The filing comes a week after it was disclosed that investor Ron Burkle sent a letter to the B&N board questioning its November passage of a poison pill designed to discourage outside investors from accumulating too big a position in B&N. Burkle, who owns 18.7% of B&N's shares through his Yucaipa funds, asked the board to waive the rule to permit him to acquire up to a 37% stake in the bookseller. The poison pill is triggered if a shareholder owning more than 20% of B&N stock acquires additional shares.

The policy has both long-term and short-term targets. By 2012, Hachette plans to raise the use of recycled fiber from 3% to 30%, with a majority of the fiber to be postconsumer. Hachette also intends to have FSC-certified papers account for at least 20% of paper use by 2012. 2020 is the target date for Hachette to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 20% and to reduce its carbon footprint 2% per year off of a 2008 baseline.

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Other aspects of the environmental policy include avoiding the use of paper sourced from any ancient or endangered forests, using paper that has been bleached without the use of chlorine, and using inks with low contents of volatile organic compounds. Hachette also hopes to reduce the number of books in landfills by improving projections of consumer demand, increasing the use of on-demand printing, and working with retailers to lower returns.

Sadly, the text-to-speech abilities of the Kindle were crippled shortly after launch following complaints from the Authors' Guild of America that the text-to-speech functionality in the Kindle 2 -- which promised to bring the benefits of electronic books to blind and partially sighted people -- were infringing authors' rights to be paid a separate royalty for all verbal performances of their works.

This disagreement -- which saw Amazon head off a lawsuit by making the text-to-speech capability controllable by e-book publishers via a flag which disables the functionality -- is directly responsible for the DX's main failings, at least according to the director of libraries at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Ken Frazier: "the big disappointment [in the trials] was learning that the Kindle DX is not accessible to the blind. Advancements in text-to-speech technology have created a market opportunity for an e-book reading device that is fully accessible for everyone, [but] this version of the Kindle e-book reader missed the mark."

Dr. Marc Maurer, President of the National Federation of the Blind, is even more scathing in his disdain for the device: in a statement regarding the use of the Kindle DX in education as a replacement for traditional textbooks, Dr. Maurer states that "it is our position that no university should consider this device [the Kindle DX] to be a viable e-book solution for its students."

Gourmet Today had a lot going for it before the magazine folded on October 5. For $40 (and $26.40 at Amazon), readers would get more than 1,000 recipes—for vegetable sides, seafood dishes, cocktails and much more -- from the editors at the prestigious magazine. There are no photos, but high-quality recipes and equally well-researched writing. However, now that Gourmet's final issue is on newsstands, sales of the book have jumped. Publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has seen sales increase since the magazine closed -- which was only two weeks after the book went on sale -- and former editor-in-chief Ruth Reichl, who'd committed to touring to promote the book months ago, has been a hotter than usual ticket in light of recent events. Booksellers are reporting a bump, and Amazon says sales of Gourmet Today have doubled since Conde Nast's announcement Gourmet was over.

Houghton reports that book sales were strong out of the gate (Gourmet Today went on sale September 22), but got stronger after a barrage of media coverage in the weeks following the October 5 news. According to publicity manager Alia Habib, the house printed 165,000 copies, and has received orders for 120,000 copies. Nielsen BookScan reports only 12,000 copies sold as of last week, although a "significant number" of Houghton's outlets (such as Williams-Sonoma) don’t report sales to BookScan, and the publisher has staged promotions at non-traditional outlets in the lead-up to holiday.

In a letter to employees last week, Perseus president David Steinberger said that despite earlier efforts to reduce costs, including a pay freeze, "it has become clear that we need to take additional steps now in order to be financially prudent and pursue opportunities to grow." Those steps include sharpening the company's publishing program, and Steinberger said that most of the 20 jobs being eliminated are in the publishing operations, with a few touching the distribution side.

Publishing has been in trouble for some time, with massive layoffs and sales numbers in decline. One reason is the industry's blockbuster mentality, in which big books -- " Harry Potter," "Twilight" -- are expected to play a savior role. At BookExpo, Dan Brown's forthcoming "Da Vinci Code" sequel, "The Lost Symbol," was advertised on two enormous banners in the Javits Center lobby, but it was the only book to get that kind of play.

Otherwise, evidence of cost-cutting was everywhere, beginning with the convention itself, which occupied 21% less floor space than last year's show in Los Angeles. As for giveaways, once a hallmark of the show, they were almost nonexistent; even advance reading copies were in short supply.

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Yet there were many at BookExpo who see this state of affairs as an opportunity, a charge to reinvent the book -- and publishing -- for a new century. Using print-on-demand technology, PublicAffairs -- a division of Perseus -- edited and published a 134-page paperback in 48 hours. Called "Book: The Sequel," it featured hundreds of first lines for prospective sequels to classics such as "Gone With the Wind" and "The Catcher in the Rye." Work began at 4 p.m. Thursday; finished books were distributed Saturday afternoon.

