Samuel Wurzelbacher's book, Joe the Plumber: Fighting for the American Dream, will address his ideas about American values, his publisher says. Mr Wurzelbacher sprang to fame when he challenged President-elect Barack Obama about his tax proposals in October.

He said he had chosen a small publisher in order to help "spread the wealth". The term is a reference to the phrase used by Mr Obama when responding to a question from Mr Wurzelbacher about raising taxes for people who earn more than $250,000 (£166,000) a year. The Republican candidate, Senator John McCain, later used the term in an effort to discredit Mr Obama's tax policies, and gave Mr Wurzelbacher a starring role in his campaign rallies and debates.

[P]olitical polling expert Nate Silver, the wunderkind statistician behind the Web site FiveThirtyEight.com, was out with a proposal for two books: one about the art of prediction and the other a Freakonomics-style guide to the mechanics of electoral politics. Mr. Silver's agent, Sydelle Kramer of the Susan Rabiner Agency, told publishers she wanted indications of interest by Tuesday, but evidently the indications came faster than expected (so much for the art of prediction) and Ms. Kramer decided to just hold an auction today. According to several sources, that auction has ended, and Penguin Group USA has prevailed.

Which of Penguin's imprint will publish Mr. Silver has not yet been determined, however, as there are at least three within the company that are jockeying for the privilege. The pricetag, we hear, is above $600,000 but below $1 million—a healthy sum even though it's paying for two books rather than just one. Update, 5:00 p.m.: New intelligence says Mr. Silver's advance is in the neighborhood of $700,000, give or take a few grand.

After she spent the last few weeks talking to just about any camera put in front of her, it should come as no surprise that former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin is moving closer to inking a book deal. Just how much could the Alaska governor make from putting pen to paper? About $7 million, according to some estimates. Sound like a lot? Not necessarily, says one literary insider.

"Bill Clinton made more than $10 million when he signed his deal in 2001 and that was the most for a former president," says the source. "Sarah brings something different to the table — there is so much curiosity surrounding her and her life. If they move fast and get this thing on shelves, then a $7 million advance could be worth it." As if there wasn't enough proof already that Palin has achieved full pop-culture phenom status, consider this: Paparazzi photos of the governor have surfaced. In the photos, which have popped up online, Palin is pictured lounging poolside (in T-shirt and shorts) doing, well, nothing.

"Cornelia Funke is that rare breed of writer in the tradition of the master storytellers from the Brothers Grimm and Charles Dickens to Roald Dahl and Philip Pullman," said Megan Tingley, senior v-p and publisher at Little, Brown BFYR, in a statement. "We are honored to be the new U.S. publishing home of this magnificent talent."

Tingley and editorial director Jennifer Hunt, who will edit Funke, have acquired North American rights for a publishing program that will include middle-grade and young adult novels, as well as a picture book. Funke's first title with Little, Brown will be the novel Reckless, about two modern brothers in a magical 19th century world reminiscent of Grimm's fairy tales. Reckless is tentatively scheduled for 2010 publication and will be followed by the middle-grade novel The Knight and the Boy.

Before Michael Crichton died last week from cancer at age 66, he had begun writing another novel. But its status remains a mystery. Until the day his death was announced, online bookseller Amazon listed an untitled Crichton novel scheduled to be released in May. "We checked with the publisher, and that book had been canceled," Amazon's Tammy Hovey says. "So it was removed from the site." Crichton's publisher, HarperCollins, won't confirm that it has been canceled. Crichton's last novel, Next (2006), imagined a legal battle over who owns cancer-fighting cells taken from a man fighting leukemia. It peaked at No. 2 at USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list.

The book was acquired for a sum in the mid-six figures by editor Sean Desmond in a deal that was brokered by the Endeavor Talent Agency's Richard Abate.

Ms. Kornblut's is the first of what is sure to be many post-election books, a category that is so far known to include titles from Newsweek, Media Matters' Eric Boehlert, Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, and Ms. Kornblut's Post colleagues Haynes Johnson and Dan Balz.

