ALA Updates Google Guide, Smashwords to Supply Kindle Titles, and More

Every day Poets & Writers Magazine scans the headlines—from publishing reports to academic announcements to literary dispatches—for all the news that creative writers need to know. Here are today's stories:

The American Library Association has expanded its guide to the Google Book Search settlement with an eleven-page section covering recent changes to the deal (Library Journal).

Self-publishing service Smashwords will begin shipping e-books to Amazon’s Kindle store tomorrow, with the titles expected to be ready for sale by December (Press Release).

Financial straits have forced Arizona’s award-winning Prescott Valley Public Library to “borrow” employees from other municipal departments (Library Journal).

In other Arizona news, the publisher of the Mesa-based East Valley Tribune—scheduled to close this year after its owner filed for bankruptcy—says an unidentified buyer could save the paper (Associated Press).

Britain’s Publishers Association is supporting a legislative proposal for more stringent file-sharing and digital copyright regulations (Bookseller). 

Author Steve Almond will appear at the Harvard Book Store on December 2 to read from his new book of writing advice, This Won’t Take but a Minute, Honey, which is being published exclusively through Harvard’s Espresso Book Machine (Press Release).

After a successful one-year trial, Washington’s Pierce County Library System and the Tacoma Public Library have formalized a reciprocal borrowing program (Library Journal).

A rare first edition of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species—discovered after four decades in a bathroom bookcase—is expected to sell at auction this week for about $100,000 (Independent).