She told us: "Well, the second two times I went into rehab, to be honest with you, I had to go because it was a court thing. It was an obligation. I had to do it to stay out of getting any jail time. And I took responsibility for that. And it was like a vacation."

"I love meeting new people and seeing what they've been experiencing. That's what I go through in different characters. And I met some great people.

"It was a nice time to shut everyone off for a while because there was so much noise. There were some things I had done... I had put myself in situations which I probably should have thought through."

The reality star is scheduled to release I Just Want You to Know: Letters to My Kids on Love, Faith and Family on April 13 by Zondervan Publishers. The personal book will feature prayers, excerpts from her journal and eight individual letters addressed to each one of her children.

"Each day the thought crosses my mind that when they get older, my kids are going to look back and think about how they were raised," Gosselin says in a statement. "I know they will have a lot of questions about things that may not make sense because they were raised so unconventionally. I don't want them to grow up and wonder; I want them to know without a shadow of a doubt how much I love them and how much every sacrifice made was worth it for them."

Motoko Rich, my colleague, spoke with a person who had a direct conversation with a person at Macmillan familiar with the conversations with Amazon. Macmillan offered Amazon the opportunity to buy Kindle editions on the same "agency" model as it will sell e-books to Apple for the iPad. Under this model, the publisher sets the consumer book price and takes 70 percent of each sale, leaving 30 percent to the retailer. Macmillan said Amazon could continue to buy e-books under its current wholesale model, paying the publisher 50 percent of the hardcover list price while pricing the e-book at any level Amazon chooses, but that Macmillan would delay those e-book editions by seven months after hardcover release. Amazon's removal of Macmillan titles on Friday appears to be a direct reaction to that.

Dear Customers:

Macmillan, one of the "big six" publishers, has clearly communicated to us that, regardless of our viewpoint, they are committed to switching to an agency model and charging $12.99 to $14.99 for e-book versions of bestsellers and most hardcover releases.

We have expressed our strong disagreement and the seriousness of our disagreement by temporarily ceasing the sale of all Macmillan titles. We want you to know that ultimately, however, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan's terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books. Amazon customers will at that point decide for themselves whether they believe it's reasonable to pay $14.99 for a bestselling e-book. We don't believe that all of the major publishers will take the same route as Macmillan. And we know for sure that many independent presses and self-published authors will see this as an opportunity to provide attractively priced e-books as an alternative.

Kindle is a business for Amazon, and it is also a mission. We never expected it to be easy!

Thank you for being a customer.

Hachette will handle sales and distribution of Peterson's titles into traditional and nontraditional trade channels internationally, for both physical and e-book formats. Hachette Book Group COO Kenneth Michaels said, "We're excited to be working with Peterson's, and look forward to helping them expand their brand both domestically and internationally, as well as supporting them in their developing e-book strategy."

"I love the connection I've made with my readers through my books and am so excited to update them on all the stories that have happened since Mommywood," Tori said in a statement on Thursday. "It's been an amazing and emotional journey so far and being able to share it is a gift."

*****

"[The book] will once again allow readers to share Tori's unique and very public life and misadventures -- complete with growing children, daredevil husband Dean, a tight circle of friends, welcome and invasive cameras, and an infamous mother -- with humor and candor," Gallery Books said in a release. "The new book will offer fans the latest updates in her never complacent life balancing parenthood with the pressures of living in Tinseltown, including reaction to the tabloid scrutiny of her weight, the truth behind the latest 'feud' making headlines [and] becoming a mini-mogul via her many business ventures and lines."

It is working with iPhone app creation platform Mobile Roadie, using an author-focused variation of Mobile Roadie's app creator that currently supports apps by musicians including Brad Paisley and Alice in Chains. Releasing today are apps for authors Steve Berry, Sophie Kinsella, and Karen Marie Moning.

The apps will let fans preview books, access bonus content, interact with other fans, check upcoming author appearances, listen to audiobook clips, and watch author videos and book trailers.

The company also reported that its Kindle electronic reader became the most "gifted" item in Amazon history. Are bound books soon to be the eight-track tapes of the reading world?

