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

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

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

The new book, Sweet Valley Confidential, takes place 12 years after the high school series, when the twins and their friends are in their late 20s and early 30s. It will, according to publisher St Martin's Press, see "the real world intrude after a perfect childhood". "I've had thousand of queries from fans over the years wondering what Jessica and Elizabeth would be like as adults. Well, Sweet Valley Confidential should give them all the answers," said Pascal, who was originally inspired to write the series by the experiences of her three daughters. "And I can guarantee they will be very surprised. Actually, more like shocked."

*****

St Martin's Press, which will publish the novel in early 2011, gave away little about the plot but fans are already speculating about which direction Pascal will take her characters. "Most everyone hopes Elizabeth and Todd are married, but we all have an idea Liz is having an affair if that's the case," said one reader, who has written about the entire series on her blog, Shannon's Sweet Valley High blog. "We figure Jessica has probably gone to Hollywood to be a star, but some of us are kind of hoping she's failed. Because seriously, that girl has had it too easy. And of course we all want to see the return of Lila, Bruce and the other side characters. It just wouldn't be Sweet Valley without them. A few of my readers are hoping Lila and Bruce are married, but I'd rather see Lila and Jessica trolling for guys together like they always have."

Brian Murray, the chief executive of HarperCollins, said in December that e-books enhanced with video, author interviews and social-networking applications could command higher retail prices for publishers than current e-books. Many of the country's largest publishing houses are worried about the sale of new bestsellers for only $9.99 in the e-book format. New releases of enhanced e-books could sell for $14.99 to $19.99, a person familiar with the situation said. HarperCollins is a unit of News Corp., which also owns The Wall Street Journal.

The HarperCollins negotiations with Apple represent a direct challenge to Amazon, which dominates the fast-growing e-book market but which could face significant competition from an Apple tablet.

HarperCollins is one of several major publishing houses that are holding back e-book versions of some new hardcover best sellers. The HarperCollins account of the 2008 presidential election, "Game Change," by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, was released in hardcover Jan. 11 but the e-book edition doesn't go on sale until Feb. 23. Enhanced e-books likely would be available for sale simultaneously with the hardcovers.

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

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

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

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.

Author Solutions will handle all aspects of the venture, although Harlequin Horizons will exist as an imprint of Harlequin, and the publisher will be able to monitor sales and sign authors to a traditional imprint. This is the second deal Author Solutions has signed with a major publisher. Earlier, it reached an agreement with Thomas Nelson to publish self-published authors interested in reaching the Christian market under Nelson's WestBow imprint. The Author Solutions spokesperson said additional agreements with other traditional houses are in the works.

"Love the Twilight books? Then you'll adore Wuthering Heights, one of the greatest love stories ever told," gushes the book chain's synopsis of Emily Brontë's novel. "Cathy and Heathcliff, childhood friends, are cruelly separated by class, fate and the actions of others. But uniting them is something even stronger: an all-consuming passion that sweeps away everything that comes between them. Even death!"

Meyer's human heroine Bella and her vampire hero Edward cite the 1847 novel as their favourite book; Bella even quotes Cathy speaking about Heathcliff, saying of Edward that "if all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger".

Just as Cathy is torn between Edgar and Heathcliff, so is Bella the centre of a love triangle between Edward and Jacob the werewolf.

"Wuthering Heights is of course a steady seller, but it's usually Pride and Prejudice, or whichever classic has recently been adapted for film or TV that is at the top. I don't think a vampire's recommendation has ever sent a book to number one before," said Waterstone's classics buyer Simon Robertson.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The agreement, which is still subject to approval from the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, will see Google paying out $125m in total, of which a minimum of $45m will go to authors and publishers whose books were digitised without their approval. Google will also pay $34.5m to establish a book rights registry, and will cover legal fees.

Authors Guild president Roy Blount Jr said the deal made "good sense". "As an author, well, we appreciate payment when people use our work," he said. "It's hard work writing a book, and even harder work getting paid for it."

