A man who was one of former Senator John Edwards's closest aides has a deal to write a book claiming that Mr. Edwards said he "would be taken care of for life" in return for falsely claiming he was the father of the baby carried by Mr. Edwards's mistress, Rielle Hunter.

The aide, Andrew Young, sold his book proposal to St. Martin’s Press for an undisclosed price late last week. In his proposal, Mr. Young quotes Mr. Edwards, a Democrat who was his party's vice-presidential nominee in 2004 and ran for president last year, as begging him to confess to fathering Ms. Hunter’s baby.

*****

Federal prosecutors are investigating whether any of Mr. Edwards's campaign money was improperly used with regard to his affair or efforts to keep it from becoming public. Mr. Young wrote that he had been questioned by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and had been subpoenaed to speak before a grand jury.

*****

Mr. Edwards denied being the father after admitting the affair last summer, and there is yet to be DNA testing. A spokeswoman for Mr. Edwards's legal team, Joyce Fitzpatrick, said Mr. Edwards had not seen the book proposal, and she would not comment on it. A lawyer for Ms. Hunter, Robert J. Gordon, said he no longer represented her.

Mr. Young's proposal states that he was writing the book because he had become disillusioned with Mr. Edwards’s behavior and recklessness, which he said included participating in the production of a sex tape with Ms. Hunter that Mr. Young later discovered.

Bog Child, the story of a teenage boy who finds the body of a child in an Irish bog, was finished by Dowd in May 2007. She died of cancer that August at the age of 47, having only turned to writing in 2003. In just four short years, she penned four children's books: her first, A Swift Pure Cry, was also shortlisted for the Carnegie.

"It's infuriating that she didn't start writing earlier, that she couldn't go on. We've lost one of our great new voices, and they don't come along that often, not at Siobhan's standards," said her publisher and editor, David Fickling, who accepted the Carnegie medal on her behalf this lunchtime. "Bog Child was written with great intensity, when Siobhan was at the height of her powers, all the while being very ill ... You get to the end and are uplifted, and that's what she was like in person, too. She buoyed you up."

The book is "an absolutely astonishing piece of writing", said the librarian Joy Court, chair of the judging panel (the Carnegie medal winner is selected by 13 librarians from around the UK). "To be able to write like that when she was going through what she was going through is just astonishing – the sheer beauty of the language, the descriptions of the environment; she has such an amazing sense of place."

Bog Child intertwines two stories: that of the 16-year-old Fergus, who discovers the child in the bog in 1981 and thinks she has been murdered by the IRA, and that of the bog child, Mel, who turns out to have lived 2,000 years ago during the iron age. Fergus smuggles packages across the Northern Ireland border each day, believing them to contain semtex, while his brother goes on hunger strike in prison in an attempt to free Northern Ireland from "the misery of it. The mourning and the weeping. The vale of tears." Dowd's command of language is "extraordinary", said Fickling, as in her description of Mel's death: "Silver light fizzed and shot apart. Love fell in particles, like snow."

George is the youngest of the senior Obama's seven children and was born six months before his father died. Little is known about George Obama. The book, tentatively titled "Homeland" and to be written with author-journalist Damien Lewis, will tell of George Obama's fall into crime and poverty as a teenager and his eventual embrace of community organizing — a passion shared by the president — and of advocacy for the poor, an identification so strong that he chooses to live among them.

"Even had George Obama not been our President's half brother, his story is moving and inspirational," David Rosenthal, Simon & Schuster publisher and executive vice president, said in a statement Sunday. "It is an object lesson in survival, selflessness and courage." Financial terms were not disclosed, but an official with knowledge of the negotiations said the deal was worth six figures. The official, who was not authorized to discuss the contract, spoke on condition of anonymity.

The complaint, which according to the American Library Association also demands $120,000 (£72,000) in compensatory damages for being exposed to the book in a display at West Bend Community Memorial Library, was lodged by four men from the Christian Civil Liberties Union. Their suit says that "the plaintiffs, all of whom are elderly, claim their mental and emotional well-being was damaged by this book at the library," and that it contains derogatory language that could "put one's life in possible jeopardy, adults and children alike."

"The word 'faggot' is very derogatory and slanderous to all males," the suit continues. "Using the word 'N****r' is dangerously offensive, disrespectful to all people. These words can permeate violence." The suit also claims that the book "constitutes a hate crime, and that it degrades the community".

"They've filed a claim against the city of West Bend and the city has to decide if it is valid," said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, acting director of the ALA's office for intellectual freedom. "Their insurance company is evaluating the claim, but I would be very surprised if they found any merit in it ... Should they find any merit in this claim, we would certainly support the library in fighting it."

Vincent, a San Diego resident, has written or co-written several books, among them "Same Kind of Different As Me," "The Blood of Lambs" and "Donkey Cons: Sex, Crime and Corruption in the Democratic Party."

With the price of e-books still a hot topic, the nonprofit research organization RAND Corp. has changed the retail price on all of its e-books to $9.95 each. The director of publications and creative services, Jane Ryan, said RAND's production, distribution and freight costs are lower for e-books, and "we want to pass these savings on to the public. Given the timeliness of our research, we want to make our work quickly available on multiple platforms, including smart phones." RAND had previously based its e-book pricing on the retail price of print editions.

Marketing director John Warren said, "The economics of e-book distribution are different than print, where the cost of printing, distribution and returns factor into the price paid by consumers. Color charts and a greater number of pages, for example, drive up the cost of print-on-demand, but are not a factor in electronic books."

