Jul 30 2012: Best-selling Irish author Maeve Binchy has died aged 72 after a short illness. Binchy's books have sold more than 40 million books and have been translated into 37...
Google argues that its book search passes fair use tests 'with ease'
Jul 30 2012: In its motion for Summary Judgment in the Authors Guild vs. Google, filed on July 27, Google attorneys argue that its keyword searchable index of books scanned from library shelves "passes with ease" the ultimate test of fair use, because it provides "enormous transformative benefit" to the...
Dept. of Justice proposed e-book price fixing lawsuit to go ahead despite 92 percent of comments in opposition
Jul 23 2012: Despite 92% of the 868 received comments opposing the settlement, and most of those against appearing to be very similar to an online form letter, the Department of Justice are not budging on their decision regarding the proposed settlement with Simon & Schuster, Hachette and HarperCollins in its...
Penguin Group buys self-publishing service Author Solutions For $116m
Jul 19 2012: In the first significant investment by a major trade publisher in self-publishing, Pearson announced Thursday morning that it has acquired self-publishing service Author Solutions from Bertram Capital for $116 million in cash (or a little more than one times sales). ASI, formed in 2007 from the...
eBooks now the dominant format in USA adult fiction - with 30 percent of sales
Jul 18 2012: Digital books are now "the dominant single format" in the adult fiction category, according to a new BookStats joint report from the Association of American Publishers and the Book Industry Study Group. eBooks exploded in the adult fiction category last year, accounting for 30 percent of net...
Else Holmelund Minarik, author of Little Bear Books, dies at 91
Jul 17 2012: Else Holmelund Minarik, a writer for children whose Little Bear picture-book series — which simply, gently and evocatively tells the story of an anthropomorphized cub’s forays into the wider world — has been a mainstay of childhood for more than half a century, died on Thursday at her home in...
Project Gutenberg, the granddaddy of all digitization programs, now has 40,000 books available!
Jul 10 2012: Project Gutenberg may have long since been surpassed by the Internet Archive and Google Books, but the granddaddy of all digitization programs is still chugging along and uploading more free ebooks - now totaling...
USA sales of "Fifty Shades of Grey" series to hit 20 million copies this week.
Jul 09 2012: The "Fifty Shades" erotic trilogy is expected to hit the 20 million-sales mark in the U.S. this week, making it one of the fastest-selling book series in recent memory.
Sales figures relate to copies of the book sold since Vintage repackaged the original self-published series and...
Gabriel Garcia Marquez no longer able to write due to dementia
Jul 07 2012: According to his brother Jaime García Márquez, Nobel prizewinning author Gabriel García Márquez is suffering from senile dementia. Thus it is unlikely that the 85-year-old will complete the second part of his autobiography, Living to Tell the...
Indie Publishers Back Agency Model, Criticize DoJ Deal
Jun 26 2012: Nine independent publishers have combined to file joint comments objecting to the pending settlements of the Department of Justice's lawsuit with Hachette, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster related to e-book pricing. The publishers noted that while they continue to sell e-books under the...
Stranger than fiction, blending tragedy and farce, How to Create the Perfect Wife is an engrossing tale of the radicalism, and deep contradictions, at the heart of the Enlightenment.
Although heavy on the scientific details, which slowed down the story for me (OK, I admit, I was one of those liberal arts majors who skipped out on...
read more
Loved this book. Magical, quirky, enchanting I could go on. All books do not have to be literary fiction, sometimes it is just so comforting to read...
read more
Can an wiser, older narrator view the past with more wisdom than he might have possessed forty years earlier in the summer he was thirteen? Ordinary...
read more
U.S. ebook sales up in 2012, but rate of growth is slowing(May 16 2013) In 2012, trade book sales (i.e. non academic book sales) rose 6.9%, to $15.049 billion, and e-book sales continued to grow, although the rate of growth...
Full Story