"It is not often that someone comes along who is friendly and tasty. Wilbur was both," wrote Liz Frame, identifying one possible future for E.B. White's iconic pig. Lauren Gilbert imagined " Facebook of Common Prayer," a sequel to the "Book of Common Prayer." Its first line? "You have a friend request from God. Confirm as Friend or Ignore?"

Publishers sold 3.08 billion copies in 2008, down 1.5 percent from the 3.13 billion copies sold the previous year, according to Book Industry Trends 2009, an annual report that analyzes sales in the United States. Higher retail prices helped to lift net revenue just 1 percent, to $40.3 billion from $39.9 billion.

The numbers confirm a litany of dreary news that has emerged from the publishing industry since last fall, when booksellers began seeing significant declines in store traffic. The trend has not abated this year, as publishers have continued to report double-digit sales declines. Borders Group announced Tuesday that first-quarter sales dropped 12 percent.

Against this backdrop, publishers, authors, booksellers and librarians are gathering in New York for BookExpo America, the industry's annual convention, which runs through Sunday.

The show won't go on in Dallas. The Christian Book Expo, an innovative consumer-focused book show, won’t be repeated next year. The board of Evangelical Christian Publishers Association, show sponsor, decided not to stage another event in 2010. Attendance at this year's show, held March 20-22 at the Dallas Convention Center, was 1,500; organizers had hoped for 10,000 to 15,000. The show left the organization with a $250,000 shortfall, according to ECPA president and CEO Mark Kuyper. "We want to clean up the debt before we consider future options," Kuyper told PW in an e-mail.

Bookstore sales, which were bolstered somewhat in January by back-to-school buying at college stores, declined 10.8% in February, to $1.02 billion. Sales for the full retail sector fell 11.5% in the month. For the first two months of 2009, bookstore sales were down 3.2%, to $3.32 billion. Sales for all of retail tumbled 9.9%.

CNN: Did you approach this book differently than you did when you were writing the Easy Rawlins mysteries?

Mosley: Yes and no. All books are different, so each of the Easy Rawlins books I wrote I approached differently. [Leonid] is a new character and he has a unique life that I had to begin to learn. I knew Easy very well, but Leonid I had to learn who he was.

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CNN: What do you like about McGill?

Mosley: This is the first time in my experiments in crime fiction that I've written a hard-boiled detective character. This is going all the way back to the beginning of the genre in the '30s, where you have a guy who gets thumped upside the head a lot and he's just as bad as the people he's after.

In the old style, you never knew what was going on inside the hard-boiled character's head, but in these stories I am actually discovering the underlying character of the hard-boiled detective, and for me that's been a great deal of fun.

Sullenberger, who became a household name after safely landing US Airways flight 1549 in the Hudson River, is set to appear on Saturday, May 30 at 3:00 pm. Sullenberger, who signed a two book deal with William Morrow worth a reported $3 million, will be delivering a speech and signing promotional material; he will be appearing on one of BEA's two author stages at the Javist Center.

The publishers of bestselling authors JK Rowling, Aravind Adiga and Ken Follett have been shocked by the news that their authors' latest books are available to read for free on a US website. Internet users can not only read free copies of The Tales of Beedle the Bard, The White Tiger and World Without End at Scribd.com, but also download the text onto their computers to edit as they see fit.

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The San Francisco-headquartered company was set up in March 2007 and claims to have more than 50 million readers a month, with more than 50,000 new documents uploaded by users every day. The Obama campaign used it to publish policy documents, and the site has recently signed a deal with some US publishers to post books and extracts with permission.

Tammy Nam, Scribd vice president for marketing, said that its policy was to "immediately remove copyrighted material when we receive notices from copyright holders", but that it had received no take down notice from Rowling's lawyers. "Our community is generally very good at policing itself and let us know when they come across copyrighted works or other inappropriate material," she added, saying that Scribd also has a copyright management system which contains "tens of thousands of works that have been entered or flagged as copyrighted - so that if anyone tried to upload anything in that system, they're immediately denied".

Rowling's novels aren't the only ones to be available from Scribd. A quick search throws up novels from Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, Jeffrey Archer, Ken Follett, Philippa Gregory, and JRR Tolkien. "We are monitoring this and are concerned about it," said Mark Le Fanu, general secretary of the Society of Authors. "Internet piracy is increasing," he continued, advising authors to monitor sites such as Scribd.

Grisham's "The Associate" deals with a character who attended the private Catholic college and was involved in a drunken rape scene in an off-campus apartment in 2003. Duquesne University spokeswoman Rose Ravasio said it's unfortunate Grisham "chose to use our name and associate it with a fictional incident of this nature."

