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Officials are assessing damages after a fire ripped through a New Jersey public library; a literary landmark in Seattle is facing a choice between relocation and closure; a Massachusetts bookstore marked Black Friday by raising prices; Bloomberg Press is closing its doors; and other news.
High demand is keeping the Nook out of stores for another week; a major literary center will open next year at Melbourne’s State Library; one of the United Arab Emirates has an ambitious plan to hand out free books; the cash-strapped Washington Post is experimenting with an online bookstore; and other news.
Amazon has treated the six-inch Kindle to a pre-holiday upgrade; a book once owned by the girl who inspired Alice in Wonderland is going up for auction; “tweets” need no longer be lost to posterity, thanks to a new publisher; potential customers will soon get an in-store look at the Nook, B&N promises; and other news.
British publishers are celebrating a bill that calls for tougher digital copyright rules; a prospective buyer is offering hope for the employees of a troubled Arizona paper; Steve Almond’s new publisher is Harvard’s print-on-demand bot; and other news.
Experts continue to warn about the implications of the new Google deal for “copyright orphans”; a museum of storytelling is planned in Oxford; Albert Camus’s son is fighting the “Panthéonization” of his father; the troubled Sun-Times Media Group has a new head; Apple is keeping mum on whether it has e-reader ambitions; and other news.
Critics have charged that the new Google deal still lacks pricing and privacy protections; a slew of award-winning authors are in the running for this year’s Bad Sex in Fiction award; an online authors’ directory now has a Scribd tie-in; the ALA is at work on its annual Library Design Showcase; and other news.
A literary collective has revamped its online magazine; preorders for Sony’s new wireless e-reader are already causing delays; agent Irene Goodman is raising money for charity by auctioning off her critical services; a new Web site examines how libraries can stay relevant in the digital age; and other news.
Mystery maven Otto Penzler will publish an eponymous imprint next year; new technology allows e-books to be converted en masse to the popular ePub standard; cuts to library funding in Massachusetts have met with protests; Aussie booksellers are miffed at the persistence of import regulations; and other news.
Plans for a PBS debate yesterday fizzled after a Google Books rep failed to show; the Writers Union of Canada is opposing the revised book-scanning settlement; Smashwords has inked a global distribution deal with a “cloud-computing” firm; the latest ranking of public libraries is out this week; and other news.
Most foreign-language works have been dropped from the Google Books settlement; the Open Book Alliance has cried foul on the new deal; Sony is rolling out themed e-readers for the holidays; a library in Phoenix is going shopping after collecting a massive late fine; and other news.
