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.

*****

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."

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

*****

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

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

It didn’t hit Harry Potter numbers, but Hachette Book Group USA estimated that it sold 1.3 million copies of Breaking Dawn, on August 2, the day the eagerly awaited final novel in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight Saga was released. The figure is a record first-day sales performance for an Hachette book. To meet the strong demand, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers went back to press for a second printing of 500,000 copies just prior to publication of the title, bringing the total number in print to 3.7 million. Among the major bookselling outlets, only Borders reported first-day sales figures for Breaking Dawn, announcing that it sold about 250,000 copies of the book. The first three titles in the Twilight Saga have sold 8.5 million copies in the U.S.

Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling announced on Thursday that she will publish a book of wizarding fairy tales in December and donate an expected $8 million (4 million pounds) in proceeds to her charity for vulnerable children. "The Tales of Beedle the Bard," which will be published on December 4, is mentioned in the seventh -- and final -- Potter book as having been left to Harry's friend Hermione Granger by Professor Albus Dumbledore, headmaster of their school Hogwarts.

Rowling initially only produced seven copies of "The Tales," bound in brown Moroccan leather and decorated in silver and moonstones. She gave six copies to people closely connected to the Potter books and auctioned off the seventh, which was bought in December by Amazon.com Inc, the Web retailer known for selling books, for about $4 million.

Bloomsbury Publishing and Scholastic will now publish editions with an introduction by Rowling, selling for $12.99, while Amazon will produce up to 100,000 collector's edition copies, which will aim to replicate the look and feel of the original book and sell for $100. "The new edition will include the Tales themselves, translated from the original runes by Hermione Granger, and with illustrations by me, but also notes by Professor Albus Dumbledore, which appear by generous permission of the Hogwarts Headmasters' Archive," Rowling said in a statement.

She said the proceeds from the book would be donated to the Children's High Level Group, a charity she founded in 2005 to help the 1 million children across Europe still living in large residential institutions.

Diane Sanabria, the youth librarian in Leominster Public Library's Robert Cormier Center for Young Adults, said many teens that come through the doors are falling in love with a series about vampires. "Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight" series is the hottest thing right now," Sanabria said. "The new book in the series, "Breaking Dawn" comes out August 1st." The series began in 2006 and tells the story of a teenage girl in love with a vampire. McCarron agreed Meyer's books are a huge hit and noted they are geared more toward female readers, but boys read them too.

*****

Both librarians noted a series by James Patterson called "Maximum Ride" is very popular with teens. The series chronicles a group of teens who escape from a lab where they were bred as 98 percent human and 2 percent bird. "Those books are really popular with both genders," McCarron said.

According to Rowling's agent, Christopher Little, the seven Harry Potter books have so far been translated into 67 languages, amassing the 400m figure since the publication of the first book in the series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, in 1997.

Despite the furious pace of sales, Harry Potter will still have his work cut out to catch the Bible, which, according to the Guinness Book of Records, has sold 2.5bn copies since 1815, and has been translated into 2,233 languages or dialects. Rowling would be more likely to catch Mao Zedong's Little Red Book, which has reportedly sold 900m copies, but its sales are slowing down.

Little, Brown is increasing the first printing of Breaking Dawn, the fourth and final book in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight saga, from 2.5 million to 3.2 million copies, making it the largest-ever first printing for the Hachette Book Group. The book pubs at midnight on August 2, and hundreds of bookstores will be holding midnight parties, a la Harry Potter. According to spokesperson Melanie Chang, the print run was upped after internal discussions about excitement from accounts were combined with bookseller feedback at BEA. The Twilight saga has a combined 6.5 million copies in print.

The Book Industry Study Group, a nonprofit organization supported by the publishing industry, projects a 3 percent to 4 percent growth through 2011, when revenues should top $43 billion. The BISG expects little change in the actual number of books sold and sees a drop in the general trade market by more than 60 million, from 2.282 billion copies in 2007 to 2.220 billion in 2011.

"The hits will keep doing well, but other books will have troubles," says BISG senior researcher Albert N. Greco, a professor of marketing at the Fordham University Graduate School of Business. The findings were announced at BookExpo America, being held this weekend at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Barring another Potter-like phenomenon, Greco believes the children's market will barely break even. Modest gains are projected in most adult categories, although that could change once Brown comes out with his long-awaited follow-up to "The Da Vinci Code." No release date has been set for the novel, which also features protagonist Robert Langdon, a Harvard University professor who interprets symbols.

The biggest losers likely will be mass market paperbacks, which continue to plunge as baby boomers seek formats with larger print, while religious books should keep growing, by more than 5 percent annually. The hottest market, according to the industry study group, isn't books, but standardized tests, boosted by the requirements of the No Child Left Behind legislation. Growth of 8 percent or better is expected through at least 2009.

