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One small press is winning praise while another is giving books away; Asus is looking to undercut competitors with a budget e-reader; Aussie publishers are planning their own e-book distribution system; Pennsylvania libraries are still suffering; Portland’s biggest daily is getting a new publisher; and other news.
B&N and Adobe are pushing for e-book standardization; an overdue U.K. library study now has a November deadline; Canada’s stimulus plans include library expansion; Anne of Green Gables returns officially and unofficially; Mexico spent decades snooping on García Márquez; and other news.
Former head of PEN Canada John Ralston Saul has been elected president of International PEN; Amazon has unveiled a Kindle app for PC users; a TV channel has enlisted a cadre of (deceased) literary greats to present the news; independent Indian publishers are banding together; and other news.
Hewlett-Packard is getting serious about print-on-demand; an Orange County school district is considering an Angelou book ban; Jack Kerouac is the subject of a new documentary with a star-studded soundtrack; don’t mess with Paul Zukofsky’s intellectual property; and other news.
The “Written in California” reading series gets underway this week in Pasadena; an Ohio law is being challenged on free expression grounds; Philip Roth made a surprise appearance during a tour named in his honor; the Frankfurt Book Fair official at the center of the Chinese dissident controversy has been fired; and other news.
The B&N “Kindle-killer” is due on Tuesday; Turkey is hoping to boost the Istanbul Book Fair; NYU aims for the first all-digital academic library; private publishers are “legal” in China (but the state still controls ISBN numbers); and other news.
Frankfurt debates deepen trans-Atlantic copyright rifts; Penguin Canada is reshuffled with a series of promotions; Kinky Friedman runs for governor (again); Yann Martel’s two-man book club begets a book; and other news.
A CEO is named for the new Penguin International subsidiary; Columbia and Cornell announce a joint library project; the Kiwi canon gets digitized; Barnes & Noble will shutter its B. Dalton stores; Britain’s Society of Authors says e-book royalties are too small; and other news.
A German company is launching an “open-source” e-reader; Random House will release a graphic novel coauthored by Michael Jackson; a Scottish MEP is fighting to keep a famous dictionary from leaving home; a church plans a Halloween book-burning; and other news.
Shakespeare’s oeuvre gets a little bigger; unpublished Vonnegut makes an appearance in Vanity Fair; Penguin China announces a new English-language list; a survey of international publishers says digital will overtake print in 2018; and other news.
Neil Gaiman collaborates with the crowd via Twitter; Pennsylvania libraries suffer cuts; Harvard will digitize its Chinese collection; a new report says book-buying is more popular in Britain than in the US; and other news.
A famous trilogy is getting a sixth installment; Aussie industry groups are opposing new book import rules; filming of the latest García Márquez novel has been delayed by protests; B.C. literary organizations fight back after losing government funding; and other news.
English PEN says U.K. libel law puts free speech at risk; a three-day conference devoted to the Google settlement revision begins today in New York City; John Steinbeck has inspired a Chicago ballet; Canadians are still without a Kindle to call their own; and other news.
Justice Department officials supervise the new Google Book Search settlement; independent booksellers in the U.K. claw market share from high street chains; the new permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy says Nobel deliberations are too “Eurocentric”; and other news.
New York City plans a fitting memorial for Frank McCourt; the Kindle may finally debut in the U.K. this month; Disney rolls out an electronic storybook site; Paige M. Gutenborg starts work at Harvard; and other news.
A small print-on-demand firm can go ahead with its antitrust suit against Amazon; the EU ponders its answer to Google Book Search; Shakespeare’s grave gets a much-needed overhaul; Banned Books Week leaves its mark on the best-seller lists; and other news.
In the first major overseas legal challenge to its massive book-scanning project, Google’s French division was hit last week with a copyright infringement lawsuit. Publishing group La Martinière, backed by the editors association Syndicat national de l’édition (SNE) and the writers union Société des gens de lettres (SGDL), is asking a Paris court to force the Internet giant to halt its digitization of protected works and to levy a fine of eighteen million euros (about $26 million) as well as a per diem fine of one hundred thousand euros ($146,000).
A month after signing a distribution deal with the Barnes & Noble eBookstore, online publishing platform Smashwords announced on Tuesday that it has reached a similar arrangement with Sony. Authors who upload their work to Smashwords through Sony’s new “Publisher Portal” can expect to see it added to the Sony e-book catalogue in as little as ten days, the company said.
About a week shy of its first anniversary, online magazine the Daily Beast is getting into the book business. On Monday, editor Tina Brown announced a joint venture with Perseus Books to release a series of short, topical e-books quickly followed by paperback editions. The new imprint, Beast Books, plans to publish three to five titles in the next year.
Two of the country’s most prominent newspapers announced significant changes to their book coverage last week. The Chicago Tribune not only reformatted its Saturday books page but officially launched Printers Row, a literary blog featuring expanded content and contributions from readers. The San Francisco Chronicle, meanwhile, scrapped its usual best-seller list on Sunday in favor of lists provided by the Northern California Independent Bookseller Association.
A panel of international writers has chosen Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez’s novel One Hundred Years of Solitude as the book that has most influenced world literature over the past twenty-five years. The survey, commissioned by international literary magazine Wasafiri, coincided with the release last Friday of the quarterly’s twenty-fifth anniversary issue.
Steve Rubin, best known as the publisher of John Grisham and Dan Brown, announced yesterday that he is stepping down as executive vice president and publisher-at-large of Random House, effective next Friday. The sixty-seven-year-old Rubin, a former journalist, said he was moving on to pursue other opportunities, including a book deal of his own with “one of the finest publishers in the industry.”
With support from several prominent American partners, Philips spinoff IREX Technologies entered the U.S. e-book market yesterday when it unveiled a device intended to compete directly with the Kindle and the Sony Reader. The IREX DR800SG, which features 3G wireless connectivity through Verizon and access to the recently launched Barnes & Noble eBookstore, will land in Best Buy stores late next month.
Four days after the Department of Justice recommended that a federal court in New York City reject the proposed Google Book Search settlement, the parties involved are asking for time to amend the agreement. The Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, with support from Google, filed a motion yesterday seeking to postpone a hearing originally scheduled for October 7.
For the first time, the world’s most influential reader has given her blessing to a short story collection. Oprah Winfrey—whose imprimatur virtually guarantees best-seller status—announced last Friday that the sixty-third selection for her eponymous book club is the debut Say You’re One of Them (Little, Brown, 2008) by Nigerian author and Jesuit priest Uwem Akpan.
