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.

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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.

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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.

July 16 will find her book, Slumdog Dreaming, simulatenously released in the U.S. and U.K. Publisher Transworld, says, besides recounting Oscar night, Ali will tell her story of "playing marbles with her friends beside the sewers of Garib Nagar in Mumbai, to dancing along to the Bollywood films she and her family watch on their old television set.

"Rubina brings alive a world of wastelands and rat-infested shanty dwellings, and shows us her home, a wooden shack with a tarpaulin roof, where she grew up with her beloved father and siblings," says the statement.

Maureen "Moe" Girkins, CEO of Zondervan, said the company, a division of News Corp.'s HarperCollins publishing company, was going to "work with Kate to reassess the schedule for her next book."

"We are saddened by this news from the Gosselins and will continue to lift both Jon and Kate and their children up in prayer. We respect their need for time to focus on their family during this difficult time."

The Gosselins announced a separation Monday (June 22) during an episode of their popular TLC network show. They later issued a statement saying divorce papers had been filed. The show is on hiatus until Aug. 8

A spokesman for Simon & Schuster said Cheney would write his book about his service in four presidential administrations for the publisher's Threshold Editions, The New York Times reported Wednesday.

His memoir has a publication date in the spring of 2011.

Cheney has been shopping for a publisher for about two months, the Times reported. The deal was negotiated by Robert Barnett, a Washington lawyer who also represents former Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, and U.S. President Barack Obama.

Published in early May by HarperCollins with an announced first printing of 150,000, "A-Rod" has sold just 16,000 copies so far, according to Nielsen BookScan, which tracks about 75 per cent of industry sales. The book sold 11,000 in its first week, then quickly faded.

At the Rizzoli Bookstore in midtown Manhattan, "A-Rod" has sold two copies. Twenty-seven copies have sold at Posman Books, based in Grand Central Terminal, but none in the past two weeks.

"I don't think he's ever been embraced by serious fans," Logan Fox, a manager at Posman, said Wednesday. "He's still considered an outsider."

In The Day I Shot Cupid (to hit stores March 2010), the Ghost Whisperer star, 30, "reveals a surprisingly wicked sense of humor as she explores the new landscape of modern dating and offers up a wide range of practical tips, from text-flirting and IM-ing to what men and women really want, and how to start over after a breakup," according to a release.

See Jennifer Love Hewitt's weight ups and downs.

Says Ellen Archer, president and publisher of Hyperion and VOICE, the company releasing the novel: "We were instantly sold on Hewitt's sassy and irreverent take on modern love and felt that her own confidence would be inspirational to women of all ages."

Taschen is printing 1,969 copies of the book to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969. Numbers 1 through 1,957 will be priced at $1,000, while the final 12 copies (numbered 1,958 through 1,969) will come with a certified fragment of moon meteorite. Taschen has not yet priced the 12 "Lunar Rock" editions, but will base the price according to the meteorite size. Those volumes will come with cases designed by Australian designer Marc Newson, who recently designed aluminum champagne coolers for Dom Pérignon. Public relations manager Creed Poulson said the meteorite editions "will be the most expensive books we have ever done." Publisher Benedikt Taschen told PW, "We are confident that the 1,969 copies will sell out very quickly."

Poulson said Taschen stores will carry the book, as will the publisher's Web site, Barnes & Noble, Borders, Amazon and other retailers nationally and internationally. A B&N spokesperson said customers can special order the title in its stores; it will also be available at bn.com.

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.

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."

Since the inauguration, the Washington Post legend has been quietly reporting a new book on the Obama White House. "I'm in the preliminary stages of working on it," Woodward confirmed to me by phone recently. "I'm working on it and making progress."

Officially, the White House says it is not adopting a press strategy to respond to Woodward. Ben LaBolt, an Obama spokesman, wrote in an e-mail that the Craig memo "was not issued in relation to any inquiry related to a specific reporter or author." Still, there is reason to think that Woodward might make the administration particularly anxious. "Every White House is wary of Woodward, " says New York Times White House correspondent Peter Baker, who worked alongside him at the Post. What's more, Obama's White House is known to hate process stories, exactly the sort of exhaustive, in-the-room descriptions of high-level debates at which Woodward excels

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.

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.

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.

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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."