In short, you get absorbed when reading on the Kindle. You lose hours to reading novels in one sitting. You sit up straighter, energized by new ideas and new universes. You nod off, periodically, infatuated or entranced or spent. And yet the slight connection to the Web still permits the (false, probably, but nonetheless reassuring) sense that if the apocalypse came while you were shut away somewhere reading, the machine would get the news from Amazon.com and find a way to let you know. Anything short of that, though, the Kindle leaves you alone.

And alone is where I want to be, for now. It's bliss. Emerge from the subway or alight from a flight, and the Kindle has no news for you. No missed calls. It's ready only to be read. It's like a good exercise machine that mysteriously incentivizes the pursuit of muscle pain while still making you feel cared for. The Kindle makes you want to read, and read hard, and read prolifically. It eventually makes me aware that, compared with reading a lush, inky book, checking e-mail is boring, workaday and lame.

In a memo sent to employees last week, Barnes & Noble chairman Len Riggio said with the retail environment the worst he has ever seen as a bookseller, the nation's largest bookstore chain is "bracing for a terrible holiday, and expect[s] the trend to continue well into 2009, and perhaps beyond." The release of the memo was first reported this afternoon by the Wall Street Journal.

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While Riggio said he still expects B&N to post a "decent profit" this year, the difficult financial environment means the retailer will need to be even more diligent with expense controls, inventory management and capital expenditures. B&N will continue to invest in its systems, but new store openings will be curtailed and discretionary spending "cut to the bone," Riggio wrote. In its second quarter report, B&N said it was reducing new store openings in 2009 to 20 to 25, down from its usual openings of 30 to 35 stores.

The agreement, which is still subject to approval from the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, will see Google paying out $125m in total, of which a minimum of $45m will go to authors and publishers whose books were digitised without their approval. Google will also pay $34.5m to establish a book rights registry, and will cover legal fees.

Authors Guild president Roy Blount Jr said the deal made "good sense". "As an author, well, we appreciate payment when people use our work," he said. "It's hard work writing a book, and even harder work getting paid for it."

The agreement follows outrage from American publishers and authors three years ago, when they learnt of agreements struck by Google with certain American universities to scan books which were still in copyright, which would then be digitised and searchable online. American authors' body the Authors Guild led the charge against the search engine, filing suit in September 2005 along with a number of authors.

Under the terms of the agreement, US readers will be able to preview up to 20% of most out-of-print books for free, with authors and rights holders of in-copyright but out of print works able to opt out of the arrangement if they choose.

For in-copyright books that are still in print, readers will be able to find the books, but will not be able to view any portion of it unless its publisher has signed up to Google's partner programme.

The group, which is owned by Bertelsmann, the German media group, laid off people from its editorial, publicity, advertising, marketing and administrative staffs. "It's not a great year," said David Drake, a Doubleday spokesman. "We've had a lot of best sellers, but does that translate into the numbers that we need and that everyone is looking for? Obviously not."

Mr. Drake said the decision was not related to the delay in the delivery of the next novel by Dan Brown, the author of The Da Vinci Code, the blockbuster best seller published in 2003. Back in 2004, Doubleday said the target release date for the next book was 2005, but Mr. Brown has yet to deliver a manuscript. Sales from even a single title - if it is as significant as The Da Vinci Code - can make a substantial difference to a publisher's sales.

Nevertheless, "the changes we've made are quite separate from anything to do with Dan Brown," Mr. Drake said.

Now, with about six weeks to go before publication, Mr. Murdoch has raised objections with Mr. Wolff and his publisher about portions of the book, titled The Man Who Owns the News: Inside the Secret World of Rupert Murdoch, that suggest that Mr. Murdoch is at times embarrassed by Fox News, which he owns, and its chief executive, Roger Ailes, and that he often shares "the general liberal apoplexy," as Mr. Wolff writes in the book, toward Fox News and its perceived conservative slant.

In early October Mr. Murdoch obtained an early draft of the book, despite a tight embargo on the manuscript, and has raised objections with Doubleday, a division of Random House, about what he said were inaccuracies in the way Mr. Wolff describes relations between Mr. Murdoch and two of his top executives - Mr. Ailes and Peter Chernin, the president of News Corporation.