In writing about where she lives (the book is expected to have up to 50,000 words of text), she has been writing about herself "because I'm spurred on by the writing process," Streisand said Wednesday during a brief telephone interview with The Associated Press. Long reluctant to discuss her private life, the 67-year-old Streisand said she has been working on chapters, in longhand, for a separate book. But she hasn't made up her mind whether she will complete the memoir and publish it.

"I go back and forth," stated Streisand, who has received numerous show business honors, including Academy Awards, Grammys and Emmys. "Do I really want to write about my life? Do I really want to relive my life? I'm not sure."

Married to actor James Brolin, her second husband, Streisand told the AP that she wants to get back into filmmaking after setting her career aside to work on her house. She is hoping to obtain rights to Larry Kramer's play "A Normal Heart," a story she has been interested in for years, and has recruited some "interesting cast members" whom she declined to identify.

CFO Mark Bierley said that in addition to the difficult retail environment, sales were down because of the company's decision to reduce inventory, which he said Borders continues to refine with publishers and other vendors. He believes that disruptions caused by that process should come to an end by the second half of the year. Another factor in the sales decline was poor execution in communicating to customers the retailer's offerings. "We've got to become better booksellers," Bierley said. He reiterated Marshall's remarks that improving sales is where the company's priority is right now.

At last week's annual meeting Marshall said expanding Borders's children's section was one way to grow sales, and Bierley said "we are undersized in kids." The company will spend the second quarter expanding the children's section, which he said ranges from infant through teens. Expansion will come in areas that use to be occupied by music and movie titles. The company has been steadily reducing that inventory and Bierley said the amount of music and movie offerings are about where the company wants them to be.

"The National Book Festival has become a true American institution," said James Billington, the librarian of Congress. "It is a joyous and very popular celebration of books and reading in the Washington, D.C., area."

The Library of Congress organizes and sponsors the event, which is free and open to the public.

An estimated 120,000 people have attended each of the past two festivals, a library spokeswoman said.

Google has faced an onslaught of opposition over the far-reaching settlement with authors and publishers. Complaints include the exclusive rights the agreement gives Google to publish online and to profit from millions of so-called orphan books, out-of-print books that are protected by copyright but whose rights holders cannot be found.

The Justice Department has also begun an inquiry into whether the settlement, which is subject to approval by a court, would violate antitrust laws. Google used the opportunity of the University of Michigan agreement to rebut some criticism.

"I think that it's pretty short- sighted and contradictory," said Sergey Brin, a Google co-founder and its president of technology. Mr. Brin said the settlement would allow Google to offer widespread access to millions of books that are largely hidden in the stacks of university libraries. "We are increasing choices," Mr. Brin said. "There was no option prior to this to get these sorts of books online." Under Google’s plan for the collection, public libraries will get free access to the full texts for their patrons at one computer, and universities will be able to buy subscriptions to make the service generally available, with rates based on their student enrollment.

The new agreement, which Google hopes other libraries will endorse, lets the University of Michigan object if it thinks the prices Google charges libraries for access to its digital collection are too high, a major concern of some librarians. Any pricing dispute would be resolved through arbitration. Only the institutions that lend books to Google for scanning -- now 21 libraries in the United States -- would be allowed to object to pricing.

With publishers cutting back new releases in response to declining sales, an estimated 275,000 traditional books were released in the United States last year, a drop of about 9,000 from 2007, according to Bowker, a New Providence, N.J.-based company that compiles industry statistics. Categories with the biggest reductions included travel, religion and biography, Bowker said Tuesday.

Abbas Taj, 30, was convicted of conspiracy to recklessly damage property and endanger life for waiting in a getaway car while two accomplices poured diesel through a mailbox of the home and office of Gibson Square publisher Martin Rynja in September. The men were spotted igniting the fuel with a disposable lighter, and police quickly smashed down the door and put the blaze out.

*****

Gibson Square had been due to publish "Jewel of Medina," a novel written by U.S. author Sherry Jones which dealt with the story of Aisha, who, according to tradition, was nine when she became the wife of the Prophet Muhammad. It originally was due to be brought out by Random House, but the publisher pulled the plug on the novel in August after saying that "credible and unrelated sources" had warned that the book "could incite acts of violence by a small, radical segment."

The tapes were smuggled out of China and will be published in English and Chinese this month – as Prisoner of the State: The secret Journal of Zhao Ziyang – days before the 20th anniversary of the massacre. In them, he praised western-style democracy and insisted that the activists were not attempting to overthrow the system, according to extracts obtained by Reuters.

*****

Zhao, who was kept under intense surveillance at his home after his downfall and whose excursions and visitors were vetted, recorded his memoirs in such secrecy that even family members were unaware of his project. He recorded about 30 hours, on Peking Opera [school] and children's music tapes, in or around the year 2000. The 30 tapes were later smuggled out of China by three former high-ranking officials.

******

Concerns over news of the project leaking were so great that publishers Simon and Schuster listed it as Untitled by Anonymous in their catalogue. "There was real concern about security, because if Chinese officials had found out early they would have used whatever means they had to make sure this didn't appear. It wasn't just commercial reasons," Ignatius added. Although the book is certain to be banned on the mainland, Ignatius said he believed some of its content would spread through the internet or bootleg editions. Bao Pu, the Hong Kong-based publisher of the book's Chinese edition and son of Zhao's former top aide, said: "There were no instructions [but] the fact he did this shows very clearly that he wanted his version of the story to survive.