Grisham told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that he chose the school because he saw it once, and has been to Pittsburgh for Steelers and Pirates games. The novel contains several other references to Pittsburgh.

Goldberg, who will start at the travel publisher in March and work out of its Melbourne, Australia, office, arrives from Dow Jones where he was senior v-p of digital strategy and operations overseeing a number of the brand's Web sites including WSJ.com and Barrons.com. Goldberg's task at Lonely Planet, as per a statement from parent company BBC, is to be the lead on its "multiplatform growth strategy."

Speaking to the hire, Marcus Arthur, BBC Worldwide's MD of Global Brands, said: "I've no doubt that Matt's expertise will not only help maintain Lonely Planet's core business in printed travel guides, but will also seek to optimize opportunities in alternative media markets as the business enters the next phase of its digital development." Before Dow Jones, Goldberg was at Bertelsmann where on, among other things, he directed its cross platform media efforts. BBC acquired Lonely Planet in late 2007.

One of publishing's brightest beacons in 2008 was The Story of Edgar Sawtelle (No. 19 this week), whose fortunes were boosted when Oprah Winfrey picked the debut novel for her book club. Author David Wroblewski has been signed by Ecco to write the second book in what will be a trilogy about the Sawtelle clan and its dogs. Book 2 will center on John Sawtelle, the family patriarch.

Wroblewski, 49, isn't setting any publication dates. (It took him more than a decade to write Edgar Sawtelle.) He's calling the series "a triptych. I think of these stories as somewhat loosely coupled but intersecting." He is also editing a 2010 non-fiction anthology highlighting new research into the relationship between dogs and people. Any canine advice for the Obama family? "I think a mutt is a great choice."

1. The popularity of e-books will increase, with titles formatted for Amazon's Kindle leading the way. Content for the Sony Reader will sell faster than ever, but by this time next year, Kindle-compatible books will be outselling them by more than 2 to 1. And Palm, which has historically been the bestselling format, will have had its best year-on-year increase as well. Powells.com, which offers the largest selection of titles in formats that are not in closed distribution (a total of 150,000 in Adobe, Microsoft and Palm so far) will also have a record year for e-book sales. By year end, nearly every straight-text title published with commercial intent will be available for Kindle; the trick for the other formats will be to make sure they're included, too. And Kindle pricing will drive the market. But despite the fast growth, e-books will still make up a tiny share of the market—no more than 2% of sales for most titles—and will contribute only a minimal amount to publishers' bottom lines.

2. Sales of books in electronic form to public libraries will continue to grow: Ingram's MyiLibrary, Follett, NetLibrary and Overdrive are already deep into this business. This opportunity will present a challenge as publishers discover that some older contracts don’t give them the right to make that kind of sale.

The address, to students passing out from of Kenyon College in Ohio, was given in May 2005, three years before the author hanged himself at his home this September, aged 46. It saw Wallace taking on the challenges of daily life, attempting to answer what the real-life value of education is, and looking at how we think about the world. It will be published as a small hardback, This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered On a Significant Occasion, About Living a Compassionate Life, running to some 150 pages, by Little, Brown US next April.

The publisher described the speech as a "pointedly observant examination of daily life", which it said was written with Wallace's "one-of-a-kind blend of casual humour, exacting intellect, and practical philosophy [which] offers advice that renews us with every reading". "[It] was Wallace's only philosophical public address," added Marlena Bittner, associate director of publicity at Little, Brown, and Wallace's former publicist.

The title, This is Water, is taken from the speech, in which Wallace told the anecdote of two young fish who meet an older fish, who asks them "how's the water?" They swim on, and eventually one of them asks the other, "what the hell is water?"

"If you're worried that I plan to present myself here as the wise old fish explaining what water is, please don't be. I am not the wise old fish. The immediate point of the fish story is that the most obvious, ubiquitous, important realities are often the ones that are the hardest to see and talk about," Wallace told the graduates. "The capital-T Truth is about life before death. It is about making it to 30, or maybe 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head. It is about simple awareness -- awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, that we have to keep reminding ourselves, over and over: 'This is water, this is water.'"

Since I spoke to you a month ago about the economic crisis and its impact on our company, I can’t say much has changed. We are now clearly in a recession and there is still no clarity on how long or deep it will be. What is clear is that retail book sales are down, advertising revenues are down, and even countercyclical businesses like education are struggling in many cases. We are not immune to these forces, and our business continues to be soft. So the time has come to take action for next year.

Effective January 1st for 2009 we will freeze salaries for everyone making more than $50,000. For those making under $50,000 there will be a pool for modest increases. All bonus plans will stay in effect, but all are sensitive to individual company profitability and individual performance. Thus the impact on individual bonus plans will vary.