The agreement follows outrage from American publishers and authors three years ago, when they learnt of agreements struck by Google with certain American universities to scan books which were still in copyright, which would then be digitised and searchable online. American authors' body the Authors Guild led the charge against the search engine, filing suit in September 2005 along with a number of authors.

Under the terms of the agreement, US readers will be able to preview up to 20% of most out-of-print books for free, with authors and rights holders of in-copyright but out of print works able to opt out of the arrangement if they choose.

For in-copyright books that are still in print, readers will be able to find the books, but will not be able to view any portion of it unless its publisher has signed up to Google's partner programme.

• The Last Oracle by James Rollins (William Morrow), the spine- tingling new thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of Black Order and Map of Bones.
  
  
• This Year You Write Your Novel by Walter Mosely (Little, Brown), the must-have writing guide from the bestselling author of the Easy Rawlins and Fearless Jones mystery series.
  
  
• Don't Make Me Choose Between You and My Shoes by Dixie Cash (Avon), the hilarious new chick lit novel about two Texas female private investigators/hairdressers that head for New York City in search of some fun and some fabulous shoes.
  
  
• The Write Type: Discover Your True Writer's Identity and Create a Customized Writing Plan by Karen E. Peterson, Ph.D. (Adamas Media)
  
  

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

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

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

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

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

Shareholders of Audible.com are making noise about the company's proposed $300 million sale to Amazon.com. Red Oak Partners, a New York City hedge fund that owns 1.4 percent of Audible shares, denounced the proposed $11.50 per share sale in a letter dated March 6 to the chief executive of Audible, calling the terms "inadequate" and "below fair value."

The critique from portfolio manager David Sandberg follows the filing of a class-action lawsuit February 20 in the Superior Court of New Jersey that charged six of Audible's directors with breaching their fiduciary duties with the aid of Amazon. In trading Friday afternoon, shares of Amazon.com gained $.18, or .3 percent, to $62.92, while Audible edged up $.01, or .1 percent, to $11.47.

In the letter addressed to Audible Chief Executive Donald Katz, Mr. Sandberg called a valuation analysis by investment bank Allen & Company "flawed." From March through July 2007, Allen & Company offered Audible to a dozen potential suitors for $12.50 per share. In a later analysis, however, Allen trimmed its assessment of Audible's worth to $11.50. Amazon, which last year introduced its Kindle digital book reader, announced the Audible acquisition in January.

Mr. Sandberg said Allen & Company trimmed Audible's valuation "despite a year in which Audible grew its revenues by 34 percent and added $0.50 per share in cash to its balance sheet. The Red Oak letter also questioned the $2.62 million fee charged by Allen & Company.

Whitney died last Friday in a Charlottesville hospital, not far from her home in Nelson County, her son-in-law, Ed Pearson, said Thursday.

Whitney wrote more than 75 books, including three textbooks, and had about a hundred short stories published since the 1940s.

"I've slowed down in that I only write one book a year," she said in a 1989 interview with The Associated Press, when she was 85. "A writer is what I am."

Whitney's last novel, "Amethyst Dreams," was published in 1997. She began working on her autobiography at 102.

Cassandra Carter is one to make you think, "Hmm...what the heck was I doing with my teenage years?" The 18-year-old's own reply involves a nationally published book and two more in the works. Her debut novel, "Fast Life," was published in July as part of the "Tru" series from Kimani Press, a division of Harlequin that focuses on African-American young-adult fiction. Carter started the book when she was just 14, after getting the idea from, of all places, a dream.

"I woke up and - I hate telling people this because it makes me sound crazy - but I heard a voice ... saying, 'Cassandra, you should write a book about that.' So I created this character. It was about this girl and she's ... got to go and move real quick, and everything else just kind of came."

