Breaking news on authors, publishers, and book-related topics

Oddest book title of the year shortlist announced

Mar 09 2009: Now in its 31st year, the annual Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year continues to find unusual book titles for its 'hotly contested' annual award.
This year's short listed titles are:

• Baboon Metaphysics by Dorothy Dorothy L Cheney and Robert M ...

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B&N buys Fictionwise, challenges Amazon Kindle

Mar 06 2009: Barnes & Noble has bought Fictionwise, the e-book website that includes eReader and eBookwise, for $15.7 million. B&N said that it plans "to use Fictionwise as part of its overall digital strategy, which includes the launch of an e-Bookstore later this year." The move ...

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Tobias Wolff wins Story Prize

Mar 05 2009: Cited for his craft and his empathy, popular short story writer Wolff takes home the $20,000 Story Prize for his 2008 collection Our Story Begins.

The Story Prize is an annual book award for short story collections written in English and published in the U.S. during ...

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Kindle app for iPhones & iPods

Mar 04 2009: Amazon is offering a free app on Apple's store allowing the Kindle to be used on iPhones and iPods. The program, which can be downloaded from Apple's online application store, lets iPhone and iPod touch users read the same electronic books, magazines and newspapers that...

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Keira Knightley to star in adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro book

Mar 03 2009: Keira Knightley is to star in the film adaptation of "Never Let Me Go" by Kazuo Ishiguro. More about the film at Variety (linked below). More about the book here.

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Amazon changes tack on text-to-speach feature

Mar 02 2009: In a surprising about-face, Amazon has decided to give publishers and authors the choice over whether or not to enable the Kindle 2’s text-to-speech function - the feature that has drawn criticism from the Authors Guild, which maintained that it was an unauthorized use ...

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Authors to get $60-$300 of Google's $125 million settlement

Feb 27 2009: Google has agreed to pay $125 million to settle copyright charges over its scanning of 7 million books. But yesterday, the Authors Guild informed authors that only $45 million would be used for author and publisher payments which amounts to about $60 to $300 per title.

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Philip Jose Farmer dies aged 91

Feb 25 2009: Science fiction pioneer Philip Jose Farmer died peacefully in his sleep today aged 91. His long career included his Riverworld series and six Hugo Award nominations.

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