"This is the most challenging economic environment that any of us has ever experienced," Makinson said, and he acknowledged the grim situations occurring at many of Penguin's competitors, including layoffs, and freezes on hiring, pensions and new book acquisitions. He was hopeful that holding off on pay increases for the next year would help Penguin avoid those drastic measures. However, Makinson said, "I cannot of course guarantee that there will be no job losses in Penguin in 2009. In this financial climate that would be plain foolhardy." Makinson did not propose a recruitment freeze but said Penguin will not be hiring "unless it is absolutely essential." The restriction on pay raises will apply to every Pearson operating company.

There were some positive remarks as well. "We are a strong and successful company, and right now we're the envy of the industry," he said. "I continue to believe that we'll have every reason to take pride in our achievements when we announce our 2008 results next March." Makinson advised employees to "expect, and plan for, the unexpected in 2009 and possibly beyond."

The official launch of the book is at the National Library of Scotland tomorrow, where a group of Edinburgh school children will attend a tea party hosted by Rowling. But bookshops across the country are opening at midnight to cater for fans desperate to get their hands on a copy of Beedle the Bard. The 128-page book is already known to Potter enthusiasts as the volume which Hogwart's headmaster Albus Dumbledore left to Hermione Granger in the final Potter novel.

"We expect it to crash into the number one slot tomorrow and it will be very difficult to dislodge it this side of Christmas," said Waterstone's spokesman Jon Howells. "It would take magic of Voldemort proportions to kick it off the number one slot."

Waterstone's is opening its flagship London Piccadilly branch from 10pm this evening, with 400 fans flying in from Australia, New Zealand, America and Europe to attend the event. The store is to feature a live Mugglenet podcast, magical entertainment and Harry Potter characters for fans to meet. Waterstone's branches across the UK will also open early tomorrow morning for children to buy the book before school.

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The Tales of Beedle the Bard contains five stories which helped Harry Potter to destroy Voldemort. The Tale of the Three Brothers is the only story to have been recounted previously, in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, with the remaining four - The Fountain of Fair Fortune, The Warlock's Hairy Heart, The Wizard and the Hopping Pot and Babbitty Rabbitty and her Cackling Stump -- unseen until now.

Company CEO George Jones said that after completing a thorough review of its options, the company determined it was best "to remain as we are," adding that he was "quite pleased" that the review is over and that Borders will remain an independent, publicly-traded company. The company still has the option to sell its Paperchase division to Pershing Square Capital, Borders's largest shareholder, for $65 million. That option expires Jan. 15. The company said it is talking to Pershing about different financing arrangements.

Similar to its competitors, Borders blamed a lack of customer traffic for the decline in sales, noting that the drop was most significant in September and October. Jones said the higher decline in comp stores compared to its competitors was due in part to its aggressive inventory reduction program which he acknowledged cost some sales. Jones said the decision to prune slow moving titles from Borders's store shelves was the right one, although he acknowledged the program "was not perfect." The company is starting to "fine tune" its inventory program and may return some books to stores, Jones said. According to Jones Borders is "well stocked" for the holidays. "It's a tough retail environment, but we feel we'll get our share of sales," Jones said.

Swedish news agency TT says Le Clezio on Saturday accepted the Stig Dagerman Prize, worth $8,000 Cdn, at a ceremony in Alvkarleby, a small village 150 kilometres north of Stockholm. Le Clezio was awarded the prize for his ability "to fill the book's white pages with the most delightful combinations of words," the Stig Dagerman jury said. The award is named after Swedish author Stig Dagerman, who died in 1954. The prize was established in 1996 and honours efforts to promote the freedom of expression.

British writers were yesterday coming to terms with the death of the doyenne of the London literary scene, Pat Kavanagh, paying tribute to her strength of spirit, tenacity and straight-talking.

Kavanagh, 68, who was married to the novelist Julian Barnes, was at the summit of her profession, representing writers including Ruth Rendell, Margaret Drabble, Robert Harris, Joanna Trollope, Andrew Motion, Clive James, and Wendy Cope. What the writers had in common was their fierce loyalty to their agent, who died yesterday morning from a brain tumour.

The novelist Robert Harris - a client for 27 years - said everyone was reeling from her loss. "She was fantastically efficient and just the person you wanted to have represent you. There was no one quite like her really. And she was exotic, like a bird of paradise. She was unflappable and she didn't let you get above yourself.

"She always described herself as being like a family doctor or a country solicitor. She didn't believe in trying to screw an enormous amount of money out of publishers. Pat was always quite indiscreet and very funny and you know, in a world full of bs, there was no bs from Pat. She didn't suck up to her writers."

More than 31,000 Americans will have a hand in publishing a new edition of the Bible. Zondervan Corp. is starting a 90-city, 24,000-kilometre cross-country tour to mark the 30th anniversary of its new translation of the book.