"I'm obviously annoyed that they're looking at an early version of the book, and a purloined one at that," Mr. Wolff said in an interview. "In essence News Corp. is holding stolen goods."

The moviemaker, who was attending the Rome Film Festival on Thursday, said he has written 60 pages of a novel, but besides ruling out that it would be a

horror or science fiction, offered few details on the project. "Based on the pages I have written we found publishers all over the world, which is very terrifying to me," Cronenberg told reporters. "It's at a very delicate phase right now, so I can't really talk about it. It's not like Stephen King, I don't know what it's like but you wouldn't call it a horror or science fiction novel at all. But what it is exactly, well, I don't know yet."

CFO Tom Szkutak said that while sales of the Kindle have exceeded expectations, it does not plan to release a new version of the e-reader until 2009 "at the earliest." He noted that Amazon has ramped up manufacturing capacity for Kindle, and the device is in stock. When the Kindle was introduced last November, the readers quickly went out of stock. Amazon said the e-book reader now accounts for more than 10% of unit sales for books that are available both in digital and print formats. Bezos said purchase of e-books is "additive" to sales of print books with Kindle e-book buyers tending to buy as many print books in addition to e-books.

"During the A&E Network's one-hour documentary, "Jose Canseco: The Last Shot," Canseco said he "regrets mentioning players [as steroid users]. I never realized this was going to blow up and hurt so many people."

During the program, the 44-year-old Canseco said he "wanted revenge" on Major League Baseball because he believed he had been forced out of the game. The book was his means of getting even, and he named names "to show I was telling the truth" about steroids in baseball, he said.

Canseco also said he wishes he could apologize to players he named in his book, like Rafael Palmeiro, Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire.

"If I could meet with Mark McGwire and these players, I definitely would apologize to them," Canseco said, according to the New York Daily News. "They were my friends. I admired them. I respected them."

Borders Group Inc, the second largest U.S. bookseller, and Amazon, the world's largest Web retailer, both said they had seen a recent trend toward finance books, from biographies of key players to books about past financial crises.

"People are really thirsting for knowledge and trying to understand what's happening out there and how we could have gotten to this point in the economy," said Kathryn Popoff, Borders vice president for adult trade books.

"We don't see the book sales really concentrated in one or two titles, we're seeing it spread out across multiple titles, which leads me to believe that people are trying to figure out the different components of what's going on," she said.

"The Snowball," the first authorized biography of billionaire Warren Buffett -- an investment guru whose company, Berkshire Hathaway, invested a total $8 billion in Goldman Sachs and General Electric Co -- has been a bestseller since its release earlier this month.

The book, published on December 4, marks Rowling's farewell to the world of Harry Potter. Not originally intended for mass market publication, Rowling initially handwrote and illustrated six editions of the book as personal gifts last year, with the seventh acquired by Amazon at auction for £1.95m.

Known to fans as the book which Albus Dumbledore left to Hermione Granger in Rowling's final Potter novel, The Tales of Beedle the Bard contains clues which helped Harry Potter in his mission to destroy Lord Voldemort. Only one of its five stories, The Tale of the Three Brothers, was recounted in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: 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, have not been seen before.

Rowling has waived her royalties for the book, with net proceeds from the sale to go to the charity she co-founded, The Children's High Level Group, which works with vulnerable children in eastern Europe.

Starbucks has made an unexpected choice for the latest title in its book program, the illustrated fable The Traveler. Written and illustrated by two brothers and first-time authors, Daniel and Daren Simkin, The Traveler will bow from FSG and Starbucks Entertainment in November; it will be in bookstores on November 25 and in over 7,000 Starbucks stores on November 28.

The book, which is a hybrid title--it's fully illustrated and follows a boy named Charlie who goes on a soul-searching mission to find a better way to spend his time--was being pitched by the publisher as an "adult fable." Drawing comparisons to The Little Prince any difficulty FSG might have had in placing the book with the right readership will now be alleviated by the Starbucks endorsement.

Viking have signed the former stockbroker turned writer Seth Freedman for "an insider account of greed, corruption and excess in the City", due next April. A mix of memoir, reportage and interviews, Viking hopes it will reveal the extent to which risking millions every day can be addictive, as well as explaining the inner workings of the market from short selling to bonds swaps.