Reading to young children stimulates their development and gives them a head start when they reach school, according to researchers who have reviewed studies on the effects of reading. Apart from helping their reading, sharing a bedtime story with a child promotes their motor skills, through learning to turn the pages, and their memory. It also improves their emotional and social development.

"You can imagine if someone technologically came up with a widget that would stimulate all aspects of a two-year-old's development, everyone would want to buy it," said Professor Barry Zuckerman, of the department of paediatrics at Boston University school of medicine, who led the study.

Studies show that children who are read to from an earlier age have better language development and tend to have better language scores later in life. Getting children to grip pages with their thumb and forefinger improves their motor skills.

Most important, though, said Zuckerman, is that reading aloud is a period of shared attention and emotion between parent and child. This reinforces reading as a pleasurable activity. "Children ultimately learn to love books because they are sharing it with someone they love," he said. The research is published in the journal Archives of Disease in Childhood.

The first instalment of the series finale will open on November 19, 2010, with the second released the following summer. Earlier reports indicated that Part II would premiere in May 2011. The studio announced the decision to split J.K. Rowling's final book in the popular wizard series into two films last month.

David Yates will return to direct the Deathly Hallows films, making him the series's most prolific helmer, steering four of the eight Potter movies. The sixth Potter film, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, opens in cinemas this November.

Google, the Internet's leader in search and advertising, says the process it developed and is using for scanning the majority of the books in Book Search is proprietary. Employees will not discuss it except to say it is much faster than what Mitchel is doing and it's not destructive. "It took us quite a while to develop it so we do keep that confidential," said a library manager for Book Search, Ben Bunnell, who declined even to say where Google does the scanning.

Many libraries began digitizing books a decade ago to preserve them. Funding from Google allows the 28 libraries it's working with to cut their digitizing costs because they don't have to pay for scanning the books Google wants to include in Book Search.

Through Book Search, users can track down a book on any topic they're interested in and read a small portion. If the book's not protected by copyright, users can download the whole thing. If it is, or if they just want to read an original, they can use Book Search to find copies to buy or borrow. More than 1 million rare or fragile books have been digitized through the Google-Michigan partnership since it began in 2004, with an estimated 6 million to go.

Reps for JKR have now confirmed to TLC that there will indeed be an extract of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows contained in this new book, along with two new illustrations of the story from author and artist Quentin Blake. Along with the contribution from Jo, others such as Philip Pullman and Jacqueline Wilson are contributing to the birthday book for The Prince of Wales, with new material due from Philip Ardagh and Anthony Horowitz. In addition to the new illustrations from Quentin Blake, other artists contributing are Axel Scheffler, Posy Simmonds and Emily Gravett. The Birthday Book will be published on November 6, with all proceeds to benefit The Prince's Foundation for Children and the Arts, a charity which”provides schoolchildren with opportunities to visit theatres, orchestras, museums and galleries."

Vander Ark wiped away tears when he was asked to reflect on what the case has done to his relationship with the community of Harry Potter fans. The former middle school librarian, who fell in love with the books in the late 90s and has devoted years to studying them and indexing their content online, could barely speak. "It's been ... it's been," he stammered, choking on his words. "It's been difficult because there has been a lot of criticism, obviously, and that was never the intention. ... This has been an important part of my life for the last nine years or so."

*****

During his testimony Tuesday, Vander Ark acknowledged that he, too, had substantial concerns all along about whether publishing an encyclopedia based on Rowling's Potter universe would constitute copyright infringement. He said he was talked into doing it by the publishing company.

Reporting its 2007 results, its pre-tax profit more than tripled to £17.86m - from £5.2m in 2006, a year when there was no book about the young wizard. As well as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, it said Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner had sold well.

The firm said 2008 had started well with "a strong pipeline of new titles". The global success of the Harry Potter books has historically generated bumper profits for Bloomsbury, but the company is now entering a new phase. Chief executive Nigel Newton said: "We are now well positioned for the post Harry Potter era. "We have reduced overhead costs, are successfully developing new business areas in specialist publishing, and have a strong pipeline of titles."

*****

However, not all experts believe the Harry Potter-effect has quite ended. A note from Numis Media Analysts said: "While the final Harry Potter book was released in 2007, we believe the group will be able profitably to mine the franchise for several years, including a paperback edition of Harry Potter 7 [The Deathly Hallows] possibly this year. "Beyond this, we expect the group to diversify either through organic growth or acquisitions."