The tour will stop at special events, churches, landmarks and other places to allow people to write out Bible verses. The collection of handwritten verses will be published and sold after the tour ends in San Diego on Feb. 12. Most will come from regular people, but the publisher also hopes to get verses from U.S. President George W. Bush, the Rev. Billy Graham and other luminaries.

The impenetrable-sounding book, a comprehensive record of Greece's postal routes, is published by the Greek Hellenic Philatelic Society of Great Britain, which "exists to encourage the collection of Greek stamps and to promote their study".

The Diagram prize is The Bookseller magazine's award for oddly named publications, and this 72-page book has won the Diagram of Diagrams, for the weirdest title in the past three decades. It nipped in ahead of People Who Don't Know They're Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It, and How to Avoid Huge Ships.

"I think the voters wanted a feelgood story about rural postmen because of all the news of post offices closing around the country," said The Bookseller's charts editor Philip Stone. He has so far been unsuccessful in his attempts to contact the book's author Derek Willan to let him know about his win. "There's no prize but the boost in sales is surely prize enough," Stone said. "When we announced our last shortlist, sales increased by 1,000%, from one copy sold in the two weeks previously to ten afterwards."

The Diagram prize was launched in 1978 as a way to relieve boredom at a particularly tedious Frankfurt book fair. The Diagram of Diagrams saw the public voting for their favourite odd book title from 30 years of former winners. More than 1,000 votes were received, with Greek Rural Postmen taking 13% of the public vote.

Rushdie's lawyer Mark Stephens said today that the authors of the book now "accepted that much of the story published in the Mail on Sunday was false". He said that Evans had been "over-egging" his position at the time: "He was a police driver making out he was an armed special protection officer," he said.

Stephens added that Rushdie had made no requests for damages, nor for any changes in opinions in the book, merely for "the falsehoods" to be changed. "The authors have admitted that there were falsehoods in the original manuscript and have made amendments accordingly," he said.

The ruling by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will leave the rights in the hands of Penguin Group Inc. and the heirs of Steinbeck's widow, Elaine Steinbeck. John Steinbeck died in 1968; his wife in 2003. The appeals court in Manhattan said a lower court judge misapplied copyright law in awarding the rights in 2006 to the son, Thomas Steinbeck, and granddaughter Blake Smyle, who already receive a portion of the proceeds of sales.

The recently reopened message board on the Twilight series Web site has been very active, and on Amazon-where the novel remains ranked #1 in sales-the book has generated more than 1,600 reviews (nearly twice the reviews of the previous book, Eclipse) and more than 1,000 "customer discussions." Unhappy readers expressed a variety of opinions, including incredulity with certain plot points or the way threads were tied up, while others felt the writing wasn"t as strong as in the previous books.

In one heavily trafficked thread entitled "Unhappy with Breaking Dawn? Don't burn it-RETURN it!," commenters debated whether returning the book was a valid way to express unhappiness with the book. "Technically, reading a book and returning it is theft of knowledge," read one post, while the original commenter, a former bookstore employee, wrote, "I don't advocate making a habit of buying new books, reading them, and returning them. But once in a while... I do think mass returns are a useful form of consumer protest." Another poster recounted, anecdotally, returning the book at Borders: "They took back my book with no problem. Got into a discussion with the cashier about how I was the 15th (!!!) person to bring my book back today."

The publisher of a book that Salman Rushdie says portrays him as "mean and arrogant" has delayed publication for a week following Rushdie's threat of legal action. On Her Majesty's Service by Ron Evans was due to be published yesterday, but John Blake Publishing has moved this to August 11 in the hope that once Rushdie has read the book in its entirety he will see it as a "light-hearted and affectionate" portrait.

Rushdie's lawyers contacted John Blake earlier this week over excerpts in the weekend papers from the former Special Branch officer's memoir. These claimed that the security guards protecting Rushdie during the fatwa against him "got so fed up with his attitude that they locked him in a cupboard under the stairs and all went to the local pub for a pint or two". Evans also claimed that the guards nicknamed Rushdie Scruffy, which Rushdie said was untrue.

Managing director John Blake said he was confident that once Rushdie had read the whole book he would realise it was no threat to security. He added: "If anyone should be defending freedom of speech it should be him ... I can't believe that he'd really want to ban a book because it says that detectives named him Scruffy -- in a way that's almost affectionate."

"We really want to maintain and have a greater leadership position in photography," said Nina Hoffman, president of National Geographic Books. Leah Bendavid-Val, director of photography publishing for National Geographic Books, said the books in the Focal Point series "will appeal to connoisseurs, professionals, collectors, serious students of photojournalism and all lovers of photography."