Gaghan's script will center on the relationship between an older man (Pacino) and the twentysomething son he was never close to. The two reconnect early on in the pic, and the boy, an idealistic drifter who's teaching in a downtown New York school, and the father, a finance type living in Connecticut, must navigate their new relationship.

Oh yes, the book. Well, the son has that Blink thing going -- he can size up people and situations on a dime. The Pacino character spots this, and both wants to help the boy find himself and use him to make some dough on Wall Street. It's "Scent of a Woman" with a finance-y twist -- colorful, self-involved older guy mentoring younger ingenue for reasons both selfless and selfish.

"There have been so many things written and said through mainstream media that have not been accurate, and it will be nice through an unfiltered forum to get to speak truthfully about who we are and what we stand for and what Alaska is all about," Palin said in an interview today in which she announced the deal.

Palin and HarperCollins would not say how much she was being paid. Asked why, the former Republican nominee for vice president said she didn't want to distract from the substance of the book.

"The idea is to focus on the content of the book and what's coming in terms of me being able to tell my story unrestrained and unfiltered," Palin said.

All existing copies are highly valued, according to Keys of Aylsham, the firm which auctioned the book which was bought by a local book dealer.

A signed photograph of Darwin sold at the auction for £22,000.

Andrew Bullock, book specialist at Norfolk auctioneers Keys, said: "It is the most important biological book ever and one of those rare occasions when the white gloves really do go on before you pick it up and you handle it with reverence.

As of Thursday afternoon, John M. Barry's "The Great Influenza," which came out five years ago, had climbed to No. 99 on Amazon.com's best-seller list. Barry's book tells of the 1918 pandemic that killed millions worldwide. A Barry work about the Mississippi flood of 1927, "Rising Tide," became popular after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005.

Also Thursday, publisher Henry Holt said that it had acquired Wolfe's "The Viral Storm," a book about "how viruses and humans have evolved side-by-side over the millennia" and "how viruses have often had the upper hand in the relationship."

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

And wait, here comes "A Lion Called Christian: The True Story of the Remarkable Bond Between Two Friends and a Lion," by Anthony Bourke and John Rendall, which enters the hardcover nonfiction list at No. 7 this week. If you aren't among the millions of people who have seen the online video, Christian is a lion cub bought at Harrods in 1969 by two friends who raised him in a flat above a London furniture store before arranging for his release into the wild in Kenya. When the men went back to find Christian a year later, the now-strapping pride leader recognized them and rushed over to give them what has to be one of the most heart-stopping embraces in screen history.

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.

"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.

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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.

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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."

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.

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.

The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum said it will display, as part of a weeklong celebration of Presidents' Day, a 1930 biography of Abraham Lincoln that was apparently borrowed by Kennedy, or a member of his staff, when he was serving in the Senate in the 1950s.

The Library of Congress book, "A. Lincoln" by Ross F. Lockridge, was found in Kennedy's pre-presidential papers. It has been listed as missing in the Library of Congress online catalog, and will be returned to its collection after the display.

"It has just always been assumed to have been one of his books," said library spokesman Tom McNaught, but the library recently learned "it had been checked out since he was a senator and he had just kept it."

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.

Japanese have a fervour for learning English and many bookstores have a corner dedicated to dozens of journals in the language, many of them now featuring the new U.S. leader's face.

"Speeches by presidents and presidential candidates are excellent as listening tools to learn English, because their contents are good and their words are easy to catch," said Yuzo Yamamoto of Asahi Press, which produced the best-selling text book.

"Obama's is especially so. His speeches are so moving, and he also uses words such as 'yes, we can,' 'change' and 'hope' that even Japanese people can memorise," he said.

Speeches by President George W. Bush and former nominee John Kerry's four years ago did not have the same appeal, however, and nor do those made by Japanese politicians, Yamamoto said.

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.

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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.

The bombshell revelations are expected to include Bush admitting to falling off the wagon, fighting with his wife, flirting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, privately calling Sarah Palin "hot" and once blasting Vice President Dick Cheney as a "Bozo," according to sources.

"George doesn't need the money. Writing his autobiography is an ego thing, as it is with all presidents," a close source told The ENQUIRER.

Bush's book will also contain some shocking revelations about his personal life, which is almost unheard of for a presidential memoir.