"The material was very dense; he had actually prepared before he started recording and we think he had a draft [text] from as early as 1993." He added: "I hope it will have a direct impact on politics in China; politicians are going to be reading this and reflecting."

The Breaking Dawn special edition will feature a DVD of the Breaking Dawn Concert Series, including a performance by Blue October's Justin Furstenfeld and conversation between author Stephenie Meyer and Furstenfeld. LB is printing "only" one million copies of this edition; it goes on sale August 4 for $24.99. Also that day, the publisher will release a trade paperback edition of Eclipse, the third book in the series.

The $24.99 journals set consists of four journals packaged in a tin, and will go on sale October 13. In addition to the mass market tie-in edition of New Moon, LB will also release New Moon Collector's Edition, slipcased with a ribbon bookmark and cloth cover, for $30; and New Moon: The Complete Illustrated Movie Companion for $18.99, both on October 6.

It's not elegant and it's not sexy – it looks like a large photocopier – but the Espresso Book Machine is being billed as the biggest change for the literary world since Gutenberg invented the printing press more than 500 years ago and made the mass production of books possible. Launching today at Blackwell's Charing Cross Road branch in London, the machine prints and binds books on demand in five minutes, while customers wait.

Signalling the end, says Blackwell, to the frustration of being told by a bookseller that a title is out of print, or not in stock, the Espresso offers access to almost half a million books, from a facsimile of Lewis Carroll's original manuscript for Alice in Wonderland to Mrs Beeton's Book of Needlework. Blackwell hopes to increase this to over a million titles by the end of the summer – the equivalent of 23.6 miles of shelf space, or over 50 bookshops rolled into one. The majority of these books are currently out-of-copyright works, but Blackwell is working with publishers throughout the UK to increase access to in-copyright writings, and says the response has been overwhelmingly positive.

Wiley director of events P.J. Campbell said the event used computers, cameras and microphones set up in White's home and at the bookstore. White's image was projected on a screen and, thanks to the SKYPE hookup, the author was able to discuss Watchmen and Philosophy, which examines philosophical questions in Alan Moore’s acclaimed graphic novel, and respond to questions from the audience at the bookstore in Cincinnati just like a typical bookstore event. The event was cosponsored with Clifton Comics and Games, a local comics shop.

*****

Michael Link, publisher relations and events manager at Joseph-Beth, said the store was pleased with the event (they sold about 25 copies of White's book) and planned another SKYPE event in June.

The book, to be published by Rupert Murdoch's New York house HarperCollins, will be a plea for a revival of "the lost balance between Man and Nature and to follow a more philosophical path which reconnects humankind with ancient wisdom and intuition". It will bring together the various strands of his belief in a need for caution and conservation, with climate change as its focal point.

The sting of the work is likely to be directed on this occasion at big businesses that have damaged the environment in their insatiable drive for profits. In a statement, the prince set out his desire to "rediscover that sense of being a part of, rather than apart from nature". Then, he went on, "we would perhaps be less likely to see the world as some sort of gigantic production system, capable of ever-increasing outputs for our benefit - at no cost".

For someone who puts such great store on "living in harmony", Prince Charles certainly knows how to pick a fight. With the world's top architects already directing their heavy guns at him for his opposition to Richard Rogers's modernist design in Chelsea, he has now opened up a second front against agricultural giants, mining and energy interests. The film is to be shot largely in America, providing no shortage of examples of environmental pillage. The most gruesome illustrations will presumably be toned down for the children's book version that will follow in 2011.

The Internet Archive has sent a letter to Judge Dennis Chin, the judge overseeing the Google/Authors Guild, AAP case seeking permission to file a motion that would ask the court to alter the proposed settlement to give other companies that have scanned printed books the same copyright protection of orphan works that would be granted to Google in the settlement. In the letter, the Archive notes that it is one of a number of parties interesting in opposing the settlement, "because it effectively limits the liability for the identified uses of orphan works of one party alone, Google...all other persons, including Internet content providers such as the Archive, would not be able to use orphan works broadly without being exposed to claims of infringement."

Mancher, whose publishing PR firm One Potata Productions, Inc. will promote SPBE, said, "Self-publishing is one of the fasting growing segments of the publishing industry, and the time is ripe to have a place where these authors can interact with the public, mingle with their peers, meet representatives of the media who are otherwise unfamiliar with their work, and expose their books to a much broader audience."

Mancher is working with Mender, a former v-p, associate publisher and marketing director at Atria Books, Dell/Delacorte and HarperCollins, to produce and develop the Expo. Mender said SPBE will include panel discussions and lectures on the challenges of self-publishing, and an "Open House" for would-be authors, which will be open to the public and hosted by representatives of self-publishing companies.

Bo, the Portuguese water dog who recently became the first presidential pet in the Obama White House, is the star of Bo, America's Commander in Leash, which is expected in stores by the end of the month. Mascot Books, a small independent publisher in Herndon, Va., that specializes in producing titles based on university and school mascots, is rushing out the book to capture the fervor surrounding the Obamas' new dog.

The book is written by Naren Aryal, a founder of Mascot Books, and illustrated by Danny Moore, an employee of the company. Mr. Aryal said he and Mr. Moore had been working on the project for about two months, leaving space for pictures of the dog once it was chosen. The 32-page book includes references to longstanding White House traditions like the Easter egg roll and the pardoning of the Thanksgiving turkey, as well as newer things introduced by the Obamas like the swing set for their daughters, and Michelle Obama's organic garden. Mr. Aryal said neither of the Obamas' daughters are named in the book because he wanted to protect their privacy.

