Sick of hearing about vampires? So is Meena Harper. But as a writer for Insatiable, the second-hottest daytime soap, Meena's being forced to use a vampire story line to boost ratings. Not that she isn't familiar with the supernatural: Meena's always known how everyone she meets is going to die... until she crosses paths with Lucien Antonescu. Lucien's tall, dark, and lacking an expiration date: Could Meena finally have met The One?

She certainly thinks so... until Alaric Wulf, a member of a secret society of vampire hunters, swoops in to insist Meena's new boyfriend is "The Prince of Darkness." A direct descendant of the Dracul, Lucien is embroiled in an apocalyptic battle to retain control of the kingdom of night.

Meena's past relationships have always been a pain in the neck, but this is taking things to a whole new level. Now Meena’s got a lot more on her mind than ratings ... such as the end of the world.

Creators of the blood-drenched show have teamed with comic veterans for new stories of Sookie Stackhouse, her undead lover, Bill Compton, and the rest of the sex-crazed cast of mythical Bon Temps, La.

The first issue includes four alternate covers and a story line that traps the cast with an unnamed beast in Merlotte's Bar.

• Novel: The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi (Night Shade Books)
• Novella: The Women of Nell Gwynne's by Kage Baker (Subterranean Press9)
• Novelette: "Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast" by Eugie Foster (Interzone)
• Short Story: "Spar" by Kij Johnson (Clarkesworld)
• Ray Bradbury Award: District 9, Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell (Tri-Star)
• Andre Norton Award: The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente

Banks, the host of reality competition "America's Next Top Model" and whose own TV talk show is set to end this year, will write three books, Delacorte Press said.

She has already finished the first, called "Modelland", which is about a teen girl in a make-believe society at an academy for exceptional models called Intoxibellas. It will be published in the summer of 2011.

1. ttyl, ttfn, l8r, g8r (series) by Lauren Myracle. Reasons: Nudity, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group, Drugs
2. And Tango Makes Three by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson. Reasons: Homosexuality
3. The Perks of Being A Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky. Reasons: Homosexuality, Sexually Explicit, Anti-Family, Offensive Language, Religious Viewpoint, Unsuited to Age Group, Drugs, Suicide
4. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Reasons: Racism, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group
5. Twilight (series) by Stephenie Meyer. Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Religious Viewpoint, Unsuited to Age Group
6. Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group
7. My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult. Reasons: Sexism, Homosexuality, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Religious Viewpoint, Unsuited to Age Group, Drugs, Suicide, Violence
8. The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big, Round Things by Carolyn Mackler. Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group
9. The Color Purple Alice Walker. Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group
10. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier. Reasons: Nudity, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group

Even the most diehard baseball fans don't know the true story of William "Blockade Billy" Blakely. He may have been the greatest player the game has ever seen, but today no one remembers his name. He was the first - and only - player to have his existence completely removed from the record books. Even his team is long forgotten, barely a footnote in the game's history.

Every effort was made to erase any evidence that William Blakely played professional baseball, and with good reason. Blockade Billy had a secret darker than any pill or injection that might cause a scandal in sports today. His secret was much, much worse... and only Stephen King, the most gifted storyteller of our age, can reveal the truth to the world, once and for all.

Le Guin's petition asks Judge Denny Chin to exempt the United States from the revised legal settlement reached between Google and US authors and publishers over the Internet giant's vast digital book-scanning project. Chin is scheduled to hold a hearing on the revised agreement on February 18.

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In her petition, which is available on her website, ursulakleguin.com, Le Guin said the settlement was negotiated by the Authors Guild "without consultation with any other group of authors or American authors as a whole." "The Guild cannot and does not speak for all American writers," she said. "Its settlement cannot be seen as reflecting the will or interest of any group but the Guild." She said the National Writers Union, the American Society of Journalists and Authors, and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America were among those opposed to the settlement.