Editorial director Joel Rickett paid what he described as a "healthy five-figure sum" for the book, and has also swooped on the Wall Street Journal columnist Gregory Zuckerman's account of hedge fund supremo John Paulson's $15bn (£9bn) bet against the housing bubble. "Obviously every publisher is now scrambling for finance and business books - these are areas that have been under-served for many years," said Rickett.

Random House have also signed up the Dragon's Den entrepreneur Deborah Meaden, with a book of business advice and anecdotes due next April. "We've definitely seen a lot of financial submissions coming through," said Headline deputy managing director Kerr MacRae, speaking at the Headline stand just before the day's deluge of meetings began. "We've made a couple of offers. They didn't go our way [but] we are updating our book City Boy: Beer and Loathing in the Square Mile, which has done really well – he's become the talking head for the City, and is writing a whole new chapter for us." Published earlier this year, this account of life in the City from the formerly anonymous newspaper columnist Geraint Anderson now looks eerily prescient.

Rev. Bernice King, Martin Luther King III and Dexter King have looked more like adversaries than siblings in recent months. The surviving three King children are involved in three lawsuits. Dexter King, as the head of his father's estate, is seeking his mother's papers, which are currently in his sister's possession. Bernice King is refusing to turn over the papers, claiming her mother did not want to participate in the US $1.4-million book deal.

New York-based Penguin Group is threatening to pull the deal this week without the documents. Speaking to reporters outside of the Fulton County Courthouse on Tuesday afternoon, Dexter King said he was saddened by the family feud. "This is not in the spirit of our parents," he said. "It's not the way we were raised. It's just very disheartening." Dexter King called the legal action between him and his siblings unfortunate, but said that he was not the instigator.

Jerome Corsi arrived in the country last week to promote The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality, an error-riddled book that recently became a bestseller in the US. It falsely claims that Obama, who is revered in Kenya, was raised as a Muslim, and smears the prime minister, Raila Odinga, the country's most popular politician.

Corsi had said that he also planned to deliver a $1,000 (£570) cheque from a conservative website owner to George Obama, the presidential candidate's half-brother who lives in the Kenyan capital's Huruma slum. But by widely publicising his itinerary, Corsi, whether intentionally or not, attracted government attention. Immigration police detained him at a luxury hotel which was due to host the book launch yesterday.

Ministry officials, denying the book had anything to do with the arrest, said Corsi had failed to obtain a temporary work permit. He was later taken to Jomo Kenyatta international airport, where he was expected to catch a flight to Europe.

The 61-year-old novelist said he had always tried to ask big questions about the role of the individual in history and society. "The question I'm always asking myself is: are we masters or victims? Do we make history or does history make us? Do we shape the world or are we just shaped by it?" Rushdie said in an interview published Wednesday.

He said the question of whether individuals acted with free will or were passive victims of events "is, I think, a great question and one that I have always tried to ask" in novels like "The Satanic Verses." "In that sense I wouldn't not have wanted to be the writer that asked it," he said.

The interview ran in The Times newspaper to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the novel's publication. "The Satanic Verses," Rushdie's fourth novel, referred to a legend about Muhammad being tricked by agents of the devil. It enraged some Muslims, was banned in India, burned by demonstrators in England and brought a death sentence for blasphemy from Iran's then-leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

According to two publishing officials with knowledge of the negotiations, Little, Brown and Company will release a book of humorous essays by the 38-year-old Fey. Her many writing credits include "30 Rock" and the "Saturday Night Live" sketch comedy series, as well as the feature film "Mean Girls."

Though the situation on Wall Street continues to unfold, there's already quite a crowded field of book proposals and sales stemming from the crisis--though oddly enough, several high-profile sales thus far have all ended up at Penguin imprints. Earlier this week, Roger Lowenstein sold a book called Six Days that Shook the World to Ann Godoff at Penguin Press, and yesterday Sorkin's colleague Joe Nocera sold world rights to a proposal co-written with Vanity Fair's Bethany McLean, co-author of The Smartest Guys in the Room, to Adrian Zackheim at Penguin's Portfolio imprint; agent Liz Darhansoff's asking price during the auction for Nocera's and McLean's chronicle of the crisis was said to be more than $1 million.

