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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Shakespeare’s oeuvre gets a little bigger; unpublished Vonnegut makes an appearance in Vanity Fair; Penguin China announces a new English-language list; a survey of international publishers says digital will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.
