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:

Throughout November, GalleyCat will offer writing tips for participants of National Novel Writing Month. NaNoWriMo tip number two is: “Create an outline [2].”

Amazon revealed it’s using its storehouse of data [3] as a tool to determine what customers want, instead of attempting to direct consumer behavior in a particular direction. (Shelf Awareness)

Zola Books will sell exclusive e-book editions of several titles by Joan Didion [4], including her famed 1968 book of essays Slouching Towards Bethlehem. (New York Times)

Oleg Kashin looks at the disparate careers of poets Yevgeny Yevtushenko and Joseph Brodsky [5], and their legacies in Russian society. (Bloomberg)

New Hampshire’s RiverRun Bookstore [6] has opened a new branch in Kittery, Maine. (Portsmouth Patch)

Win Bassett speaks with Amy Woolard [7], an emerging poet who works as a child welfare attorney in Virginia. (Atlantic)

On the Barnes & Noble blog, Rebecca Jane Stokes lists ten bad behaviors in Donna Tartt’s new novel The Goldfinch [8], including infidelity, fraud, and “ruining a perfectly good suit.”

In answer to a New York Times article on the demise of college humanities, professor Monica F. Cohen writes in a blog post [9] for the Los Angeles Review of Books: “Literature classes continue to speak, and to speak powerfully, to students of all fields.”