As McCormick points out, there is room for a lot of different takes on the story; an apt comparison might be the number of books spawned by September 11, many of which glutted the marketplace around the one-year anniversary of the attacks. But some publishers aren't bidding on Wall Street-related projects at the moment, thinking it's too early and preferring to wait and see how the story plays out. "We were worreid about how many subjects can be published on this subject in a successful way," said one publisher who said he was 'inundated" by Wall Street proposals last week.

Chair of judges and Guardian children's books editor Julia Eccleshare said the panel of judges, made up of children's authors Mary Hoffman, Mal Peet and last year's winner Jenny Valentine, were blown away by the "breathtaking quality" of Ness's writing. "It's challenging but not bleak - an excitingly different book," she added.

The Knife of Never Letting Go traces the journey of 12-year-old Todd Hewitt after he is forced to flee the stifling male-only environs of Prentisstown, where the thoughts of each inhabitant, man and beast, are a never-ending swell of Noise. With only his singularly chatty dog Manchee ("Need a poo, Todd") and the mysteriously silent Viola for company, Todd fights to survive and to learn the dark secrets behind Prentisstown's facade.

Ness said he was "genuinely astonished" to win. "I think it was a super-strong shortlist. Before I Die is a huge hit, Frank is a great writer, and I'm reading Siobhan Dowd now, it's really great and I kind of thought she would win."

A corporate writer at a cable company in the US until he was made redundant and used the payoff to set up as a novelist in the UK, Ness has previously written a novel, The Crash of Hennington, and a short story collection, Topics About Which I Know Nothing, both for adults. He turned to children's fiction after he had the idea of a world where information overload is inescapable, and knew it was a book for teenagers.

It was the highest opening ever for a Random House children's book, but far below the 8.3 million copies in the United States alone for the launch of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," and the 1.3 million for Stephenie Meyer's "Breaking Dawn," released at midnight on Aug. 2.

Michelle Blankenship, who recently joined Harlequin as publicity manager for the imprint, said lots of media has been lined up for the Sept. 30 launch, including an Oct. 1 Today Show appearance. Delilah will also be talking about the book, which features stories from her listeners, on her show. The second nonfiction title, Safe Passage: The True Story of Two Sisters Who Saved Jews from the Nazis, will be released as a trade paperback in November. The title was originally released by Morrow in the 1950s, and has a new foreword by Jewish scholar Ann Sebba who will help promote the title.

Judges said Friday that Rowling was the unanimous choice to receive the 2008 Edinburgh Award, in recognition of her contributions to Scotland's capital. Rowling said she was honoured.

"Edinburgh is very much home for me and is the place where Harry evolved over seven books and many, many hours of writing in its cafes," Rowling said. "So much has happened to me both professionally and personally since I moved here nearly 15 years ago, that to receive this recognition is particularly meaningful and special."

The largest distributor of children's books to Canadian schools has decided to yank all Bratz books from its roster after parents and psychologists complained that the controversial dolls promoted "precocious sexuality."

Scholastic Inc. distributes its products through school-based book fairs and clubs, selling books to students and teachers at discounted prices. But after a persuasive North American campaign spearheaded by the Boston-based Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, the company has relented and pulled books and products featuring the popular Bratz dolls.

The company confirmed yesterday that its fall product line for schools no longer includes the Bratz brand -- a switch from last year, when Scholastic said the books appealed to "reluctant readers" and its job was to "offer materials that appeal to children where they are, not where we would like them to be."

The Bratz book line is a spinoff of MGA Entertainment Inc.'s top-selling fashion dolls, which have gained notoriety for their skimpy wardrobe of miniskirts, high-heel boots and feather boas. A New Yorker article about the powerhouse of marketing behind the brand described the appearance of the dolls as being akin to "kept girls," "pole dancers on their way to work at a gentlemen's club," and, most critically, wearing "the sly, dozy expression of a party girl after one too many mojitos."