There's a lot of "everything else," since the move is over in the first 50 pages. What follows is a fast-talking, high-rolling rumble following Kyra Jones between Chicago and an island in the Bahamas, complete with gorgeous guys, sniping girls, friendships gone horribly bad, scandalous wealth, the illegal drug industry and a few more page-turners that I can't tell you about without tipping off the last half of the book.

Carter worked on it all through the summer she was 15, and when it was done she mentioned it to her grandmother, Sandee Grassi. "I wasn't at all surprised," said Grassi. "Cassandra has always impressed me with her dream of and enthusiasm for writing."

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

A friend and I were talking last night, as we usually do, about books. We were going on and on about our favorite authors and I noticed there were no men authors being talked about. When I asked her who her favorite male author was who wrote romance she immediately said Nicolas Sparks, "If you can get past the tragic endings." Well, I knew that was the reason I didn't read his books. I need my HEA (happily ever after).

So for my turn I threw out Paul Levine who writes the great Solomon vs Lord series (think Moonlighting meets Boston Legal). I love the romance in his books, along with the humor, memorable characters and mystery.

Nora Roberts' Angels Fall (Putnam) was named Book of the Year by readers (as well as winner in the Romance category) at the 2007 Quill Book Awards, held October 22 in New York City at the spectacular Jazz at Lincoln Center theater. Quills were awarded in 19 categories, plus Book of the Year and Variety’s Blockbuster Book to Film Award, which went to the Bourne Trilogy by Robert Ludlum. The Quills also honored David Halberstam posthumously with a Platinum Quill.

Kicking off the awards ceremony, The Colbert Report's Stephen Colbert lamented the loss of the oral tradition, took a swing at the National Book Awards, and wondered why the Quills were "being televised instead of novelized." Presenters included Joan Allen, a star of the Bourne films and a supporter of First Book, which gives books to children from low-income families, footballer Tiki Barber, actress Brooke Shields, and novelist Mary Higgins Clark. Also on hand was Bourne Ultimatum screenwriter Tony Gilroy, who directed the recently acclaimed film Michael Clayton. With winners named in advance, many more authors were on hand, including Amy Sedaris, who took the Humor category for I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence (Warner), and Laura Lippman, whose What the Dead Know (Morrow) received the Mystery/Suspense/Thriller prize.

In Japan, the cellphone is stirring the nation's staid fiction market. Young amateur writers in their teens and 20s who long ago mastered the art of zapping off emails and blogs on their cellphones, find it a convenient medium in which to loose their creative energies and get their stuff onto the Internet. For readers, mostly teenage girls who use their phones for an increasingly wide range of activities, from writing group diaries to listening to music, the mobile novel, as the genre is called, is the latest form of entertainment on the go.

Most of these novels, with their simple language and skimpy scene-setting, are rather unpolished. They are almost always on familiar themes about love and friendship. But they are hugely popular, and publishers are delighted with them. Book sales in Japan fell 15% between 1996 and 2006, according to the Research Institute for Publications. Several cellphone novels have been turned into real books, selling millions of copies and topping the best-seller lists. "Love Sky," one of the biggest successes so far, is about a boy with cancer who breaks up with his girlfriend to spare her the pain of his death. It has sold more than 1.3 million copies and is being made into a movie due out in November.

• Autographed copy of The Silver Moon Elm by MaryJanice Davidson and Anthony Alongi (Berkley Jam), the exciting new adventure in the New York Times bestselling Jennifer Scales urban fantasy adventure series. Jennifer is a normal teen with abnormal problems: she's half-weredragon, half-beaststalker.
  
  
• Inspired Creative Writing: Pokes and Prods for Scribblers of All Stripes by Alexander Gordon Smith (Perigee), the offbeat and accessible guide to help aspiring authors get their imaginations flowing.
  
  
• Unaccompanied Women: Late-Life Adventures in Love, Sex and Real Estate by Jane Juska (Villard), the funny, sexy and frank story of a woman who refuses to give up dating, fun and adventures just because she's passed the big 60.
  