"We ask that the United States also be exempted from the settlement," she said. "We ask that the principle of copyright, which is directly threatened by the settlement, be honored and upheld in the United States." "We urge our government and our courts to allow no corporation to circumvent copyright law or dictate the terms of that control," Le Guin said.

HarperCollins has acquired several frontlist and backlist titles from Dorchester publishing and has also extended its distribution partnership. Authors include titles from Victoria Alexander, Nina Bangs, Christine Feehan, Sandra Hill, Marjorie M. Liu, Katie MacAlister, Lynsay Sands and CL Wilson. We are currently scheduling the Avon release of these books, and will sell, market and publish all acquired titles by these authors on a go-forward basis. We look forward to working with these talented authors to futher grow their brand recognition.

I am now writing for Avon, who will publish the entire Dirk & Steele series--the nine titles that have already been released, and two new books that are upcoming. I admit: I am very excited by this. When I first confirmed the news on Twitter, I think some folks were understandably confused by what it all means, and whether it's a good thing or not...but from my point of view, it's great. This is a new adventure and a fantastic opportunity, and I'm looking forward, very much, to writing my next two books with Avon.

Dirk & Steele has moved to a good home, and as an author who cares deeply about her books, that's a gift.

Pullman, 63, told the Western Mail: "If Sam is right then I am very disappointed because it obviously would have been very good to have seen the other two films made."

Catholic League leader Bill Donahue has said he is "delighted" by the effectiveness of his religious boycott – "I knew if we could hurt the box office receipts here, it might put the brakes on the next movie."

Pullman said of Donahue's triumphalism: "It's disgusting, but only the sort of behaviour I expect of these people. It's rubbish [that the Golden Compass introduces children to atheism]."

He added that he was particularly disappointed because the film adaptation of Northern Lights finished about three quarters of the way into the book. "So there were a number of very important scenes that were shot and were very good, but we didn't see them in the film. "Their justification was that they were going to use the scenes they'd shot, but at the start of the second film. It sort of made sense, but if what Sam Elliott says is true we won't see those scenes."

Waterstone's has launched a standalone Marketplace site in conjunction with Alibris, the giant online bookshop that sells used and rare books via a network of independent bookellers. In addition, individual book searches on the Waterstone's site now show secondhand copies, which are available to buy via a marketplace link.

Waterstone's said the development meant it could offer "access to tens of millions of items stocked by independent sellers from 45 countries around the world". Featured shops on the marketplace site include, Bailey Hill Book Shop, Castle Cary, Somerset; Literary Cat Books and Prints, Wales; Cromer Books; and Spinetinglers, Ballygowan.

Academic bookseller Blackwell signed a similar deal with Alibris in February last year. Borders made the same deal in September thus year. Waterstone's will also be competing with Amazon and Play.com, which both offer secondhand books.

"There was a different ending to 'New Moon.' Originally it was much quieter [and took place] in Bella's head," she said. Meyer changed it at the urging of her mom, Candy Morgan. She introduced the Volturi earlier, and — voila! — a Volturi smack-down jazzes up the end. Thanks, Candy.

Otherwise, Oprah and Meyer went over very familiar territory: "Twilight" came to Meyer in a dream; she imagined a hot vampire who was in love with a mortal girl; she wanted to know more; that dream became Chapter 13 of "Twilight." "In the dream it was two people in a circular meadow and one of them was a sparkly boy and one was just a girl who was human and normal and the boy was a vampire, which was bizarre," Meyer said. "It was a passion and frenzy when I started writing."

And of course, there was a question about Robert Pattinson. His hygiene having often been called into question, Oprah wanted to know, "What does he smell like?" "He smells great," Meyer said. "Rob is hilarious. He is the funniest person. He's not at all like the Edward character. He's so different. He just doesn't look like anyone else, in a good way. He's very striking looking."