A Bollywood children's film, Hari Puttar, has been forced to postpone its premiere after the Hollywood studio behind the Harry Potter blockbusters took the Indian producers to court over the film's title. Warner Brothers claims the Bollywood film sounds too similar to the teenage wizard and has refused the Indian studio's offer of putting a disclaimer in the title sequence. The Harry Potter films have grossed $4.5bn (£2.5bn) since 2001.

Hari Puttar was due to open last Friday but will now be shown later this month after Indian television networks refused to run promos for the film. A Delhi court is due to hear the case this month. "The movie will come out on [September] 26," said a spokesman for the Mumbai studio Mirchi Movies. "We do not know about the exact legal position as of now."

Hari Puttar: A Comedy of Terrors is a comedy shot in Yorkshire about a 10-year-old Indian boy whose family moves to England and becomes embroiled in a plan to save the world from two criminals. Hari is a popular Indian name and Puttar means "son" in Punjabi.

sTORI Telling, which has been on the best-seller list for 14 weeks, is so successful that it is in its 19th printing, and as a result, Simon & Schuster is back in business with the "Tori & Dean: Home Sweet Hollywood" star. This spring, the publishing company will release a second book by Tori with the working title, Mommywood. Obviously, from the title, the book will be about Tori's life since she became mother.

Under the multi-year agreement, Mr. Lagasse is set to release his first book -- with a focus on indoor and outdoor grilling -- in May 2009. Although the chef, who is known for his enthusiastic cooking style, has produced 12 titles with HarperCollins since 1993, the book will be his first in four years. It will also be one of HarperCollins' first releases under its new HarperStudio imprint.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, though Mr. Lagasse will receive a modest advance, as well as 50% of profits generated from the titles, according to Robert Miller, head of HarperStudio.

Launched in April 2008, the new imprint made waves as the most recent effort by book publishers to cope with stagnant book sales and increasing production costs. It is unique because it splits profits with authors in lieu of paying them hefty advances and aims to eliminate the costly practice of allowing booksellers to return unsold copies. HarperStudio also focuses on electronic books and digital audio editions, one of the key reasons MSLO executive chairman Charles Koppelman pushed Mr. Lagasse to the experimental imprint. "Emeril is the perfect author for HarperStudio's cutting-edge book publishing formula," Mr. Koppelman said.

A leading publisher has admitted that the introduction of age banding to children's books has been poorly handled. The initiative has prompted a widespread rebellion amongst children's authors, with a website attracting almost 800 signatures from authors including Philip Pullman, JK Rowling, Jacqueline Wilson and Terry Pratchett.

"I would suggest – and I am speaking entirely as myself, rather than as the representative of anyone else or anybody here – that there were some regrettable errors in how publishers went about the introduction of age guidance," said Scholastic group managing director Kate Wilson. "I think most of them, if they had their time again, would do it differently and in greater consultation with authors."

She was the only representative of the publishing industry who accepted an invitation to a specially-organised debate at the Children's Writers and Illustrators conference at which Philip Pullman condemned the initiative, branding the labels "not true" and questioning the research which motivated their introduction.

Wilson, responding as an individual publisher, albeit one which has supported the policy, was conciliatory on the principle of consultation. But she was vigorous in her defence of the research and the need for children's books to find a more competitive edge against other forms of spending on children. "Age guidance isn't perfect but it is another ingredient added to the marketing mix that the majority of book buyers surveyed said they'd welcome."

Zuiker's chapters will close with codes that readers can use online to unlock "motion picture footage" that continues the storyline from the book. The deal, for world rights, was made by president and publisher of Dutton, Brian Tart, with a littany of players: Dan Strone, CEO of Trident Media, Brillstein Entertainment Partners, Morris Yorn and Barnes & Levine and CAA.

Zuiker's story, of a government investigator named Steve Dark who goes rogue after his family is murdered by a drug kingpin, will, as Dutton noted, "move from books to film to the web with ease." Although the house called the deal "unprecedented in the publishing industry," it mimics, on some level, what Scholatsic is trying to achieve with its much-hyped multimedia project, The 39 Clues.