"George is expected to confess that he briefly fell off the wagon during his presidency," said a publishing source who has seen a proposal regarding the book.

"Laura caught him late one night with a drink. It led to a fight, and he hasn't had a drink since.

"George will also write that he and Laura had some major dustups, not only over drinking, but his wandering eye.

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."

At the Ferguson Library in Stamford, Conn., "it's not unusual for us to have 40 or 50 reserves on a popular book," says spokeswoman Linda Avellar. At the Randolph County Public Library in Asheboro, N.C., a 25% increase in visitors over the past six months from a year ago has been hard on 14-year-old carpeting that officials say needs to be replaced now rather than in six years, as planned.

This isn't the first time library attendance has spiked in a downturn. The 1987 and 2001 recessions saw similar jumps, librarians say. But few people thought that libraries would again be in such favor after so much information flooded the Web.

One big draw: Most libraries have put in free computer and Wi-Fi service. And they've begun stocking DVDs and videogames. With the recession weighing on them, "people recognize what a great value the public library is," says Jim Rettig, president of the American Library Association in Chicago.

Librarians are turning into job counselors -- and even social workers -- as they have to deal with a sometimes-desperate new class of patrons. "They are frustrated, overwhelmed and thought they would not be job hunting again in their lives," says Jan Perrier, head of reference and adult services at the Roxbury Public Library in Succasunna, N.J. "I had one woman just so overwhelmed she sat in front of the PC and cried."

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.

• Agatha Christie's Poirot: The Definitive Collection DVD Box Set. Fans of Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot, the Belgian detective who solves crimes using his little grey cells, will adore this fabulous boxed set of the BBC series which starred the brilliant David Suchet.
  
  
• The Complete Idiot's Guide to Publishing Children's Books, 3rd Edition by Harold D. Underdown (Alpha Books)
  
  
• A Silent Ocean Away by DeVa Gantt (Avon), a breathtaking saga of an extraordinary American family.
  
  
• Roads to Quoz: An American Mosey by William Least Heat-Moon, an ingenious and mirthful exploration of small-town America. (Little, Brown)

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.

The book is just the latest self-help book to be made into a film, although it is certainly one of the most unusual. Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo's 2004 New York Times bestseller He's Just Not That Into You has been made into a rom-com starring Jennifers Aniston and Connelly, Ben Affleck, Drew Barrymore and Scarlett Johansson, while Mireille Guilano's Why French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure, is being made into a film by Hilary Swank's 2S Films production company.

"Michael Wolff has been obsessed with me and my sex life for close to 30 years," she tells us. "I'm finally going to give him what he wants - he's going to get [bleeped] by Judith Regan."

Shortly after Doubleday signed him to write "The Man Who Owns the News," Wolff sent an e-mail to Regan, whose storied career at Rupert-owned HarperCollins had ended. She was fired amid controversy over her plan to publish O.J. Simpson's memoir, "If I Did It ..." "Once again, I beseech you: Talk to me," Wolff wrote Regan. "Considering the dreadful things I write about you when you don't talk to me, it really can't get any worse by talking to me. ... Come on, you know how this works. You're now the News Corp. whipping girl -- so at least put it back to them."

Regan refused. The result? In his book, Wolff allows that Regan succeeded "spectacularly" in producing best sellers for Murdoch. But Wolff also describes Regan as "a nut," "unemployable anywhere else" and "a reviled figure." He also reported in his main text that one of Murdoch's top lawyers accused her of making anti-Semitic remarks. Only in an unnumbered end note does he acknowledge that News Corp. later apologized to Regan, accepting that she never made those remarks (and reportedly paid her $10.75 million).

"Michael Wolff had an obligation to prominently set the record straight," says Regan. "He's grossly irresponsible. I'm going to sue him personally, so he'll have to spend his own money. He projects his own perverted view of the world on everyone else. He is consumed with hatred, vitriol and pathological envy."

Regan also resents Wolff's past claim that "on several occasions, [Judith and I] almost got involved." "He's having fantasies," says Regan. "He's a repulsive specimen." Says Wolff: "Among Judith's problems is a hair-trigger inclination to make loopy accusations. Some years ago when I wrote about her, she announced to The Washington Post ... that I was probably gay -- that I was writing critically of her because I was secretly in love with one of her boyfriends."