The game, which has sold about 25,000 copies according to the publisher, follows a Hollywood-based 27-year-old musician who's given a device called a Soul Trap that turns him into an unlikely ghostbuster of sorts, allowing him to capture ghosts on Earth and send them to the great beyond. Although Atria couldn't yet speak to potential publicity plans, it's assumed that the imprint will be able to work off of the existing game platform to create tie-in potential for the books. The story idea was also tracking in Hollywood--we reported back in August that CAA is representing the film rights for the book and there was some interest on the left coast. No word yet about a film deal, though.

The first new volume, Lost Souls, will be published in May 2010 and begins a new story cycle that will continue with the two subsequent books, to be released in May 2011 and May 2012.

The books in Koontz's original Frankenstein trilogy have been bestsellers, and the third volume, Dead and Alive, debuted at number one on the New York Times paperback bestseller list when it pubbed in July. Lost Souls will pick up where Dead and Alive left off, with the setting moving to the American West and a new villain arriving on the scene. Koontz's longtime editor, Tracy Devine, will edit the new books.

Dr Jamie Tehrani, a cultural anthropologist at Durham University, studied 35 versions of Little Red Riding Hood from around the world. Whilst the European version tells the story of a little girl who is tricked by a wolf masquerading as her grandmother, in the Chinese version a tiger replaces the wolf. In Iran, where it would be considered odd for a young girl to roam alone, the story features a little boy.

Contrary to the view that the tale originated in France shortly before Charles Perrault produced the first written version in the 17th century, Dr Tehrani found that the varients shared a common ancestor dating back more than 2,600 years. He said: "Over time these folk tales have been subtly changed and have evolved just like an biological organism. Because many of them were not written down until much later, they have been misremembered or reinvented through hundreds of generations. By looking at how these folk tales have spread and changed it tells us something about human psychology and what sort of things we find memorable. The oldest tale we found was an Aesopic fable that dated from about the sixth century BC, so the last common ancestor of all these tales certainly predated this. We are looking at a very ancient tale that evolved over time."

Dr Tehrani, who will present his work on Tuesday at the British Science Festival in Guildford, Surrey, identified 70 variables in plot and characters between different versions of Little Red Riding Hood. He found that the stories could be grouped into distinct families according to how they evolved over time. The original ancestor is thought to be similar to another tale, The Wolf and the Kids, in which a wolf pretends to be a nanny goat to gain entry to a house full of young goats.

Germany has complained that Google had scanned books from U.S. libraries for a database without asking the owners, and there are also fears the service will be expensive for libraries as it is unclear what Google may charge them. "We hope that the court will not give its approval to the accord, or at least that it will remove German authors and publishers ... so they are unaffected," said German Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries in a ministry statement.

If that happens, Germans could decide for themselves whether to make their works available to Google. German officials will take part in a fairness hearing on Oct. 7, said the ministry. Last week, the European Union's media commissioner said she backed the Google deal.

Academic bookseller Blackwell signed a similar deal with Alibris in February last year. Borders will also be competing with Amazon and Play.com, which both offer secondhand books. Borders UK head of e-commerce Julie Howkins said that the retailer had decided to set up the new offer on its website to "make sure we're offering our customers the greatest range of books possible". Howkins added that "cash-strapped parents and students have now got another alternative" for back to school titles.

Individual product pages now offer second hand books where available along side other variations, such as hardback or e-book. Howkins said that this would insure that customers had the "widest selection possible". The section launched at the beginning of August, however Howkins said she expects sales to increase with the back to school season.

As many as 10,000 retail stores will close nationwide this year, led by clothing stores, electronics and food-and-beverage stores, and department stores, in that order, a study released Tuesday shows.

If the forecast holds, the store closings this year will be nearly double that of last year, when store closings stood at 5,100, said Sandra Reese, a principal at Grant Thornton LLP's offices in Chicago. Last year, the biggest store closings occurred in electronics, followed by home improvement-furnishings stores and in third place, apparel stores.