In addition to online film clips, the multimedia effort will include a web-based community portal with different characters and more spin-off storylines. According to Dutton, the portal will be a place readers can "consume countless ancillary levels of story enrichment." Tart said the best way to think of Zuiker's forthcoming work, slated to launch in fall 2009, is as "storytelling 2.0."

The Barnes & Noble on Concord Pike in Brandywine Hundred has plenty in stock. The book has been selling relatively well there. When Biden attended signings upon the book’s publication, a spokesperson says, the turnout and sales were a huge success. Now that Biden is one step from the main national political spotlight, that attention is even more potent.

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At the Borders on Geoffrey Drive in Stanton, about 20 hardback copies were in stock when Biden was added to the ticket. They're gone, and a spokesperson says the store is accepting reserved orders for the roughly 400 paperbacks it expects to arrive soon. Even the inventory system is having trouble keeping up with demand.

The Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps has agreed to write a memoir, "Built to Succeed," to be published by Free Press in December. The book "will reveal the secrets of his success, taking us behind the scenes of his approach to training, competition and winning," a statement from Free Press released on Friday said. The book will focus on the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing and the eight gold medals Mr. Phelps won there. He will also discuss his personal life, his upbringing by a single mother and his diagnosis of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. Free Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, did not disclose financial terms.

• The Last Oracle by James Rollins (William Morrow), the spine- tingling new thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of Black Order and Map of Bones.
  
  
• This Year You Write Your Novel by Walter Mosely (Little, Brown), the must-have writing guide from the bestselling author of the Easy Rawlins and Fearless Jones mystery series.
  
  
• Don't Make Me Choose Between You and My Shoes by Dixie Cash (Avon), the hilarious new chick lit novel about two Texas female private investigators/hairdressers that head for New York City in search of some fun and some fabulous shoes.
  
  
• The Write Type: Discover Your True Writer's Identity and Create a Customized Writing Plan by Karen E. Peterson, Ph.D. (Adamas Media)
  
  

"There has not been such an authoritative and intimate account of presidential decision making since the Nixon tapes and the Pentagon Papers," Woodward's longtime editor, Alice Mayhew, said Tuesday in a statement. "This is the declassification of what went on in secret, behind the scenes."

According to Simon & Schuster, Woodward's book "takes readers deep inside the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, the intelligence agencies and the U.S. military headquarters in Iraq."

"Based on extensive interviews with participants, contemporaneous notes and secret documents, the book traces the internal debates, tensions and critical turning points in the Iraq War during an extraordinary two-year period."

You can tell people until you're blue in the face how good a book is, and the chances are most of your friends won't even bother to pick it up. But then the film comes out and suddenly everyone's an expert. The story has been plucked from its secret place where only those willing to go the distance of several hundred pages can find it and thrust into the attention-deficit glare of mainstream culture for quite literally anyone to come along and "love" just as much as you do... for a week, anyway.

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Some of us who love particular writers have more of this pain than other readers.....how many times can you try to tell your movie-going friends that, actually, We Can Remember it For You Wholesale is a classic discussion of reality, identity and memory, and not just a Steven Seagal-level action flick called Total Recall starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.

If anything, the graphic novel reader can enjoy an even higher level of elitism than the ordinary bibliophile - you generally have to go to even greater lengths to find your reading matter. So anyone who has bought - on import, in monthly instalments - the output of British comic writer Alan Moore over the years will no doubt have been dismayed by great works such as V for Vendetta, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and From Hell reduced to CGI-laden momentary distractions for a Thursday evening when there's nothing on the telly.

"Libraries are facing competition from television, magazines, the internet, e-books, yet they have this archaic and mad idea of charging people money for being slightly late," said library consultant Frances Hendrix - a loud voice in the debate which has been taking place on an online forum for librarians. "It's all so negative, unprofessional and unbusinesslike; like any business, libraries need not to alienate their customers." Liz Dubber, director of programmes at reading charity The Reading Agency, agreed. "My personal view [is that] they're past their sell-by date because they do sustain a very old-fashioned image of libraries which is out of sync with today's modern library environment and the image libraries are trying to project - tolerant, responsive, flexible, stimulating," she said.

