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:
Concerned about the “absence of competition” for institutional subscriptions, three major library groups—the American Library Association, the Association of College and Research Libraries, and the Association of Research Libraries—have asked the Justice Department to monitor the implementation of the Google Book Search settlement (Library Journal).
Britain’s Booksellers Association says the number of independent bookshops in the country has declined by 20 percent over the last decade (Bookseller).
Literary magazine Opium has launched a new iPhone app (Los Angeles Times).
Seamus Heaney and other notables are mounting a campaign to give the late Poet Laureate Ted Hughes a spot among Britain’s most celebrated writers—in Poets’ Corner at Westminster Abbey (Times).
Books rank behind television, the Internet, and music as the country’s fourth most popular form of entertainment (Hollywood Reporter).
Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita leads the polls at the Great Opening Sentences Web site.
Despite having had access to the device for only four weeks, Canada now ranks among the top five countries for Kindle downloads and purchases, according to an Amazon press release.
Newly minted e-book platform Kobo supports “device agnostic” formats, but the company also plans to launch an e-reader of its own (Publishers Weekly).
Meanwhile, the new Kobo international e-book store could be a viable challenge to Amazon, says Wired.