"It's been amazing to me how, in conversations, everyone from the low-end to the high-end shopper is cutting back on spending and not spending on lavish purchases," Reese said.

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Though bookstores represented only a fraction of the total, their closings are forecast to jump 500 percent from last year, to 400 stores.

This week, the Urban Libraries Council (ULC), a member organization of medium and large public libraries called for changes in the settlement plan, as did New York State librarian Bernard Margolis, in a separate open letter to leaders in the library community.

"This is a pivotal moment in the history of access to recorded information, not unlike the introduction of moveable type or the birth of the Internet," wrote Susan Benton, the Urban Libraries Council's (ULC) new president and CEO, in a letter to the federal court overseeing approval of the settlement. "It is important, therefore, that the needs of the public at large shape the thinking of those responsible for guiding this extraordinary advance."

The Digital Reader service will go live in December, and will give users access to hundreds of comics and graphic novels from publishers such as Marvel. Users will be able to download the comics straight to their PSP Go using its built-in wireless capabilities, and can read stories page-by-page or zoom in to read them frame-by-frame.

Among some of the early titles available are Spider-Man, X-Men and the Fantastic Four, as well as Star Trek. Sony, which also produces a dedicated ebook reading device, the Reader, could eventually expand the library to include other titles and novels.

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The PSP Go, which was unveiled at E3 in June, goes on sale in the UK on October 1, and is expected to cost around £150. The device is half the size and weight of the original PSP handheld games console, and features 16GB of flash memory, allowing users to store thousands of songs, photos and games on the device. It also has a slide-out control pad, and integrated Bluetooth, as well as a memory card slot to expand its storage limit.

Peter Brantley, a director at coalition co-founder Internet Archive said the group, whose members will be formally disclosed in the next couple of weeks, is being co-led by Gary Reback, a Silicon Valley lawyer involved in the Department of Justice's antitrust investigation against Microsoft Corp. last decade. Microsoft, Amazon.com Inc. and Yahoo Inc. have agreed to join the group. Mr. Reback did not reply to requests for comment.

Microsoft and Yahoo confirmed their participation. Amazon declined to comment. The coalition is the latest sign that Google's rapid ascent has made it a prime target for competitors, just as Microsoft was reviled as the industry's bully in the 1990s.

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The U.S. Justice Department and state attorneys general are continuing to investigate the settlement and have been discussing their concerns with Google, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers. The Justice Department sent the U.S. District Court reviewing the agreement a letter last month saying that it was investigating the agreement. The court gave the Justice Department until Sept. 18 to submit any concerns in writing.

But some of Google's close commercial rivals have held their fire publicly, while sharing their views with regulators.

The latest objection, filed with the Manhattan court today, comes from a Washington-based lawyer and writer who specialises in class-action law and monopolies. In his 47-page complaint, Scott Gant argues that potentially millions of authors in America and around the world are being coerced into accepting the deal without being fully informed about its implications.

"Anyone taking part in this project should be doing so as a conscious choice to participate knowing fully what they are doing. In fact, people are being forced to hand over to Google some of their intellectual property often with no understanding of what that means," Gant said.

Under US class-action law, authors and publishers who do not specifically opt out of the settlement are deemed to have signed up to it. But Gant points out that as an author himself — he wrote a book on the digital information revolution called We're All Journalists Now: The Transformation of the Press and Reshaping of the Law in the Internet Age — he has never received any legal notice about the case.

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Other opponents of the deal include the National Writers Union and the American Society of Journalists and Authors. Eighteen professors within the University of California system have also written to the court objecting that the settlement fails to protect the interests of academic authors and puts profit before the public's right to information.

We know everyone's excited for Scott Westerfeld's new book Leviathan, coming out in October. What to do while you wait? Get caught up on his amazing Uglies series, starting with a free book download of Uglies. Everybody gets to be supermodel gorgeous. What could be wrong with that?