John McCain's 24-year-old daughter Meghan has a book deal! Sources say Hyperion has prevailed over at least three other publishers in an auction that began earlier this week, following a round of meetings during which the in-your-face young conservative and the literary agent she shares with her father, Sterling Lord Literistic president Flip Brophy, discussed a number of possible approaches to the book with editors around town.

Several sources said the advance Ms. McCain will receive from Hyperion, which is owned by the Disney Company, is in the high six figures.

The letter cites two objections to the agreement: a so-called "most favored nation" clause and the mechanism to deal with orphan works. The group maintains that because the settlement was negotiated between Google and the AAP/authors, there was no one representing the public interest in what Consumer Watchdog calls an agreement that will transform publishing.

According to Consumer Watchdog, because the settlement guarantees that Google would be offered the same terms from the Book Rights Registry that any competitor might receive, competitors would be discouraged from establishing a competing service. The most favored clause should be eliminated to remove barriers to entry, the letter states, adding that "it is inappropriate for the resolution of a class action lawsuit to effectively create an anti-compete clause."

In dealing with orphan works, Consumer Watchdog wants the protections granted to Google about potential exposure to rightsholders who may file claims to works that appear in a database extended to any company that wants to compete with Google under the same terms given to Google.

The first, Pirate Latitudes, will be published on November 24, 2009; the second, as yet untitled, will be published in Fall 2010.

Pirate Latitudes is an adventure story about piracy in the New World. Set in 1665, when Jamaica was a British colony holding out against Spanish dominance, the story centers on a plan hatched by the island's governor and a notorious pirate called Hunter to raid a Spanish treasure galleon. Fast-moving and suspenseful, Pirate Latitudes is a historical classic from one of America's best-loved authors. The novel was discovered amongst Crichton's files and was written contemporaneously with Next, published in 2006.

Jonathan Burnham, Senior Vice President and Publisher of Harper, says, Pirate Latitudes is a fantastically enjoyable and light-hearted adventure yarn about pirates and profiteers in 17th century Jamaica. It is deeply researched and full of lively historical detail, and it shows Crichton going back to the territory he explored in novels such as The Great Train Robbery - old-fashioned entertainment, with a twist."

In Fall 2010, Harper will publish his latest techno thriller which explores the outer edges of new science and technology in the way that only Michael Crichton knew how. The new novel will be based on the development of Crichton's narrative on notes and files. "It is some consolation to the millions of Crichton fans out there that two or possibly more works are in the offing, and that the amazing legacy he has left behind him will be reinvigorated by these new novels" adds Burnham.

Michael Crichton was born in 1942 and died in November 2008. His bestselling novels include State of Fear, Prey, The Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park and Timeline. He was also the creator of ER.

Candlewick president and publisher Karen Lotz acquired the book and will also edit; Jennifer Gates at Zachary Shuster Harmsworth brokered the deal.

Ladder to the Moon imagines what lessons Soetoro-Ng's four-year-old daughter might have learned from her grandmother (Soetoro-Ng's and Obama's mother) if the two had ever met. Soetoro-Ng is currently a high school teacher at an all-girls school in Hawaii; Ladder to the Moon is her first book.

With BookExpo America about two months away, show director Lance Fensterman acknowledged that the number of exhibitors will be down in 2009 from previous years. "We're trending behind last year," Fensterman said. "The show will be smaller and tighter, and there will be fewer exhibitors."

One of the largest publishers to decide not to exhibit at BEA in 2009 is Kensington Publishers. President Steve Zacharius said that given the state of the economy, "we decided it makes more sense to spend our marketing dollars where it will have more of an impact on sales." Kensington has taken space in the BEA Rights Center and will have staff walking the exhibit floor, Zacharius said, adding that the publisher will also host some cocktail parties.

1. The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-miligram Containers of Fromage Frais
2. Baboon Metaphysics by Dorothy L Cheney and Robert M Seyfarth (University of Chicago Press)
3. Curbside Consultation of the Colon by Brooks D Cash
4. Strip and Knit with Style by Mark Hordyszynski (C&T)
5. The Large Sieve and its Applications by Emmanuel Kowalski (Cambridge University Press)
6. Techniques for Corrosion Monitoring by Lietai Yang (Woodhead).

The freeze was made at the recommendation of management and approved by the compensation committee of the board of directors. The execs will still be entitled to collect bonuses if performance targets are hit. The freeze applies to chairman Len Riggio; vice chairman and CEO Steve Riggio; COO Mitch Klipper; CFO Joseph Lombardi, and Alan Kahn, president of Barnes & Noble Publishing.

William Lynch, who joined B&N earlier this year as president of Barnes & Noble.com, is still guaranteed to earn 150% of his base salary, in accordance with his employment agreement. Lynch's base salary is $800,000.

The Christian Book Expo, a first ever "fan event" for evangelical Christian book lovers, drew only about 1,500 people to the Dallas Convention Center during a three-day run that ended Sunday. "It's far less than we had hoped for," said Mark Kuyper, president/CEO of the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association, which put on the event.

Kuyper said the marketing strategy relied too much on networking through publishers, authors and church groups, and would have to include billboards and other forms of mass marketing to pull in a much larger crowd. If ECPA tries again, Dallas will remain the site, Kuyper said. He added that the event was well-received. "The people who came just loved it," he said.