At least since Dante's Paolo and Francesca fell in love over tales of Lancelot, literary taste has been a good shorthand for gauging compatibility. These days, thanks to social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, listing your favorite books and authors is a crucial, if risky, part of self-branding. When it comes to online dating, even casual references can turn into deal breakers. Sussing out a date's taste in books is "actually a pretty good way -- as a sort of first pass -- of getting a sense of someone," said Anna Fels, a Manhattan psychiatrist and the author of Necessary Dreams: Ambition in Women's Changing Lives. "It's a bit of a Rorschach test." To Fels (who happens to be married to the literary publisher and writer James Atlas), reading habits can be a rough indicator of other qualities. "It tells something about ... their level of intellectual curiosity, what their style is," Fels said. "It speaks to class, educational level."

Naming a favorite book or author can be fraught. Go too low, and you risk looking dumb. Go too high, and you risk looking like a bore -- or a phony. "Manhattan dating is a highly competitive, ruthlessly selective sport," Augusten Burroughs, the author of Running With Scissors and other vivid memoirs, said. "Generally, if a guy had read a book in the last year, or ever, that was good enough." The author recalled a date with one Michael, a "robust blond from Germany." As he walked to meet him outside Dean & DeLuca, "I saw, to my horror, an artfully worn, older-than-me copy of Proust by Samuel Beckett." That, Burroughs claims, was a deal breaker. "If there existed a more hackneyed, achingly obvious method of telegraphing one's education, literary standards and general intelligence, I couldn't imagine it."

• The Accidental Vampire by Lynsay Sands (Avon), the funny, sexy story of a woman who never intended to wind up being the only vampire in a small town.
  
  
• The Alpine Traitor by Mary Daheim (Ballantine), the charming new Emma Lord mystery.
  
  
• What the Dead Know by Laura Lippman (HarperCollins), the gripping crime novel that won the Quill Award.
  
  
• Manuscript Makeover: Revision Techniques No Fiction Writer Can Afford to Ignore by Elizabeth Lyon (Penguin).
  
  

A rare 1937 first issue of the first edition of the childrens' classic was sold at Bonhams earlier today, going for twice its pre-sale estimate. The copy, inscribed by the author with a message of thanks to his friend Elaine Griffiths, who helped the author see the work into print, went to an anonymous telephone bidder. The £60,000 price tag sets a new world record for signed copies of the book, which remains Tolkien's bestselling work, having sold over 100m copies since its first publication.

Also included in the sale was the first foreign language edition of The Hobbit, also inscribed to Elaine Griffiths. The Swedish version, dating from 1947, went for £1,560, almost four times its estimated sale price.

The last known photograph of Tolkien, taken by his grandson Michael on August 9 1973, was also included in the auction. The photograph shows the author in the Botanical Gardens of Oxford, where Tolkien taught Anglo-Saxon language and literature, leaning against his favourite tree, the Black Pine he named Laocoon after the mythical Trojan prophet. The photograph was a gift to Elaine Griffiths from Tolkien's daughter Priscilla, who wrote on the back "For Elaine with love from Priscilla".

The aviation pioneer's Lockheed Lightning P-38 disappeared July 31, 1944. In a forthcoming book, former Luftwaffe pilot Horst Rippert says he believes that he shot down the plane - although he is not completely sure. Le Figaro magazine published extracts of the book, "Saint-Exupery, the ultimate secret," this weekend. "I shot down Exupery," the magazine quoted Rippert as saying.

But the former Messerschmitt pilot also added: "I didn't see the pilot, and it would have been impossible for me to know that it was Exupery. I hoped, and I still hope, that it wasn't him." Saint-Exupery was 44. A scuba diver since found the wreckage of his plane on the Mediterranean seabed, offshore between Marseille and Cassis.

He has become one of France's most admired figures, in part because of "The Little Prince," a tender fable about a prince from an asteroid who explores the planets and then falls to earth. Saint-Exupery's other works, which largely deal with his aviation experiences, include "Wind, Sand and Stars" and "Flight to Arras," about a doomed reconnaissance mission.

The German pilot, Rippert, says in the book that he was a fan of the author's works. "In our youth, at school, we had all read him. We loved his books," he said. "If I had known, I would not have opened fire. Not on him!"

The studio purchased all rights to the five novels, composed of handwriting and animation, chronicling the daily indignities faced by middle school student Greg Heffley. Former Buena Vista president Nina Jacobson will produce the first feature, with more to possibly follow. Carla Hacken is overseeing the film's development for the studio.

Author/illustrator Kinney's first two books, last spring's "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" and February's "Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules," both hit No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list, with the first book staying there for 45 weeks. The author launched his underdog hero's story on Funbrain.com in 2004, attracting more than 50 million visits from fans.

Fox 2000 young adult book scout Riley Ellis met with Kinney a year ago and brought in the project, helping make the rights deal with agent Sylvie Rabineau and attorney Keith Fleer. The studio is currently seeking a director and screenwriter for the project.

"I do think that they really captured the spirit," Black said in an interview. "They really got the family dynamics. They really got the character dynamics. When Jared comes on screen, and he hits the front of the car with a stick, it just gave me chills. I was like, 'That's Jared. That's my boy.'"