As such, the books are moderately high-priced; the fall list includes three $40 hardcovers—Windows of the Soul: My Journeys in the Muslim World by Alexandra Avakian, The Life of a Photograph by Sam Abell and Odysseys and Photographs by Maynard Owen Williams, Volkmar Wentzel, Luis Marden and Thomas Abercrombie—as well as a $75 tome: Reza War + Peace by Reza. Hoffman said that while the fine art photography market is small, "it is at the heart of National Geographic. We want to stake a claim, and we do in the magazine world. We want the same recognition in books."

Amazon and the publisher Grove/Atlantic will give away the electronic download of a new novel, Spirit House, by Christopher G. Moore, to Amazon Kindle customers beginning Friday, in advance of the book's release in print on Aug. 28, the companies announced on Wednesday. Morgan Entrekin, the president and publisher of Grove/Atlantic, said in a statement that the deal with Amazon "is a great way to expand Moore's audience even further." The Kindle, a portable electronic reader that downloads books, newspapers, blogs and magazines, sells on Amazon.com for $359.

Dante, the father of the Italian language, fled his native city in 1302 after being sentenced to death for crimes including fraud and extortion. Florence council was to have healed the 700-year rift with the poet by presenting the city's golden florin to Count Pieralvise Serego Alighieri. The count, however, believes the Florentines are not sorry enough.

Last month, a meeting of the council's cultural committee, held to annul the expulsion order, prompted the kind of rancorous divisions that led to Dante's exile. Five councillors voted against the annulment and several others stayed away.

Count Pieralvise said it was "anything but a collective 'mea culpa' and symbolic ending of [Dante's] exile". "I could have wept when I read the comments of some of the councillors," he said. The proposed reconciliation, the initiative of two councillors from Silvio Berlusconi's People of Freedom party, ran into fierce opposition from the radical left. Nicola Rotondaro, the leader of a communist group on the council, said Dante "did not need the council to rehabilitate him".

"If he had been sent to his death, would we perhaps have asked for his resurrection?" he said. The count said it was "as if the people of Stratford-upon-Avon had quarrelled over an event in memory of Shakespeare".

Never heard of her? Well that's probably because you are not 13 and female. But you soon will. Although five million of her sales have been in the US, momentum is growing in Europe and with the release of a film of Twilight, the first book, scheduled for early next year, the books are expected to take off here. British bookshops are planning midnight openings on the day that the fourth book in the series is published in August.

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She says that some people are surprised that a Mormon is writing vampire novels, but they generally haven't read her. "When you think about vampire novels, there is a lot of gruesomeness, a lot of sexuality, a lot of darkness, blood obsession. When you read my books it is completely different. Really, the whole vampirism thing is a metaphor for feeling trapped in a certain role. I never got into any trouble from the Latter Day Saints people. My strongest fan base is probably in Utah." How Meyer came to write about vampires, however, is a mystery to her, given that she was very far from steeped in the vampire tradition. She is too "chicken" to read horror and doesn't watch R-rated films because “there are things that you don't need to have in your head. There are R-rated movies that I would like to go and see - I heard The 40-Year-Old Virgin was hysterical. But when you have an unbroken streak, you don't want to mess that up."

[I]ts Reader Digital Book will be able to read electronic books published using the .epub format that many of the largest book publishers are using. Until now, Sony's e-book reader could only read books available from the Sony e-book store, PDF documents, and DRM-free text. Starting next month, the new PRS-505 Sony Reader model will be able to access secure DRM- and non-DRM-protected content in the .epub format, formerly called the Open eBook format.

The Sony Reader Digital Book is the first e-book reading device to support the .epub format, which is the XML-based standard format proposed by the International Digital Publishing Forum. It allows publishers to convert books to different formats, protect the copy using DRM (digital rights management) and has the ability to resize PDF e-books and other text to better fit the reader's screen size.

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"This upgrade opens the door to a whole host of paid and free content from third-party eBook stores, Web sites, and even public libraries," Steve Haber, senior vice president of consumer product marketing for Sony Electronics, said in a statement.

The announcement is the latest move in a standards war over e-book formats pitting Sony against Amazon. Amazon's Kindle e-book reader and e-books it sells support the proprietary .azw format. Amazon also acquired Mobipocket, which offers a format for texts read on PDAs and BlackBerrys and its Kindle can read DRM-free .mobi files.

The pen may be mightier than the sword, but a magic wand is more powerful than either, or at least according to this year's Forbes' list of the world's richest celebrities. Harry Potter author JK Rowling earned more than any other celebrity, according to the annual Celebrity 100 list, taking home $300m (150 million pounds) last year. There were other strong British performances from Keira Knightley, announced as the world's second best paid female actor, Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe and David Beckham.

Police have recovered a 400-year-old volume of Shakespeare stolen in England a decade ago and worth millions of dollars (pounds) after a man walked into a library in Washington, D.C., and asked to have it authenticated.