The expo featured workshops and panel discussions with authors, including one Saturday with best-selling author Christopher Hitchens and four Christian apologists.

Previously adapted for TV in 1990 as a miniseries set in 1958 and starring Tim Curry as the evil shape-shifting entity Pennywise, the film version, which is being produced by Warner Bros, will be set in the present day. No casting details are yet available and there is no director on board, though The Invasion's Dave Kajganich has been hired to write the script.

King's novel, which was the biggest selling book in the US in 1986, centres on a group of teenagers living in the fictional town of Derry, Maine, who call themselves The Losers Club. Together they confront Pennywise and seemingly destroy Pennywise, only for the creature to return 27 years later for another battle.

PW Comics Week: Why did the Times start a graphic novel list?

Diane McNulty: The ranking of Graphic Books has been an ambition of The New York Times for quite a while. The unveiling of these rankings is in keeping with the ongoing evolution of the Best Seller Lists, which have expanded to include Childrens' best sellers in four categories and the reimagining of Trade and Mass Paperback best sellers as separate entities.

PWCW: Why were these three categories (hardcover, softcover, manga) chosen over others?

DM: Our own research and feedback from retailers and publishers—as well as basic observations of the growth of these shelves—real and virtual—where people purchase their graphic books—led us to conclude that these three graphic categories are a natural place to start.

The latter correspondence with friends and contemporaries includes exchanges with his cherished angling companion, the late Ted Hughes – and an almighty squelch from his English teacher at Dulwich college in the 1960s, who marked a reference to TS Eliot in an essay by the aspiring author as "terribly snooty".

Swift described the experience of watching his life being driven away from the door of his London home, packed into 75 file boxes in the back of a white van, as "curiously akin to donating your body to medical science while still alive".

"There was also an element of feeling I was selling the family silver. Then I thought, well, I'm still alive, and healthy, and working – so suddenly it all felt like a tremendous relief, not having to worry about them any longer, not having to think what would happen to all those papers in the loft if there were a fire or a flood."

The archive includes letters, often on literary subjects, with friends such as the poet laureate Andrew Motion, and many fellow Booker-winning novelists including Kazuo Ishiguro, Pat Barker and Michael Ondaatje. The Ted Hughes correspondence barely mentions literature. The two men, both passionate anglers, were fishing friends on the river Torridge in Devon – a river in which, Swift recalled wistfully, it was possible to catch trout, salmon, or, on a really five-star day, sea-trout. "We rarely spoke even briefly of what we were working on," Swift says. "For both of us fishing was an escape from all that. I miss him very much."

The winning bidder was a vintage comic book collector from Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. His wife is a fan of the Harry Potter series. "Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone," was one of only 200 copies from the first printing issued with illustrated wrappers by London publisher Bloomsbury. The 1997 book includes an illustrated card signed by author J. K. Rowling.

King's agent, Ralph Vicinanza, said Tuesday that downloads of King's novella UR, available only as an e-book and released to coincide with the launch of Amazon's upgraded Kindle reader, have reached "five figures" after barely three weeks on the market.

In 2000, in the early years of digital texts, King's novella Riding the Bullet was downloaded hundreds of thousands of times, overwhelming Amazon.com and other online sites.

Following a nasty break-up, lovelorn college English instructor Wesley Smith can't seem to get his ex-girlfriend's parting shot out of his head: "Why can't you just read off the computer like the rest of us?" Egged on by her question and piqued by a student's suggestion, Wesley places an order for Amazon.com's Kindle eReader. The [pink?] device that arrives in a box stamped with the smile logo -via one-day delivery that he hadn't requested - unlocks a literary world that even the most avid of book lovers could never imagine. But once the door is open, there are those things that one hopes we'll never read or live through. Firm, gripping, and deftly written by a craftsman at the top of his game, this is King at his crisp, clear, page-turning best. Download and read UR only on Kindle.

Fictionwise, which operates the Fictionwise.com and eReader.com Web sites, was founded in 2000 by Steve and Scott Pendergast, who will continue to head the company B&N said it will operate as a separate business unit based in New Jersey. B&N added, however, that Fictionwise is part of its overall digital strategy, which includes launching an e-bookstore later this year. Last month, PW reported that B&N had plans to open an e-bookstore sometime in March; the company had no comment at the time.

The 200 or so draft pages of The Pale King were found two months after Wallace's death by his wife, Karen Green, when she was sorting out the garage where Wallace worked. The book is set in a tax office in the American midwest and features a cast of bored Internal Revenue Service agents who seek to transcend the tedium of their jobs.

An extract from the manuscript has been published in this week's New Yorker, and Michael Pietsch, Wallace's editor at Little, Brown, has said that he has a tentative agreement with Wallace's agent to publish The Pale King in the spring of 2010. Pietsch described the experience of reading the manuscript, along with the accompanying notebooks and drafts, as one of "joy" rather than pain because of Wallace's "astounding, levitating, daring" writing.

The work expands on the concept of the virtues of mindfulness and concentration that Wallace tackled at a 2005 commencement speech at Kenyon College, when he declared that true freedom "means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed."

Rod Blagojevich may not have been able to sell Barack Obama's US Senate seat (allegedly) but he is seeking to cash in on selling something else: books. Today the former Illinois governor signed a six-figure deal with Beverly Hills-based Phoenix Books. The deal is the largest advance by the independent publisher. The company has previously published books by the likes of CNN's Larry King and rock star Gene Simmons.

