I said: I have to get a shot at this movie because I feel like my 33 years of life have been preparing me to do something like this,” says Isaac.

He first submitted a recording of himself performing the traditional blues ballad, “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me,” which Llewyn plays in the film. He auditioned for a casting director and then later for the Coens. Usually, as a guard against later disappointment, Isaac immediately tosses a script after an audition. But he didn’t this time, and kept working on the part for the next month before Joel Coen called to tell him he got the part.

His preparation included performing the film’s songs, like Llewyn, in downtown New York clubs. Buster Keaton was an influence in forming a “mask of melancholy.”

“I would go to parties with that and try to interact with people with that,” says Isaac. “It’s tough because it’s not about being cool. In a way, it’s just about being very open and very up front with who you are. That was a scary place to live in.”

But the music was central to character, a kind of window into Llewyn’s soul. A bit of advice from Burnett (who also did the music for the Coens’ “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”) was crucial: “Sing like you’re singing to yourself.”

Along with Burnett, Isaac collaborated with Timberlake and Marcus Mumford. Using the parlance of musicians, Timberlake said Isaac “threw it down” in his performance.

“It felt like a little bit of serendipity,” Timberlake says of the Cannes reception to Isaac. “Just seeing the looks on people’s faces looking at him like, ‘Where did you come from?’ It felt like: ‘Llewyn finally made it.’”

Moviegoers will surely become more familiar with Isaac when CBS Films releases “Inside Llewyn Davis” this December in the heart of awards season. (He also co-stars alongside Kirsten Dunst and Viggo Mortensen in the upcoming thriller “Two Faces of January.”)

“Why this movie is so personal — I think to all of us — is because of the recognition that it just as easily can go the other way,” Isaac says.

“There’s very few geniuses that are shooting across the sky like Shakespeare or Dylan. The rest of us, it’s like you have to work and be talented, but you got to be lucky for a lot of this stuff to happen.”

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Follow AP Entertainment Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jake_coyle

Eight Mile Style filed a federal lawsuit in Detroit on Monday, alleging that a Facebook ad that was broadcast online last month copied music from Eminem’s 2000 song “Under the Influence.”

The Detroit Free Press reports (http://on.freep.com/10LFB2N ) the 30-second ad was featured in a webcast by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to announce Facebook Home, an interface for Android phones.

The complaint says ad agency Wieden+Kennedy of Portland, Ore., copied Eminem’s music “in an effort to curry favour” with Facebook by catering to Zuckerberg’s personal likes and to “invoke the same irreverent theme” of the song.

Messages seeking comment were left Tuesday with Facebook and the ad agency.

It happened all right. After years of clamouring from fans and rumours firing them up while the cast hung on for a green light, “Arrested Development” has risen from the dead with 15 half-hours premiering en masse on Netflix on Monday at 3:01 a.m. EDT.

“Arrested Development” is the cock-eyed comedy blessed with a king’s ransom of talent and the twisted vision of its mastermind, Matt Hurwitz, that aired on Fox for three seasons as a cult favourite, then was cancelled for low ratings — and maybe because it befuddled everyone who wasn’t hooked on its lunacy. (Those original three seasons are available for streaming on Netflix, too.)

“I think the show scored some ‘cool points’ for dying before its time,” says Cera. “But there are still a lot more places for it to go.”

Yes, “Arrested Development” died young with a beautiful, if funny-to-look-at, corpse. But its fans weren’t ready to bury it. And said so.

“Clearly a lot of people DIDN’T like the show,” Jason Bateman allows, “so I guess all we were hearing from were those who do — and that happens to be a brand of people who are not afraid of speaking their minds.”

Now reanimated by public outcry, “Arrested” is going new places.

“Mitch and the cast didn’t want to do something not as good as the old series,” says Bateman (who plays Michael Bluth, the fractious family’s would-be mediating presence). “We didn’t want to do something lateral or just a retread.”

“I think it’s new at every opportunity,” says Cera (who plays Michael Bluth’s straight-arrow son), “while retaining the show’s original heart.”