Police in Durham, northeast England, said Friday they had arrested a 51-year-old man over the theft of the First Folio edition of 1623, which scholars consider one of the most important printed books in the English language. It was among seven centuries-old books and manuscripts stolen in December 1998 from a display case at the Durham University library.

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he mystery began to unravel two weeks ago when a man brought the First Folio to Washington's Folger Shakespeare Library and asked to have it verified as genuine. The man claimed to be an international businessman who had bought the volume in Cuba. "We have people come to us from time to time with questions about books," said Garland Scott, head of external relations at the library, one of the world's leading centers of Shakespearean research. "It's not every day that someone walks in with a First Folio."

Scott said library staff members soon had their suspicions raised. The book was largely intact, but the end boards and some early pages -- which bore marks that would have identified them as the Durham copy -- had been removed.

Previously unseen documents, postcards, sketches and personal belongings of the Czech-Jewish writer, who wrote in German, have been gathering dust in the home of Esther Hoffe, the former secretary of Kafka's friend and executor Max Brod since his death in 1968. Hoffe's refusal to relinquish the documents led to a literary game of cat and mouse between her and the state of Israel, under pressure from the country's cultural elite, which on one occasion even led to her arrest on suspicion of smuggling Kafka's writings out of the country.

Now, following her death at the age of 101, Kafka lovers hope the row may have come to an end. Researchers are ready to pounce on the contents of Hoffe's flat, fully expecting the items will throw new light on the mysterious writer who died at the age of 41, as well as his friendship with Brod, his greatest champion.

But authorities in Tel Aviv have warned that the papers, with their high sulphuric acid content, may have stood up poorly to conditions in Hoffe's damp flat in the centre of Tel Aviv and to the hordes of cats and dogs which she kept until two years ago when health inspectors intervened after neighbours complained about the stench.

A Child Called It was a horrific tale of sadistic abuse at the hands of his alcoholic mother, who kept him locked in the family basement, force-fed him dog faeces and ammonia, and stabbed and burned him. A sequel recounted his childhood in foster care after police and teachers rescued him at 12, quickly followed by a third volume charting his journey through the US air force to become a juvenile counsellor, bestselling author, motivational speaker and living legend of the daytime Oprah circuit. His books have been on the New York Times bestseller list for more than a decade, breaking every record since the list began.

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Pelzer believes people like his books because they put their own problems in perspective. "A Child Called It was a story about resilience, it was never about boo hoo hoo, it was about a kid that didn't quit. I never sat down and thought: I'll do it to commercialise it, or for morbid fascination. I did not know until I came to England, on a book tour in the late 90s, that there was this thing about a morbid fascination. That's when I was accused of it, of being a morbid writer. That had never happened in America."

How does he feel about the criticism that misery literature feeds a voyeuristic taste for cruelty? "I can't help what other people may think." But he must have an opinion, surely. "You know, that's not my job, ma'am. My job's to do a good job. That's my opinion."

That jaw-dropping sum got the house world English rights, which means they'll be able to publish the book-described to Media Mob as a collection of comedic "rants" -- through any of their international units and sell whatever rights they don't want to other publishers.

Because Mr. Brand is a much bigger star in England than he is anywhere else, the UK unit is covering the lion's share of that massive advance, our source said. Stateside, the book will be published through HC's Collins division and overseen by editor Gillian Blake.

Mr. Brand, who is currently working on a second movie with Mr. Apatow and recently wrapped one with Adam Sandler, published a raucous memoir last year about his addiction to drugs and sex that was a huge bestseller in the UK. That book, entitled My Booky Wook, originally involved a ghostwriter, but Mr. Brand didn't like what he saw of a first draft and decided to write it himself -- in Tuscany! -- over the course of about a month.

The launch will mark the end of the two-week festival, coinciding with the veteran actor's 78th birthday. Festival bosses said the James Bond star's "eagerly-anticipated" first book, entitled Being A Scot, will shed light on his views about many aspects of Scottish life and culture. Connery is expected to attend the book launch, which comes at the height of the city's world-famous festival season. Book festival director Catherine Lockerbie said a number of other James Bond themed-events - including the launch of Charlie Higson's fifth and final Young Bond novel - would be held to mark 007 creator Ian Fleming's centenary.

Unveiling the programme today, she said: "In this special year it was obviously essential to bring Sir Sean back to the city of his birth, on the day of his birthday, for a world exclusive launch of his first book, Being A Scot." "What we will unveil is a rather remarkable document, written in conjunction with his friend, the brilliant Scottish film-maker Murray Grigor."

It's a good enough package that my guess is that digital readers will soon become common, perhaps even the usual way we read books. How will this affect the publishing business? Right now, publishers make as much from a Kindle download as they do from the sale of a physical book. But the experience of the music industry suggests that this won't last: once digital downloads of books become standard, it will be hard for publishers to keep charging traditional prices.