Glenn Selig, Blagojevich's publicist, said the former governor will pull no punches in the book and that "there were some people in high places who didn't want the governor to write this book". The book should be released in October and is tentatively titled The Governor.

Gillies, who has a recurring minor role as Elliot Stabler's wife on the NBC show Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, chronicles the collapse of her marriage in the book. Starbucks's push will now see the title, which is also appearing in this month's Vogue, featured in more than 7,000 of its stores.

Borders is continuing to try and get its financials in order; to that end the company has eliminated 136 positions, most of them at company headquarters in Ann Arbor, Mich. This most recent cut comes just two weeks after Borders eliminated several top management jobs as well as a number of employees who held the director title. This week's reductions, by contrast, affected entry-level to middle-management employees across all departments, and represents 12% of the corporate workforce, but less than 1% of the company's total workforce.

Borders CEO Ron Marshall called the cuts "one of the necessary steps we must take, along with other non-payroll expense reductions, to help get this company back on track financially. We will continue to move forward with deliberate speed to make the changes required to get Borders back on firm financial footing."

Just last week Borders got an extension from Pershing Square Capital Management, its largest shareholder, for the repayment of its $42.5 million loan until April 15. It also extended its put option to acquire its Paperchase subsidiary until April 15.

"Rice will combine candid narrative and acute analysis to tell the story of her time in the White House and as America's top diplomat, and her role in protecting American security and shaping foreign policy during the extraordinary period from 2001-2009," according to a statement issued Sunday by Crown, a division of Random House Inc.

*****

Rice, 54, also will write a memoir about her family, scheduled for 2012, and a young-adult edition of her family book that will come out at the same time. None of the planned works are currently titled.

*****

Her family memoir, according to Crown, will tell of her "upbringing in the context of the extraordinary efforts made by her parents and other people in the community to raise children against a backdrop of fading Jim Crow laws and emergent civil rights initiatives."

The 60-year-old British writer received the knighthood at a ceremony at Buckingham Palace on Wednesday. Pratchett is known for his "Discworld" series of novels, and has sold more than 55 million books worldwide. He announced last year that he has early onset Alzheimer's — a rare form of the disease.

In light of the economic challenges facing us, we have decided to restructure and streamline the General Books Group.

Four years ago, we launched the Collins Division within the U.S. General Books Group. While acknowledging its many successes, we have decided to return to a more focused structure. Hence, we are closing the Collins Division and realigning the imprints.

Harper, under the continued leadership of SVP, Publisher Jonathan Burnham, will expand to include the books on the Collins general non-fiction list, Collins Reference titles and Collins Business books. The Collins general non-fiction list will be published under the Harper imprint going forward. Collins Reference, both hardcover and paperbacks, will remain intact under Bruce Nichols, VP, Publisher of Collins Reference, who will also serve as Executive Editor at Harper. The Smithsonian program will continue under Elisabeth Dyssegaard. The Collins Business list will be published as Harper Business books going forward. Hollis Heimbouch, VP, Publisher, will continue to oversee the business books program and also become Executive Editor at Harper. Bruce, Elisabeth and Hollis will report to Jonathan, as will Executive Editor Adam Bellow and Senior Editor Ben Loehnen.

Collins trade paperbacks, with the exception of Collins Reference and Collins Design, will be folded into Harper Perennial and Harper paperbacks under SVP, Publisher Carrie Kania. Collins Design’s VP, Publisher Marta Schooler and her entire team will now report to Carrie, and continue to publish under the Collins Design imprint. Additionally, to further strengthen our paperback program, the Avon trade paperback line will now fall under Carrie. Stephanie Meyers, Associate Editor, will join the group and report to Cal Morgan, VP, Editorial Director.

Liate Stehlik will take over the role of SVP, Publisher of William Morrow/Eos/Avon, and will continue to oversee Avon and Harper mass market titles. Collins Living titles will be published as William Morrow books going forward and will now be part of the William Morrow imprint. Mary Ellen O’Neill will join this group as VP, Executive Editor, and take on the added responsibility of managing the William Morrow cookbooks program reporting to Liate. Senior Editor Matthew Benjamin and Editor Anne Cole will continue to report to Mary Ellen.

The only child of the publishing giants Alfred and Blanche Wolf Knopf, Pat Knopf, as he was called, worked at his parents' company, concentrating mainly on sales and marketing, when he approached his father about hiring the editor Simon Michael Bessie as the Knopfs' eventual successor. Bessie had recently been passed over for the position of editor in chief at Harper & Row in favor of Evan Thomas.

When his father refused, blaming his mother's resistance because she apparently did not like Bessie, Knopf said in an interview in 2005, Knopf decided to join Bessie and Hiram Haydn, an editor at Bobbs-Merrill, in founding Atheneum. They lined up four backers, each willing to put up $250,000. Cornelia Schaeffer, who would later become Bessie's wife, joined the house as an editor about a year after its founding.

Atheneum got lucky fast. Its first three lists produced three No.1 best sellers: "The Last of the Just," a novel about the Holocaust by Andre Schwarz-Bart; "The Making of the President, 1960," the first in Theodore White's series on presidential campaigns; and "The Rothschilds: A Family Portrait" by Frederic Morton.