The Twilight author has been served with a "cease and desist" order sent to her publisher, Hachette Book Group USA, by lawyers acting for Jordan Scott. The letter claims that the latest volume in Meyer's Twilight series, Breaking Dawn, which was published last year, "shows a striking and substantial similarity" to Scott's book The Nocturne, and asks the publisher how it intends "to cease and desist from any further copyright infringement and to compensate my client for her damages". Hachette called the claim "completely without merit" and said that any lawsuit would be "defended vigorously".

Scott's lawyer, J Craig Williams, claims that Scott's book was published and posted on the internet in 2006 and cites similarities. Among these are that both books include an after-wedding sex scene on a beach, that both contain a scene about a woman who is sick because she's pregnant with a child with evil powers, that both feature a scene in which the pregnant wife is dying, that both include a scene in which the main character sees their baby for the first time, and that both see the main character turn into a vampire. Scott also points out that in both books the main character refers to his wife as "love".

Early Friday afternoon, the studio completed a deal to purchase pre-emptively the film rights to "I Am Number Four," an unpublished science fiction book, for Bay to produce and possibly direct. It is the first in a planned six-volume series co-written by "A Million Little Pieces" author James Frey.

Neither the studio nor WME, which represents Frey and Bay, would confirm Frey or divulge the name of the other author. The deal is in the high-six figures.

WME began shopping the book's feature and publishing rights early in the week to a number of producers and studios. The agency used a pseudonym for the authors presumably because Frey is notable mainly for his scandal-ridden fudging of facts in his ostensible memoir of addiction and subsequent high-profile dressing down by Oprah Winfrey on her show.

The "Four" story line involves nine alien teens assimilating to high school on Earth after their planet is destroyed by an enemy species. The fourth of the group discovers that the enemy is now after him on Earth.

Writer and director Guillermo del Toro ("Pan's Labyrinth") teams with thriller writer Chuck Hogan ("The Standoff") to create a visceral page-turner that reimagines vampirism as a virus that causes its victims' bodies to mutate — disgustingly — into buglike creatures, stomping zombie-style around Manhattan and wreaking havoc. A disparate team of a rogue CDC doctor, rat-catcher and an Eastern European pawnshop owner come together to try to stop them.

Unlike Stephen King's classic "The Stand," another epic battle between good and evil involving a virus, the book never transcends genre fiction and the main characters remain staunchly two dimensional, secondary to the forward-rushing plot.

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.

Gervais will voice the lead character in the film version, which is being adapted for the screen by The Simpsons writer and producer Matt Selman. Flanimals, a four-volume series written by Gervais and illustrated by Rob Steen, introduced readers to a world of weird creatures, ranging from Grundit, a dopey, muscular blue Flanimal with a bump on its head, to Honk, a small Flanimal that spends most of its time asleep, but occasionally wakes to emit a loud honk.

Gervais's character, Puddy the Puddloflaj, is a pudgy, perspiring purple creature who spends most of its days avoiding the Grundit. "It will be great to play a short, fat, sweaty loser for a change," Gervais said. The film is being produced by Chris Meledandri under the auspices of new Universal offshoot Illumination. Flanimals does not as yet have a director or full voice cast.

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.

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."

Well, every little bit helps after they postponed the big day by eight months.

The studio rationalized that opening the sixth installment of the mega-hit franchise on a Wednesday is like giving it two consecutive debut weekends.

"Every day the kids are out of school in summer is just like an extra Saturday," said Dan Fellman, Warner Bros.' head of distribution.

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 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.

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.

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."

Publishers now on board include Houghton Mifflin, Simon & Schuster, Random House, Hachette and Penguin Group USA. Having these big names is a big step forward for iTunes itself in becoming an e-book shop and the iPhone in becoming a legitimate e-book reader and competitor to products like the Kindle and the Sony E-Reader.