The new Netflix season takes the form of what you might call an anthology as it updates viewers, character by character with each episode, on the Bluth family — that once-wealthy, now-broke and at-each-other’s-throats clan squabbling in Newport Beach, Calif.

A wicked homage to the scandals of Enron and Tyco and a loopy foreshadowing of the 2008 Wall Street meltdown, “Arrested” premiered in 2003 as a sendup of high-end vanities, greed and corruption as displayed within the Bluth family circle.

Besides de Rossi, Cera and Bateman, the cast of “Arrested” Redux brings back Will Arnett, Alia Shawkat, Tony Hale, David Cross, Jeffrey Tambor and Jessica Walter, who reconvened in a strategic yet catch-as-catch-can fashion.

“There was no reality where we could get everybody for a full 7- or 8-month period,” explains Hurwitz. “That gave birth to the form we came up with for the new series.”

The 15 episodes dwell on individual characters during the six-year span from when the series was cancelled in 2006 up through 2012. That structure was supposed to make it simple to book each actor for an isolated shooting schedule.

Then Hurwitz took his creativity another step. Since all the episodes are happening simultaneously, he couldn’t resist including crossover appearances from other actors in each episode. He wanted characters and story lines from different episodes to intersect. But his ambition made it all the trickier getting all the actors he needed in place for any given episode.

“In a quarter of the scenes, someone is green-screened in,” says Hurwitz, who goes on to concede that what began as a solution to a problem of logistics inspired him to create new problems for himself. For instance: “If two characters are having a conversation in one of those characters’ episodes and that character’s life changes, then in the other character’s episode you show the other side of the conversation and the result of it on THAT character.”

The overall effect is a sort of hypertext array for the 15 episodes.

“Matt made it a choose-your-own-adventure season, in that you can watch any episode out of order and it makes sense but, depending on which order you watch them, the series kind of tells a different story,” says de Rossi (who plays spoiled materialist sister Lindsay).

Not that “Arrested Development” has ever chosen the simple or obvious path. From the start, it was dense, convoluted and layered, packed with sight gags, self-referential jokes, flashbacks, hand-held cinematography with run-on sequences (promoting improvisation to enhance Hurwitz’s scripts) and, of course, its droll, documentarylike narration by Ron Howard, one of the show’s executive producers.

On Fox, the show won six Emmys and a Peabody as well as critics’ love while always fighting for its life in the ratings. But Hurwitz is philosophical about the obstacles his show has faced. They seem to have given him license to obliterate boundaries that otherwise would have hemmed him in.

“All of the limitations,” he says brightly, “are great creative opportunities.”

That applied to the new episodes’ shooting pace, which Arnett describes as “run-and-gun and crazy.”

“But it really worked to our advantage. It was ‘OK, get over here, here we go,’ and we were right back into it,” says Arnett (who plays Lindsay’s older brother, Gob, a preening, mediocre stage magician). “After working together on the series before, all of us just kind of knew what we’re doing. There’s an implicit trust there. I know that sounds corny, but it’s true.”

This is a mutual admiration society: The cast heaps praise on Hurwitz, who volleys it back at his actors. And they all join in celebrating “Arrested” viewers, but for whom the show would be long dead and forgotten.

“There are way, way more fans of ‘The Big Bang Theory,’” notes David Cross (who plays Tobius Funke, a quack-psychiatrist-turned-actor-wannabe). “But they’re not as passionate as ‘Arrested Development’ fans — because there’s more to be passionate about.”

“In either a conscious or unconscious way, our audience thinks — and rightly so — it’s THEIR show,” says Jeffrey Tambor (who plays jailbird-patriarch George Bluth Sr.).

“A lot of people have told me over the years that they would build friendships around the show,” Ron Howard adds. “They would judge first dates on whether that person likes ‘Arrested Development’ or not. It was a means of evaluation.”

Does that mean there might be children walking around today whose parents were united by “Arrested Development”?

“I think that’s fair to assume,” Howard says with a laugh.

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Online:

http://www.netflix.com

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EDITOR’S NOTE — Frazier Moore is a national television columnist for The Associated Press. He can be reached at fmoore(at)ap.org and at http://www.twitter.com/tvfrazier.