Indeed, if e-books become the norm, the publishing industry as we know it may wither away. Books may end up serving mainly as promotional material for authors' other activities, such as live readings with paid admission. Well, if it was good enough for Charles Dickens, I guess it's good enough for me.

Now, the strategy of giving intellectual property away so that people will buy your paraphernalia won't work equally well for everything. To take the obvious, painful example: news organizations, very much including this one, have spent years trying to turn large online readership into an adequately paying proposition, with limited success.

But they'll have to find a way. Bit by bit, everything that can be digitized will be digitized, making intellectual property ever easier to copy and ever harder to sell for more than a nominal price. And we'll have to find business and economic models that take this reality into account.

And I meant every hyperbolic word of it. See, sometimes you can judge a book by its blurber.

"I have no idea at this point how many books I've blurbed," says humorist Jonathan Ames, who is approached frequently to dish out book-jacket praise.

"It may be about 50. It might make some long, strange poem if I was to collect them all."

In fact, one of his blurbs was even declared "best blurb" by New York magazine for "The Only Bush I Trust Is My Own," which Ames notes, "on the title alone, deserved a great blurb."

While he tries to blurb honestly, he does admit, "Once I promised someone that I would blurb their book, and then I read it and didn't feel so strongly about it. This was years ago. But I blurbed it anyway, and then a fan e-mailed me and said they bought the book because of my blurb and were sorely disappointed. I felt bad about this. But I guess it shows that blurbs actually do work once in a while."

Oh, they totally work. Even if it's just to generate an article about blurbing.

Publicist - and now best-selling author - Sloane Crosley (who, yes, has a blurb from Ames) has seen press from Radar to New York magazine about her bevy of notable blurbs as a first-time author, the question being whether she "cheated" by using her publishing clout to secure out-of-sight blurbs.

The world's largest software maker is under pressure to show it has a coherent strategy for turning around its unprofitable online business after its bid for Yahoo Inc., last valued at $47.5 billion, collapsed this month.

Digitizing books and archiving academic journals no longer fits with the company's plan for its search operation, wrote Satya Nadella, senior vice president of Microsoft's search and advertising group, in a blog post Friday.

Microsoft will take down two separate sites for searching the contents of books and academic journals next week, and Live Search will direct Web surfers looking for books to non-Microsoft sites, the company said.

Microsoft entered the book-scanning business in 2005 by contributing material to the Open Content Alliance, an industry group conceived by the Internet Archive and Yahoo. In 2006, it unveiled its competing MSN book search site.

Unlike Google, whose decision to scan books still protected under copyright law has provoked multiple lawsuits, Microsoft stuck to scanning books with the permission of publishers or that were firmly in the public domain.

The company said it will give publishers digital copies of the 750,000 books and 80 million journal articles it has amassed.

Microsoft's search engine is a distant third behind Google's and Yahoo's, in terms of the number of queries performed each month, despite the company's many attempts to emulate Google's innovative search features and create some of its own.

The first of six books, all centred around a small, vivacious, ginger-haired girl called Ugenia Lavender, is published today by Macmillan. Halliwell is full of ambitions for her young doppelganger, who she describes as summing up "what being young is all about". "She's streetwise, sassy, has a sense of humour but most importantly has a sense of right and wrong," she said. "I believe Ugenia can conquer the world, and I really hope people will love her as much as I do."

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The first of six books, all centred around a small, vivacious, ginger-haired girl called Ugenia Lavender, is published today by Macmillan. Halliwell is full of ambitions for her young doppelganger, who she describes as summing up "what being young is all about". "She's streetwise, sassy, has a sense of humour but most importantly has a sense of right and wrong," she said. "I believe Ugenia can conquer the world, and I really hope people will love her as much as I do."

In a dig at fellow celebrity-turned-author Katie "Jordan" Price, whose My Perfect Ponies was recently nominated for a Nibby award, Halliwell has been keen to emphasise that the writing of the books was all her own work. "I know there is a prejudice against celebrity authors, but if you read my stories you'll know they're not ghostwritten - only that I could be bonkers," she confessed to the Hello! Magazine website.

Scholastic announced today that it will create a children's book line from the BBC program Planet Earth. The company holds U.S. and Canadian English and French rights for the Planet Earth children’s books program and will publish and distribute the titles through its trade, school book club and school book fair channels. The books will be printed on 30% post-consumer waste recycled paper.

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The program will launch in September with the full-color, 48-page Planet Earth Scrapbook and Planet Earth Reader. The program will continue with three January 2009 publications (a second reader, a board book and scrapbook), followed in April 2009 by a full-color 98-page Guide to the Planet timed to coincide with Earth Day. The program will include paperbacks, board books, phonics books, novelty books and scrapbooks. It will target preschoolers, middle-grade students and teens. High-quality 30% post-consumer waste recycled paper will be used for all titles.