In another alarming sign for traditional publishers, it seems that Amazon's already cheaper-than-a-physical-book price point of roughly $9.99 is still too expensive for many consumers. An analysis by the lit bloggers at Galley Cat found that 64 of the 100 e-books topping the Kindle best-seller list yesterday were priced at $0.00. Yes, that's right: free. The list of free Kindle best-sellers includes some classics that are in the public domain (e.g., Arthur Conan Doyle's The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Jane Austen's zombie-free Pride and Prejudice).

But it also features recent titles from mostly smaller publishers, like the current No. 1, Noel Hynd's Midnight in Madrid, about a U.S. Treasury agent investigating the theft a mysterious relic from a Madrid museum.

The PubTrack survey of book buyers found that 34% of Americans have reduced the number of books they are buying, while 19% of consumers are either buying more used books or swapping books with others. Other ways consumers are looking to save money when buying books include buying fewer hardcovers and more paperbacks, and only buying books that are being sold at steep discounts or that are on sale. And in a direct contrast to the hope that consumers might buy books as an inexpensive form of entertainment, only 2% of consumers said they are buying more books as an alternative to more expensive kinds of entertainment.

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

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

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

Dr Strlic told BBC News that the idea for new test came from observing museum conservators as they worked. "I often noticed that conservators smelled paper during their assessment," he recalled. "I thought, if there was a way we could smell paper and tell how degraded it is from the compounds it emits, that would be great."

The test does just that. It pinpoints ingredients contained within the blend of volatile compounds emanating from the paper. That mixture, the researchers say, "is dependent on the original composition of the... paper substrate, applied media, and binding". Their new method is called "material degradomics". The scientists are able to use it to find what chemicals books release, without damaging the paper. It involves an analytical technique called gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. This simply "sniffs" the paper and separates out the different compounds.

Beyond a Nov. 16 television interview with Oprah Winfrey, nothing is scheduled for Chicago. New York will feature media appearances only. Instead, the itinerary for Palin, whose "Going Rogue" comes out Nov. 17, includes Noblesville, Ind.; Washington, Pa.; and Rochester, N.Y. "She wants to be unconventional. She is unconventional," HarperCollins spokeswoman Tina Andreadis said Wednesday. "She feels like this is where her fans are and Harper feels this is where she'll sell the most books."

*****

The tour starts Nov. 18 at a Barnes & Noble in Grand Rapids, Mich., where Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate, and running mate Sen. John McCain made a campaign appearance last fall.

*****

The tour will last about three weeks, with a break for Thanksgiving, and will end around Dec. 10, after which the increase in holiday shoppers makes it difficult for stores to hold events, Andreadis said. Palin will travel by bus for much of the time, likely accompanied by family and by aide Meg Stapleton.

The full schedule has not been completed, but confirmed locations - many of which Palin campaigned at last year - include Cincinnati; Columbus, Ohio; Roanoke, Va.; the Army post in Fort Bragg, N.C.; Orlando, Fla.; and Albuquerque, N.M.

For a politician known more for her folksy expressions than her literary prowess, Sarah Palin has made enough money on her yet unpublished first book to make most writers blush.

The former Alaska governor, 2008 vice-presidential candidate and likely 2012 Republican presidential contender earned at least a $1.25m advance for her memoir Going Rogue, to be published next month by HarperCollins.

It is unclear how much the advance will total once the book hits shelves, since book advances are often distributed in several parts. She earlier was reported to have received $7m. Hillary Clinton received $8m total advance for her 2000 memoir Living History.

The book, penned with conservative writer Lynn Vincent, is already a bestseller on reservation lists at Amazon.com and other booksellers. The figure, revealed in a disclosure statement filed today in Alaska, is likely only a portion of the entire advance, because the statement does not include the period since she resigned from office and delivered the manuscript. HarperCollins plans an initial print run of 1.5m copies.

The contract calls for Browne to publish the titles over the course of three years and will also see HarperOne create The Sylvia Browne Collection, a series that will feature books about spirituality and the supernatural that Browne will have a large role, per the publisher, in selecting and also supporting through various ways, from writing introductions to promoting on her Web site.