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The other side of the debate points out that without fines, customers are unlikely to return their books. Alison Wheeler, adult services manager at Suffolk Libraries, told the Guardian that her personal view was that some people do need the "occasional financial nudge" to remind them about doing the right thing. "No one would argue against a parking or speeding fine -- if we didn't have speeding fines it wouldn't mean that people behaved better on the roads," she added.

Miramax Film Corp filed its suit for breach of contract against Pearson on Friday in Manhattan Federal Court, according to Reuters, saying that although Pearson accepted $700,000 in August 2003 under a two-year contract, she has still not delivered the novel. Miramax also said that Pearson has ignored its requests for information about the book's whereabouts since 2006.

I Think I Love You, which Pearson's agent said she believed Pearson would still deliver "but I don't know what deadline she has set herself", is described by its UK publisher Chatto as being "about love in many forms, but first love in particular, how it shapes us and imprints us". Pearson signed a deal for the book with Chatto in 2003. A spokesperson for the publisher said he had "absolutely no information whatsoever" on when it might be published; Amazon lists publication dates between July 2006 and February 2009.

His book, "Sex, Love and Fashion: A Memoir of a Male Model," describes his early days as a lifeguard, playing professional basketball in Sweden and goes on to tell how he was discovered, and the parties and exotic locations that followed. But it's the kiss-and-tell stories about the former Calvin Klein model's sexual adventures with some of the world's most beautiful women that have caused a buzz in the modeling world and sparked criticism of Hulse.

"Bruce Hulse never learned that gentlemen don't kiss and tell," wrote the New York Post. In the book, Hulse writes about the time with Andie MacDowell, the actress from "Four Weddings and a Funeral" where the light was too bright in a hotel room so he tossed his T-shirt over the lamp — and it caught fire.

Then there was the night when he ended up alone with Australian supermodel Elle "The Body" Macpherson when he was getting over a breakup with another model and had lost his sex drive. "No worries Brucie... let's just be friends then," he wrote Macpherson told him. There is also the candlelight dinner in Paris with Paulina Porizkova which ended in sex that was like a "professional wrestling match... I'd never had such energetic, wild sex with anyone before."

The 976-page book is being written by former Morgan Stanley insurance analyst Alice Schroeder, and is titled "The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life," publisher Bantam Dell Publishing Group said. Schroeder first met Buffett while working as an analyst, and covered Buffett's insurance and investment company, Berkshire Hathaway Inc.

According to the publisher, Schroeder has spent "thousands of hours" with Buffett, talking about his life and career, and winning broad access to his files and friends. The book had been scheduled for a May release in conjunction with Berkshire's annual shareholder meeting, but was delayed.

Its title comes from a reported comment by Buffett: "Life is like a snowball. The really important thing is finding wet snow and a really long hill." Schroeder's book earlier had the title "The Snowball: How Warren Buffett Collected Friends, Wisdom and Wealth." Buffett has transformed Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire since 1965 into a roughly $179 billion conglomerate with at least 76 companies selling such things as car insurance, ice cream, paint and underwear, and investing in stocks.

An additional 2,500 copies have been commissioned for "Story of My Life," according to Vintage Books, a paperback imprint of Random House, Inc. The book, first released in 1988, is narrated by a promiscuous, aspiring actress whom McInerney has said was inspired by Hunter -- then named Lisa Druck -- and a group of friends the author had met in New York.

As of Monday afternoon, "Story of My Life" was No. 470 on Amazon.com best-seller list and was out of stock.

One of Europe's biggest telecommunications companies, Deutsche Telekom, is developing a portable e-reader, apparently a competitor for Amazon's Kindle, reports German magazine Der Spiegel.

The company plans a test run with a few dozen prototypes of electronic newspaper readers in Berlin this autumn, under the project name "News4Me". Peter Mockel, head of Deutsche Telekom's R&D department, says his company sees a market in the gap between mobile phones and laptops.

One of the engineers involved in the project is quoted as saying that the Kindle generally points in the right direction but Deutsche Telekom will end up developing a device with a larger (and possibly bendable) display. It's also supposed to be easier to operate.