  
• Dead Ex by Harley Jane Kozak (Doubleday), the fabulously fun mystery set in the fascinating world of soap operas.
  
  

• Insufficient Mating Material (LoveSpell), the racy, wildly entertaining futuristic romance by bestselling author Rowena Cherry.
  
  
• Autographed set of Murder on Nob Hill, The Russian Hill Murders and an ARC of The Cliff House Strangler (all from St. Martin's Press), the three books in the delightful and bestselling mystery series by Shirley Tallman. Set in 1880's San Francisco, the series stars a feisty female attorney who solves mysteries: it's Legally Blond for the 19th century!
  
  
• Autographed copy of Jeff Herman's 2007 Guide to Book Publishers, Editors, & Literary Agents (Three Dog Press). It's the must-have guide for all aspiring authors.
  
  
• Floor Sample by Julia Cameron (Tarcher Penguin), the inspring new memoir from the bestselling author of The Artist's Way. Nothing is off limits in her life story: from her career writing for Rolling Stone, her marriage to Martin Scorcese to life in Hollywood, Julia tells it like it is, with her trademark humor and wisdom.
  
  

Representatives of Harlequin Enterprises, the world’s biggest publisher of romance novel series, inspected the assets of about 200 men who lined up at a Toronto casting house on Saturday to prove they could flutter readers’ hearts better than professional models.

"We're looking for some guys that are not your usual models, but have that iconic look that women go for -- sexy, sensitive, beautiful and fit," said Harlequin spokeswoman Marleah Stout, who attended the open casting. "We want real men ... exactly what you think in your mind when you're fantasizing or imagining that ideal man." Toronto-based Harlequin, a division of newspaper group Torstar Corp., sold 131 million books in 94 countries last year. It estimates that a third of American women have read at least one of its titles.

Until now, the publisher relied on modeling agencies to supply bodies for its concupiscent covers. But the readership -- predominantly female and averaging 42 years of age -- was upset when slight, young cover models clashed with the brawny, mature heroes described within.

"Some of the heroes are captains of industry, billionaires," said Deborah Peterson, a Harlequin creative designer and a judge at the audition. "A lot of the models were too young, men in their twenties ... and our audience likes men a little bit older, a bit bigger, than the runway models."

Stephen King hooked me about three decades ago with that sharply faceted, blood-stained jewel, The Shining. Through the years he's bumped my gooses with kiddie vampires, tingled my spine with beloved pets gone rabid, justified my personal fear of clowns and made me think twice about my cell phone. I've always considered The Stand--a long-time favorite--a towering tour de force, and have owed its author a debt as this was the first novel I could convince my older son to read from cover to cover. But with Lisey's Story, King has accomplished one more feat. He broke my heart.

Lisey's Story is, at its core, a love story--heart-wrenching, passionate, terrifying and tender. It is the multi-layered and expertly crafted tale of a twenty-five year marriage, and a widow's journey through grief, through discovery and--this is King, after all--through a nightmare scape of the ordinary and extraordinary. Through Lisey's mind and heart, the reader is pulled into the intimacies of her marriage to bestselling novelist Scott Landon, and through her we come to know this complicated, troubled and heroic man.

Two years after his death, Lisey sorts through her husband's papers and her own shrouded memories. Following the clues Scott left her and her own instincts, she embarks on a journey that risks both her life and her sanity. She will face Scott's demons as well as her own, traveling into the past and into Boo'ya Moon, the seductive and terrifying world he'd shown her. There lives the power to heal, and the power to destroy.

Lisey Landon is a richly wrought character of charm and complexity, of realized inner strength and redoubtable humor. As the central figure she drives the story, and the story is so vividly textured, the reader will draw in the perfumed air of Boo'ya Moon, will see the sunlight flood through the windows of the Scott's studio--or the night press against them. Her voice will be clear in your ear as you experience the fear and the wonder. If your heart doesn't hitch at the demons she faces in this world and the other, if it doesn't thrill at her courage and endurance, you're going to need to check with a cardiologist, first chance.