Shortly before Labor Day rumors surfaced that Weinstein Books was being shut down, but publisher Judy Hottensen, while acknowledging that its staff had been cut from five to four and was looking to control expenses, said Weinstein Books was continuing to acquire titles. Hottensen, along with the Weinstein Books team, will remain in its current offices and "will participate in the development of the longer-term plan for the JV," the press release said.

First new books to come from the venture, which will still be called Weinstein Books, will be titles that had been in the Weinstein Books pipeline including All Things at Once by Mika Brezinski, a Raquel Welch beauty guide and The Overnight Socialite by Bridie Clark.

Mandela himself, who bestowed these "traces of my life and those who have lived it with me" on his eponymous foundation, hopes the collection will afford the world a glimpse into his mind and his past. "Anyone who has explored the world of archives will know that it is a treasure house, one that is full of surprises, crossing paths, dead ends, painful reminders and unanswered questions," he said.

Jonny Geller, an agent at the Curtis Brown literary agency and the man entrusted with handling the book's worldwide rights, described the collection on offer as an "utterly remarkable" resource. "I've never heard of a living political leader giving up their entire archive," he said as he waited for his plane to Frankfurt. "I can't think of any other political leader who has opened up their archive without any censorship.

"There's everything from political scribblings to letters to his wife. It's an incredible archive, which will not only have political and historical insights, but which will also provide an emotional insight into the man too. It will give a portrait of the man and his life."

Soon the famed Glow in the Dark tour will be making a comeback, albeit in the form of a 288-page book, accompanying live music CD and a Web-based art video.

On Friday, Kanye took to his blog with stills of the upcoming project, saying, "This is the photo book from the Glow in the Dark Tour. Nabil captured the experience like crazy! When I look at the photos it brings me right back to that time! It's very emotional for me because I didn't want to have to tour but my pain brought my greatest creation to date. Thank you to everybody who came to the shows and experienced this moment in time with me!"

The book will be a sequential journey through the trek, made up of initial set-design sketches by West himself with behind-the-scenes and performance photos by Elderkin, the director behind West's "Champion," "Welcome to Heartbreak" and "Paranoid" videos.

Back in the 1980s, Nelson Mandela was front and center on the world stage. Now, Macmillan aims to see history repeat itself, thanks to a global, 13-language launch of the picture-book adaptation of his autobiography. The company's unprecedented release of Long Walk to Freedom "was intended to reflect Nelson Mandela's importance to South Africa and the world," says Emma Hopkin, managing director of Macmillan Children’s Books in the U.K.

*****

Those numerous and simultaneous translations were, in fact, an essential part of the deal for the Foundation and Little, Brown. Although English is South Africa's lingua franca, it is actually the first language of only a small minority of the country's children. Hopkin explains that "because of Nelson Mandela’s importance to South Africa, the goal was that every South African child would have the opportunity to read this book." To achieve this end, Macmillan printed Long Walk to Freedom not only in Afrikaans, but in isiZulu, isiXhosa, Sesotho and the rest of South Africa's 11 official languages.

John Sterling acquired world rights to the book--it's the former president's White House diaries--which FSG plans to publish in October 2010. Agent Lynn Nesbit brokered the deal and FSG described the book as a truncated version of the diary entries Carter made while he was Commander-in-Chief, from 1977 through 1981.

The one-time peanut farmer kept a lengthy record of his time in office--his diaries span more than 5,000 pages--and the entire collection of notes is currently available in the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum. The annotated version, which will include photographs, will, per FSG, "offer comments on what happened and why."

U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain threw out the lawsuit brought by Missy Chase Lapine, saying the books weren't similar except for their goal of hiding healthy food inside favorite meals of children.

However, the judge declined to rule on Ms. Lapine's claims against Jerry Seinfeld, who on David Letterman's show last year noted her three names and joked that people with three names -- including James Earl Ray and Mark David Chapman -- have turned out to be assassins. She said those claims should instead be filed in state court, where Ms. Lapine's lawyer, Howard Miller, said he planned to bring them.