The first official books will begin to roll out Monday and include titles such as Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight," Philip Pullman's "The Golden Compass" and a number of others by Christopher Paolini, Brad Meltzer and Scott Westerfeld. There are already several e-book readers in the app store, as well as a number of out-of-copyright e-books, but ScrollMotion's product is unique in that these are stand-alone and newer in-copyright titles and best-selling novels.

Each book is a separate application using Scroll Motion's new reader technology called Iceberg and is wrapped only in the FairPlay iTunes DRM, putting Apple directly into the e-book business by allowing them to pick up a certain percentage of each sale.

In his bio--and speaking backstage after winning an Oscar for The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe--Berger said that his fascination with special effects started with his mother, a teacher, as she read him Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. "That's what started this for me," Berger said.

So was he disappointed not to work on the film version of his favorite book? "No, I'm not," Berger said with a laugh. "We were approached four times, and we turned it down four times. [We turned it down] because I'm in love with it so much. I respect it too much. What is happening is what I thought would happen."

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Whether those reports are true or not, Berger said: "The direction that they were taking in the movie was certainly not the direction that I would have taken. It was potentially a catastrophe. I had a sinking feeling about it. I didn't want to get myself in it. It's a horrible idea."

Berger and his partner, Greg Nicotero of KNB EFX Group, in Van Nuys, Calif., met with Jonze, who is helming the movie for Warner Brothers. Berger worked on Star Wars: Episode III--Revenge of the Sith, Land of the Dead and Transformers, as well as The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, which comes out on DVD on Dec. 2.

"Even when I heard about it I thought, 'I don't want to do it,'" Berger said. "Greg and I met with Spike Jonze a couple of times, and they kept asking us if would we do it."

Random House has announced plans to add 6,000 backlist titles to its current e-book library. With these additions, Random House will have nearly 15,000 titles available in the digital format. (The house, which is the biggest trade publisher in the world, is already one of the largest e-book publishers.) Random will also, for the first time, make its entire catalog of both new and existing titles, available in the emerging standard format for the industry, e-Pub.

Among the titles being digitzed, which include those from the children's and adult divisions, are books by Philip K. Dick, Harlan Coben, Louis L'Amour, John Updike, Mary Pope Osborne and Barbara Park. Markus Dohle, chairman and CEO of Random, said the publisher is "making significant investments in the digital future" with moves such as this one.

"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.

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 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.

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.

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."

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.

Richard Mayhew came to London to make his fortune. He lands a job as a stockbroker, but he doesn't seem to be making much progress. His beautiful but cold fiancee Jessica is always pushing him to better himself, and, a kind fellow, he feels lucky to have her. One evening while on his way to a dinner with Jessica to meet her wealthy and influential boss, Richard nearly trips over a young woman who is bleeding from a switchblade wound. Over the loud protests of his outraged fiancee, Richard takes the woman home and cares for her. Her name is Door, and she disappears after she recovers somewhat. After Door's disappearance, Richard's life goes straight to Hell. He meets two grim and frightening personages who are looking for Door, then finds that no one can see or hear him in the normal world. He has fallen through the cracks into London Below -- a strange, magical and altogether frightening place which he must navigate in order to get his life back.

Neverwhere is a thrilling and brilliant dark fantasy novel from Neil Gaimon, author of the popular Sandman series. The world of London Below is peopled with a colorful and sometimes frightening characters, both human and not. The dialogue is crisp, witty and funny, the literary references fly thick and fast, with nods to outstanding authors from Charles Dickens to Douglas Adams, and the pace is breathtaking. This one's an absolute gem. Highly recommended.

The fifth and final of Rick Riordan's million-selling "Percy Jackson and the Olympian" books, "The Last Olympian," is coming out May 5, 2009. The first four adventures of the 12-year-old boy descended from a Greek god include such popular stories as "The Lightning Thief" and "The Sea of Monsters."

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."