BEA show manager Lance Fensterman said the cost reductions "show our commitment to helping defray costs for everyone who attends the show." For example, the Doubletree Metropolitan will reduce its room fee from $269 to $219, while the Park Central has reduced its rates from $309 to $199. Rates at the Doubletree Times Square will be reduced from $379 to $299 and the InterContinental hotel's rates will be reduced from $299 to $249.

Fensterman said he is working to get more hotel price reductions and will make additional announcements soon. "One of the advantages to being in the same place for three years is that it gives us more negotiating power," he noted.

In another sign of the economic times, the ABA announced that it is taking various steps, among them reducing its staff and instituting a hiring freeze, to scale back operating costs. The decisions, which came out of the ABA board meeting last week in Salt Lake City, will result in a 12% staff reduction (equivalent to at least five full-time positions) through attrition; suspending contributions to employees' 401(k) and SEP plans; and eliminating all discretionary travel and discretionary spending. The ABA also intends to deliver educational programs electronically, through webinars and other "web-based communication." The cutbacks have also led to the cancellation of the group's spring forum schedule and a revamping of employees' medical benefits.

"There was a period when John and I felt it was a good idea to watch the world of e-books evolve before diving in," said David Gernert, Mr. Grisham's longtime literary agent. "Now that it's a more mature marketplace, he will be available very soon in all digital formats."

Earlier this week, Amazon introduced an updated version of the Kindle. Although many current best-sellers are available for $9.99 on the Kindle, Mr. Grisham's newest novel, "The Associate," a legal thriller that ranks No. 1 on The Wall Street Journal list of fiction best-sellers, isn't for sale. A spokeswoman for Random House declined to comment except to say, "We would be thrilled by the opportunity to publish all of John Grisham's books in e-book format." Mr. Grisham's hardcover titles are published by Random House's Doubleday imprint, his paperbacks are published by Random House's Dell imprint and his audiobooks are published by Random House's audio unit.

Albert N. Greco, a professor at the Fordham Graduate School of Business who studies the book industry, said there weren't any reliable consumer revenue figures for e-books. But they are widely considered one of the fastest-growing segments of the book-publishing business at a time when the industry is being crippled by the recession.

Edwards, wrote a first, well-received memoir "Saving Graces" in 2006 focusing on her battle with breast cancer and the death of her 16-year-old son in a car accident. The new book, "Resilience," will be published in May by Broadway Books, part of the Random House group which is a division of Germany's Bertelsmann AG. Broadway Books said in its catalog that Edwards "shares her inspirational message on the challenges and blessings of coping with adversity."

The catalog also describes Edwards as a woman who "would exhibit (this) remarkable grace and courage again when the very private matter of her husband's infidelity became public fodder." But the description stopped short of saying exactly how detailed Edwards would get when writing about her husband's affair with video producer Rielle Hunter, and a spokesperson for Broadway did not immediately return a request for comment.

A brain-imaging study carried out by psychologists at Washington University in St Louis used functional magnetic resonance imaging to track brain activity as participants read short stories, finding that reading is by no means a passive activity. Instead, as participants read from a 1940s text about the daily activities of a young boy, activity in different brain regions increased depending on what was going on in the story.

So, if the character in the book "pulled a light cord", brain activity increased in the frontal lobe region which controls grasping motions. As the character in the story "went through the front door into the kitchen", activity went up in the relevant temporal lobes.

"There has been good evidence for a while that mental simulation - imagination - can improve performance in sport and other skilled behaviours. This study suggests that readers do mental simulation when they comprehend a story," Jeffrey Zacks, a co-author of the study and director of the university's dynamic cognition laboratory, said today. "It could well be that the simulations we perform when reading function like skilled practice. I was reading a cooking magazine last night, and I certainly hope that helps me get better with a whisk."

Mortimer's family said he died early in the morning at his home in the Chiltern Hills northwest of London, with his wife and children at his side. They did not disclose the cause of death. Mortimer combined a career as a lawyer with a large literary output that included dozens of screen and stage plays and radio dramas.

His most famous creation was Horace Rumpole, a cigar-smoking, wine-loving barrister who appeared in a TV series and a string of novels and stories. Tony Lacey, Mortimer's editor at publisher Viking, said it's hard to think he's gone.

OUP president Tim Barton said the cuts were "a result of the difficult economic environment impacting the publishing industry." OUP employs roughly 700 people in the U.S., and publishes approximately 500 new titles a year, approximately half of which are monographs. OUP spokesperson Christian Purdy said besides shedding jobs, the press was not planning any dramatic cuts to its publishing program or to any other strategic initiatives. Purdy said the cut was made in anticipation of a reduction in state and library budgets for next year.

Palin has reportedly enlisted the services of Robert Barnett, the Washington lawyer who represented President Obama, would-be President Hillary Rodham Clinton and former President Bill Clinton in their multimillion-dollar book deals.

*****

The economy could also be a factor in how much Palin, whose family is not wealthy, could earn from any book. In recent months, reports of her wanting as much as $11 million for her memoirs have surfaced, though she could get far less. Former First Lady Laura Bush just sold her memoirs for less than $2 million.

But there is more than money at stake. Palin has been trying to stay in the spotlight, presumably with an eye on 2012, and a book could help as well as giving her some sort of a base beyond Alaska.

"Say it plain: that many have died for this day," said Alexander, a professor of African American studies at Yale University and personal friend of Obama, during the reading of her poem Praise Song for the Day. "In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air, / any thing can be made, any sentence begun. / On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp, / praise song for walking forward in that light."