"They are still very much alive," he said of those claims, along with claims against News Corp.'s HarperCollins that the publisher misappropriated information from Ms. Lapine's book, "The Sneaky Chef: Simple Strategies for Hiding Healthy Foods in Kids' Favorite Meals," when it rejected her proposal. Ms. Seinfeld's cookbook, "Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food," was published by Collins, a HarperCollins imprint.

PW: You're a comedian, so why do a memoir instead of, say, a humor book?

KG: You know, I think those books are great, but I just didn't really have a desire to take my act and put it in print form. I do so many [comedy] specials--I probably do more standup specials than any comedian--so I thought, well, god, with two Bravo specials a year and me being on the road all the time, nobody's gonna buy a book if it's just my standup printed. When [Random House] said they wanted a memoir, I thought, well, what if I did a sort of hybrid--part memoir, part humor book. Then I found out that in your world it's all about the categories, which I didn’t even know. So they told me, "Well, technically this is a memoir," and I said, "Well, you have to call it a memoir according to Kathy Griffin" because god forbid I get somebody's fu***ing birthday wrong and then the next thing you know I'm James Frey.

*****

Jon Krakauer's new book drops this month and, of course, Dan Brown's new novel, The Lost Symbol. Nervous about the competition?

Well, I'm gonna outsell that guy, too. What's that guy Dan Brown write? Sounds like mush to me. That hack--I'm taking him down.

Skyhorse has bumped its first printing of the book, by journalist Phil Hanrahan, from 15,000 to 20,000 and is also hoping to boost sales after fine-tuning the title's pub date. Life After was originally slated to drop in late September, but Skyhorse is now releasing the title on October 5, to conincide with the Monday Night Football game featuring the Vikings (Favre's new squad) and the Packers (his former squad).

Thomas Semosh at Skyhorse said the house is doing "a huge push" for the book and is hoping Hanrahan can land unexpected press gigs because of the heightened coverage of Favre during the early season. Hanrahan is currently scheduled to tour throughout Wisconsin in November.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*****

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

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

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

"We'd always hoped to publish earlier," Cary Goldstein, spokesman for book publisher Twelve, said in an e-mail to us. "The production process moved faster than expected, so we were able to shave off some time." Kennedy, who is battling brain cancer, collaborated on the memoir with Ron Powers, co-author of Flags of our Fathers, chronicling the World War II battle of Iwo Jima.

In the book, the 77-year-old Kennedy recounts the "heartbreak" of his brothers' assassinations, his more than four decades in the Senate and finding the "woman who changed his life," wife Victoria Reggie Kennedy, according to the publisher's description.

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

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

*****

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

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

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

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

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

*****

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

With Chronicle holding onto its post as exclusive publisher of Top Chef books, another book and a trivia game are on the way. In November, the house will publish Top Chef: The Quickfire Cookbook, a $29.95 hardcover written by the creators of the show and featuring a foreword by host Padma Lakshmi. The book draws from the first five seasons and includes 75 recipes culled from Quickfire Challenges, the short, simple contests that make up a portion of each show (e.g., create a flambé dish in a limited amount of time; make an amuse bouche using $10 of ingredients from a vending machine). Bruder thinks it's going to be big: "We expect The Quickfire Cookbook to equal, if not surpass, the performance of the first book. Quickfire is an incredibly popular segment of the show—it translates well to the home kitchen, and the book itself is spectacular."

Mr O'Callaghan, who reversed his Riverdeep educational software company into the publisher of school textbooks and the Curious George children's titles, told the Financial Times he would see his 40 per cent stake cut to "the low 20s" and give up his voting control. "The old equity realises it's well under water," he said. "The difficult parts of the equity aren't being led by some difficult private equity firm or deluded entrepreneur."

The refinancing had averted any risk of a Chapter 11 filing and should carry EMPG through a year in which strained state budgets have prompted falls of up to 30 per cent in school budget spending. Lawyers have been working on the agreement since a May 27 deadline by which EMPG – which competes with Pearson, the educational publisher and owner of the Financial Times – had been due to make cash interest payments to second lien lenders.