Black wrote the text of the books, while DiTerlizzi drew the illustrations. They share authorial credit because of their close collaboration on the story, which follows the Grace family as they move into a new home and discover that there are mythical creatures living all around them. DiTerlizzi and Black also received executive-producer credits on the film and were consulted every step of the way.

"I think we made it clear that we [made] the books; we [weren't] going to tell [the producers] how to make a movie," DiTerlizzi said in the same interview. "That mindset--and it probably stems from us having such a collaborative give-and-take relationship--I think that allowed us to be able to swim amongst a highly collaborative project." Black added: "We actually did get to see all the scripts and give our feedback and give our thoughts, and they listened to us. And when they agreed with us, hopefully we were in some ways useful."

Both DiTerlizzi and Black were especially pleased with the film's production designer, James Bissell, whose previous work includes 300 and Good Night, and Good Luck. They said that his designs incorporated the important themes of the book in creative and subtle ways. "James Bissel is amazing," DiTerlizzi said. "I gave him everything that I looked at and used as reference, both for the sets and for the creatures. And then he was seeing stuff that you almost don't even think about it. [In] Spiderwick, one of the thematic elements is kind of man rubbing up against nature, if you take the stance that the fairies are kind of spirits of ... nature or what have you. So Jim was like, 'Oh, I've got oak-leaf motifs in the house.' The newel posts on the staircases all have acorns and stuff. So he was able to integrate it in ways that you just can't [illustrate]."

A story based on the Three Little Pigs fairy tale has been turned down by a government agency's awards panel as the subject matter could offend Muslims. The digital book, re-telling the classic story, was rejected by judges who warned that "the use of pigs raises cultural issues". Becta, the government's educational technology agency, is a leading partner in the annual Bett Award for schools.

The judges also attacked Three Little Cowboy Builders for offending builders. The book's creative director, Anne Curtis, said the idea that including pigs in a story could be interpreted as racism was "like a slap in the face".

The CD-Rom digital version of the traditional story of the three little pigs, called Three Little Cowboy Builders, is aimed at primary school children. But judges at this year's Bett Award said that they had "concerns about the Asian community and the use of pigs raises cultural issues".

The Three Little Cowboy Builders has already been a prize winner at the recent Education Resource Award -- but its Newcastle-based publishers, Shoo-fly, were turned down by the Bett Award panel. The feedback from the judges explaining why they had rejected the CD-Rom highlighted that they "could not recommend this product to the Muslim community". They also warned that the story might "alienate parts of the workforce (building trade)".

As a boy, author/illustrator Tony DiTerlizzi was told he "had a weird imagination." At a recent preview of the movie based on The Spiderwick Chronicles, the best-selling series DiTerlizzi wrote with Holly Black, he said, "This exceeds my boyhood imagination by miles." The five-book series about a family's battle with trolls, ogres and goblins has sold 4 million copies.

The movie, which stars Freddie Highmore and opens Feb. 15, may be scarier than the books. "When you read about an ogre, somehow it seems less scary than seeing it up on the big screen," DiTerlizzi says. But Black says, "You never know what's going to scare kids." One 6-year-old reader "thought the scariest thing was the part about the parents' divorce."

Amazon spokesman Craig Berman said Amazon wants to take the book on tour to libraries and schools, though the company doesn't yet have detailed plans. Amazon representatives did not disclose where the book is being stored. One of the book's five original stories, "The Tale of the Three Brothers" is told in the final "Harry Potter" novel, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows."

" 'The Tales of Beedle the Bard' is really a distillation of the themes found in the 'Harry Potter' books, and writing it has been the most wonderful way to say goodbye to a world I have loved and lived in for 17 years," Rowling said in a prepared statement. Rowling said the six other copies of the "Beedle" books have been given to people who were closely connected to the "Harry Potter" collection.

"Purchasing this book with the proceeds going to charity does, in a real tangible way, say thank you to J.K. Rowling for what she's done for readers around the world," Berman said. Rowling said she'd donate the proceeds to The Children's Voice campaign, a charity she co-founded to help improve the lives of institutionalized children across Europe.

• Autographed copy of How to Get Somewhere in the Music Business: From Nowhere to Nothing by Mary Dawson (CQK), the must-have guidebook for every aspiring songwriter.
  
  
• Still Summer by Jacquelyn Mitchard (Warner Books), the exciting and moving story of three women and their unexpected and shocking adventure.
  
  
• Widdershins by Charles deLint (Tor), the captivating bestselling urban fantasy set in and around the mysterious town of Newford.
  
  
• Science Fiction: The Best of the Year 2007, Edited by Rich Horton (Cosmos), the collection of short stories that will thrill sf fans. A Locus Recommended Reading Selection.