Lisey's Story is bright and brilliant. It's dark and desperate. While I'll always consider The Shining, my first ride on King's wild Tilt-A-Whirl, a gorgeous, bloody jewel, I found, on this latest ride, a treasure box heaped with dazzling gems.

A few of them have sharp, hungry teeth.

Claire Forlani, Jacqueline Bisset and Oliver Hudson have been tapped to star in the Lifetime original movie "Carolina Moon," based on Nora Roberts' best-selling novel. "Moon," from Mandalay TV and Stephanie Germain Prods. , is one of four adaptations of books by Roberts that Lifetime plans to run back-to-back on Monday nights in February. The other three -- "Blue Smoke," "Angels Fall" and "Montana Sky" -- are in preproduction. (Nellie Andreeva)

Right down to the label, "chica lit" is one pop-culture trend that was entirely predictable: Just add a Latina heroine to chick lit, then change the "k" to an "a." The only question is, "What took so long?" With titles like "Friday Night Chicas," and "Cinderella Lopez," chica lit is a small but growing niche within chick lit, the category that has spawned such thinly sliced genres as "mommy lit" and "hen lit," not to mention such hybrids as the chick-lit mystery.

What all the varieties have in common is a focus on the real-life concerns of regular women. There's usually some added glamour, but the heroines tend to be middle-class professionals dealing with friendship, romance and career. That some of those heroines should be Latina — in a country with 40 million Hispanics — should have been a no-brainer.

"The publishing industry expected us to be writing tales of oppression and exile and misery and all this sort of stuff they were used to, and instead we were writing legitimately what our lives are like," says Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, the Albuquerque, N.M., author who launched the chica-lit revolution three years ago with "The Dirty Girls Social Club." Her newest is "Make Him Look Good." "I'm an Ivy League graduate, middle-class person who just lives a regular American life — you know, born and raised here, don't speak all that much Spanish — and there are lots and lots of people like me."

Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary, published in the UK in fall 1996, unleashed a battalion of Bridgets, launching one of the biggest tidal waves in publishing history. Women cried out for more funny, lighthearted novels about "singletons" like Bridget who were searching for love, job satisfaction and the perfect pair of shoes. Ten years later, chick lit, for better or worse, is here to stay. Some of the books are indelibly etched into popular culture.

*****

But even as Hollywood has come calling, chick lit has received some negative attention lately, thanks to the plagiarism scandal surrounding How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life by Harvard student Kaavya Viswanathan. The novel about an Indian-American girl and her humorous efforts to get into Harvard was removed from shelves in May after it was discovered that Viswanathan had lifted material from other chick lit authors, including Sophie Kinsella and Megan McCafferty.

Like any genre that unleashes a flood of imitators, there is good chick lit and bad, books that sell well and those that disappear without a trace. Even the term chick lit has created a backlash, with some practitioners believing the term is demeaning and limiting.

But love it or hate it, chick lit continues to find an audience. Three titles are on USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list: The Devil Wears Prada (No. 3), Goodnight Nobody by Jennifer Weiner (No. 35) and The Undomestic Goddess by Kinsella (No. 46). And like the characters whose twentysomething hopes and dreams they deconstruct, chick lit is experiencing growing pains with such spinoffs as bridezilla lit, mommy lit and multicultural lit.

HarperCollins, through its Avon and HarperTorch mass market imprints, has quietly entered the premium paperback field and added a new twist in the process. After publishing Serpent in the Crown by Elizabeth Peters in the premium format in March with a 250,000 printing, Avon released Philip Margolin's Lost Lake in May as the first in its premium plus initiative. The plus program, which ties into HC's Author+ initiative, allows buyers of Lake to register online for a free copy of an HC "pick of the month" (currently William Lashner's Fatal). "We thought it was a good way to give extra value to the format," said Liate Stehlik, who took over as Avon publisher in November. About 500 readers signed up for the free book in the first week Lake went on sale.