The infamous book was sold alongside a signed self-portrait, which fetched 12,300 pounds at Mullock's auctions at Ludlow racecourse, Shropshire. Hitler gave the book to a fellow inmate, an early member of the Nazi party, at Landsberg prison following his failed attempt in 1923 to overthrow the German government, known as the beer hall putsch. The German inscription reads: "Herrn Johann Georg Maurer. In memory of our time together in prison in Landsberg. Cordially dedicated by Adolf Hitler. Christmas 1925."

More than 3,000 McGraw-Hill Professional titles (business, medical and technical) are already available in Kindle format. This fall, Amazon will use the McGraw-Hill content in its on-campus trial programs to make Kindle DX devices available to students. Participating colleges and universities will distribute hundreds of the devices to students across a range of academic disciplines.

Ed Stanford, president of McGraw-Hill Higher Education, said, "The modern student body increasingly requires digital access and capabilities, and we are pleased to be strengthening our partnership with Amazon to help meet these critical needs."

Titled No Apology: The Case for American Greatness, the book outlines what appears to be a campaign platform: Mr. Romney's views on how to create a stronger economy, military and families, and his vision on jobs, education, health care, energy and citizenship. The manuscript is currently 304 pages.

St. Martin's did not disclose the terms of the deal, which was negotiated by Sally Richardson, publisher, and Peter Matson, Mr. Romney's agent at Sterling Lord Literistic.

Details of the agreements were filed under seal. But the deals will allow the 1988 book to be reprinted in the United States, Canada, England, Germany and France.

Publishing rights in the United States and Canada will be given to Shaye Areheart, who was the original editor of "Moonwalk." Her company is a part of Random House Inc.

"Moonwalk" has been out of print for more than a decade. It was originally published by Doubleday and was acquired by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

In separate announcements, a coalition of four university presses have received a planning grant to study the feasibility of a collaborative scholarly e-book program, and the University of Chicago Press announced a multi-faceted program to make 700 e-books available immediately.

A coalition of presses from New York University, Rutgers, Temple and the University of Pennsylvania, plan to use a planning grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to hire a technical consultant for a six-month study looking at the feasibility of a collaborative scholarly e-book publishing program. The new program will focus on studying the particular needs of university presses and their library partners. (A spokesperson for Temple Univ. press noted that TUP plans to immediately release 50 new e-books that are not a part of this announcement or coalition study.)

The coalition of presses plans to study how to bring together a wide variety of university presses of different sizes—a minimum of ten presses at launch—in an e-book publishing program that would launch with at least 10,000 e-book titles and add five to 10 new UPs each year over 5 years. According to the details of the grant, the new program would focus on the library market and then on supplying e-books to students as well as looking at variety of payment/delivery models—from purchase/subscription to rental models, bundling and POD.

Regnery Publishing announced today it has signed a publishing contract with former Miss California Carrie Prejean. Her new book, Still Standing, will be released in November 2009.

Prejean attracted national attention when she answered a question at the Miss USA Pageant defending traditional marriage. The unprecedented personal attacks that ensued eventually culminated in Prejean being stripped of her Miss California crown. But the 22-year-old won the respect of millions for modeling something other than evening gowns and swimsuits—the courage of standing up for her convictions.

Now she will tell her side of the story, answering such questions as what happened behind the scenes at the pageant, why she answered the Perez Hilton question as she did, what really led to her losing the Miss California crown, and how she has been forced to battle the left's double-standard on free speech and the bias against conservatives—particularly conservative women—who stand up for their beliefs.

Prejean is represented by Lee Hough with Alive Communications, Inc.

Stewart, the ex-wife of rocker Rod Stewart and a friend of Fawcett's for 30 years, said she was encouraged to go into print by Fawcett herself and by Ryan O'Neal, the "Love Story" movie star who was Fawcett's long time companion.

"Farrah had originally encouraged me to write this book. It was her idea. However, while I was contemplating my decision, her health took a turn for the worse, and I could no longer seek her advice," Stewart said in a statement.

"So I turned to Ryan O'Neal. He was so positive and so supportive. 'You have to do it', he said emphatically. 'There will be lots of people writing books about her. Yours will be the truth, and it will be a wonderful tribute to her. You have to do it!'", she said.

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

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

*****

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

*****

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

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

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.

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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.