The singer and activist Harry Belafonte is embroiled in a feud with the family of Martin Luther King after he tried to sell papers relating to the late civil rights leader. Three documents, including a draft of King's first major speech against American involvement in Vietnam and another found in the pocket of the suit he was wearing when he was shot, were withdrawn from auction in New York following objections from the King estate.

Belafonte had said he intended to give the proceeds to charity. Hours before the sale yesterday the estate, which has been criticised for trying to profit from King's papers, issued a statement condemning the auction and saying that it believed the documents had been "wrongly acquired" by Belafonte.

"The King estate contends that these documents are the property of the estate of Martin Luther King Jr," the statement said. "Mrs Coretta Scott King [King's wife] and the King estate stopped a previous attempt by members of Harry Belafonte's family to anonymously and secretly auction wrongfully acquired King documents through a Beverly Hills auction house." It added that lawyers were "looking into issues related to the December 11th Sotheby's auction of King documents". According to the auction house, Belafonte - who became friends with King in Harlem in the mid-1950s - asked that the items be withdrawn from the sale.

In an interview before the objections from the estate were aired, Belafonte, a long-time social activist, said that he intended to donate the estimated proceeds of $750,000 to $1.3m to charities for "the disenfranchised". "I am at the end of my life," he said, "I will be 82 shortly and there are a lot of causes I believe in for which resources are not available, and there is a need to redistribute those resources."

The jury returned a unanimous verdict in favour of Briscoe and her publisher, Hodder & Stoughton Ltd., after a day of deliberations. The book has sold more than half a million copies since its publication two years ago, and Briscoe has written a sequel, "Beyond Ugly."

Briscoe testified that her mother beat her repeatedly with a stick for bed-wetting and called her a "dirty little whore." The abuse drove her to drink bleach in a suicide attempt and she had plastic surgery in response to her mother's taunts that she was ugly, Briscoe said. Briscoe, 51, is a lawyer and one of the first black women in Britain to be appointed a recorder or part-time judge.

*****

Briscoe testified that she did not owe it to her mother to be silent. "I had a story to tell and that . . . is that I, someone from dirt poverty, from absolutely nowhere, with absolutely no assistance whatever, having faced adversity at every turn, could come through," she testified. "I wanted to say to whoever read the book . . . you can be whatever you want to be. You just have to believe in yourself."

Publishers of "misery lit" will have been relieved at yesterday's outcome. But the truth is that all is not well in a genre which has boomed beyond all expectations since Dave Pelzer wrote A Child Called It in 1995. Sales of misery memoirs - marketed under the more upbeat label of "inspirational" memoirs - have declined this year, with the top 30 titles down nearly 35% on last year, according to Nielsen BookScan.

Last year's bestseller, Don't Tell Mummy, sold more than 300,000 copies over the year, while this year's, Not Without My Sister, is just topping 152,000, according to the Bookseller. The slew of legal cases means publishers are changing people and place names to make the stories as unidentifiable as possible.

"These things are generally so libellous, because you're talking about abuse. We tend to change the names," said publisher John Blake. "It's a very fraught area because it's quite subjective." Blake pulled out of the market six months ago after judging it to be saturated. "I think the public quite likes them but even the most miserable person in the world has got too many now."

Carole Tonkinson, a publisher at misery memoir powerhouse HarperCollins, says they are "cutting back a bit". She said: "There was a lot of over-publishing and there have been a lot of problems legally with some of them."

"I've been talking to some publishers, but nothing has happened yet — just a few visits," she said in a telephone interview Tuesday to discuss her upcoming special about the White House on cable's History channel.

Earlier this month, the AP reported on Bush's proposed book, citing three publishing executives with knowledge of the discussions who asked not to be identified because talks were in the early stages and highly confidential. The executives said that Bush is being represented by Washington attorney Robert Barnett, whose many clients include former President Clinton, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sen. Edward Kennedy.

Barnett, who worked with Bush when she and daughter Jenna collaborated on a children's book, declined comment Tuesday when contacted by the AP. A memoir from Laura Bush could be the political version of "Garbo Speaks." The public has long been fascinated by the first lady, if only because she has said so little about herself, and her life is already a bestseller in fictional form, in Curtis Sittenfeld's novel "American Wife."