The poem, only the fourth to have been read at an inauguration behind works by Miller Williams and Maya Angelou, who composed poems for Bill Clinton, and Robert Frost, who recited The Gift Outright for John F Kennedy, has not been received with universal acclaim, with the Los Angeles Times calling it "less than praiseworthy" and The New Republic describing it as "bureaucratic". But Alexander's publisher Graywolf Press is rushing out an $8 paperback of the poem on 6 February nonetheless, with a 100,000 first print run. With over two weeks to go before publication, the book is already the bestselling poetry book on Amazon.com; Alexander's new-found celebrity has also sent another of her titles, the 2005 Pulitzer prize finalist American Sublime, into the third spot.

Oprah Winfrey broke her silence Friday about former guest Herman Rosenblat, saying she's "very disappointed" in his now discredited story about meeting his future wife in a Nazi concentration camp. "That's what happens with lies," Winfrey said on an episode of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" that aired Friday. "They get bigger and bigger and bigger."

Rosenblat, a 79-year-old resident of North Miami Beach, Fla., and his wife Roma have appeared twice on Winfrey's show. Winfrey said he had planned to appear again to "explain himself," but the man's lawyers scuttled that. Rosenblat's tale of a little girl throwing apples over a barbed-wire fence to him every day at a sub-camp of Buchenwald in the 1940s was endearing, Winfrey said. "And he told that story and I was crying, everybody was crying," Winfrey said.

*****

Until Friday, Winfrey let her Web site do the talking, adding a small disclaimer that "on December 27, 2008, Herman Rosenblat admitted to fictionalizing portions of his life story, including how he met his wife." As of Friday night, Rosenblat's discredited tale remained listed on the site as the first example of "Love Lessons From Amazing Couples."

Skira Rizzoli International will be based in the Italian company's New York City office with Rizzoli New York president Charles Mier overseeing it. Mier, who said Rizzoli has already found success collaborating on titles with museums for various exhibitions -- he cited books like Andrew Wyeth and Monet in Normandy as examples -- sees Skira Rizzoli as helping the house strike more co-publishing arrangements. "We felt the time was right to formalize and expand our program in conjunction with our sister companies worldwide, bringing to museums a wider range of opportunities," Mier said.

While Rizzoli's existing staff will work on the new imprint, Karen Hansgren has been brought on as its associate publisher. Hansgen comes from a museum background and was director of publications at the New Museum of Contemporary Art. Skira Rizzoli will coordinate with Skira Flammarion in France and Skira Italy on foreign editions of its books. Skira Rizzoli is set to launch in fall 2009; a spokesperson at the publisher said that the number of titles it will be releasing has not yet been finalized.

In an interview with Fox News, Dubya revealed he was planning on writing a book, although he hasn't quite pinned down what he'll be writing about yet. "I'm not quite exactly sure what it's going to be, but I'm toying with the idea of maybe describing the toughest decisions I had to make as president, and the context in which I made them," he told interviewer Brit Hume. "What's evident to me is that it is very hard for people to remember what life was like a mere four or five years ago, and it's going to be very important for me to recreate the environment in which I had to make certain decisions, particularly the environment right after September the 11th, 2001."

Although he refused to be drawn on how long it would take him to deliver the book - "that's the kind of question I better not answer ... I'll say two years, and it'll be four" – Bush was sure that his "type A" personality would mean it wouldn't be too lengthy a project. "I require things to do, and I bet once I get going on this book, I'll be able to get 'er done," he said.

The news follows his former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff Karl Rove's surprise revelation on 26 December that Bush devoured a total of 40 books in 2008, 51 in 2007 and 95 in 2006, with reading matter an erudite mix of history and biography - as well as an annual flick through the Bible, and an excursion into existentialism with Albert Camus's The Stranger in 2006.

Since winning the 2006 season of The X Factor, Lewis has broken sales records, serenaded Mandela and performed at the Beijing Olympics with Jimmy Page. The book will include over 100 new photographs, suggesting that pictures – and not meticulous prose - will be the means by which Lewis tells her tale.

"The last two years have been an unbelievable experience for me," she said in a statement. "So to have it documented in pictures and to be able to tell people in my own words how it feels means a lot to me." Dean Freeman, who worked on David Beckham's autobiography, has been hired to take new photographs of the 23-year-old -- of Lewis hunched over a typewriter perhaps, or thumbing through the Oxford English Dictionary.

"This will be the first time Leona tells her story of how the X Factor launched her from waitressing in Pizza Hut in Hackney to stardom on both sides of the Atlantic," raved Fenella Bates, Lewis's editor at Hodder & Stoughton. "It is a real-life fairytale and every girl's dream."

Publishing house Scribner, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc., has acquired the rights to the first lady's book. In a statement, Scriber says the memoir will offer "an intimate account of Mrs. Bush's life experiences, including eight years in the White House."

Nan Graham, Vice President and Editor-in Chief of Scriber, will edit the book. Neither Scriber nor the White House has said how much Mrs. Bush will be paid. Laura Bush's predecessor, Hillary Clinton, received a blockbusting $8 million advance for her book, "Living History." Former First Lady Barbara Bush's memoirs far outsold her husband's.

In 2010, HarperCollins will release an investigative work, currently untitled, by reporter-anchor Andrew Kirtzman, who has been featured on the New York City television stations WCBS and NY1. Random House will publish a Madoff book, also currently untitled, by Richard Behar, a journalist who has written for Time, Fortune and other magazines.