Avon has three more premium plus titles planned: J.A. Jance's Long Time Gone will come out in August; Hot Kid by Elmore Leonard will be released in September; and Anne River Siddons's Sweetwater Creek will be out in January.

The premium plus effort coincides with the release of Avon's e-book epilogues to two Julia Quinn books (PW Daily, June 6) and is part of Avon's effort to give a spark to mass market sales. The two epilogues sold a combined 1,588 units in the first 24 hours through just the harpercollinsebooks.com site and more than 3,000 units through mid June. Later this year, Avon will release Stephanie Laurens's To Distraction as an e-book on August 15, two weeks before the print edition. The e-book will have some added content and is aimed at building buzz for the print edition. "We're thinking about other ways to use e-books," said Stehlik, who observed that romance readers tend to be Web savvy and very loyal to their favorite authors.

The actress has already planned a plot for her first foray into literature, and can't wait for the work to be in bookshops. She says: "They offered a huge deal and I like the idea of seeing my book on a shelf. The plot's top secret so far but let's just say I have a wild imagination."

"For me, it's great exposure, because the kind of woman who wears DKNY clothes is the kind of woman who's going to like my book," says author Deborah Schoeneman, whose novel, 4% Famous (Shaye Areheart, $21.95), is about the world of gossip columnists in New York. She has been appearing at DKNY stores across the country.

DKNY spokeswoman Aliza Licht says Schoeneman was a perfect partner for DKNY because of the book's content and because "people love a happening. It's nice for customers already there, and it's a vehicle to get new customers." It's happening elsewhere:

Saks stores across the country hosted book signings for authors Jill Kargman and Carrie Karasyov for their novel, Wolves in Chic Clothing.

Ellyn Spragins did events at Eileen Fisher stores in New York and New Jersey for her book, What I Know Now.

Bergdorf Blondes author Plum Sykes appeared at Chanel, Ralph Lauren, Frederic Fekkai, Ferragamo, Neiman Marcus and Oscar de la Renta stores for The Debutante Divorcée.

*****

"It's tough these days, especially in the major markets, to get a big turnout for bookstore events," says Joanna Pinsker of Broadway Books, which published Wolves in Chic Clothing. "There are so many competing events, and unless you are a famous author, it's very hard to draw a lot of people to bookstore events," she says. "At these parties, there's a built-in list of people." Many of these events send invitations to VIP customers. "It hits our target market," says Marleah Stout of Harlequin. "They like hip clothes, cosmetics and shoes, and they may not go to bookstores." Harlequin has had success with such events and plans to do more. Last fall, Leeanne Banks, author of Feet First and Underfoot, did an event at the DSW shoe store in New York. This fall, Harlequin plans to hold an event for her new book, Footloose, during Fashion Week.

• Once Upon Stilettos by Shanna Swendson (Ballantine Books), the hilarious and enchanting new urban fairy tale that combines chick-lit, magic and romance.
  
  
• Body Intelligence: Lose Weight, Keep It Off, and Feel Great About Your Body Without Dieting by Edward Abramson, Ph.D. (McGraw Hill), the revolutionary book that will help you lose those unwanted pounds permanently.
  
  
• The Alpine Recluse by Mary Daheim (Ballantine), the fascinating new Emma Lord mystery in which amateur sleuth Emma faces murder and arson in the tiny town of Alpine, Washington.
  
  
• The Jury Master by Robert Dugoni (Warner Books), the exciting new legal thriller about a brilliant trial attorney that is thrust into a whirlwind of danger and adventure.

In an exclusive interview to CNN-IBN, Author Salman Rushdie thought Kaavya's lapses as anything other than "unintentional and unconscious". "I must say I don't accept the idea that this could have been accidently or innocently done. The passages are too many and the similarities are two extensive. And I am sorry that this young girl pushed by the needs of a publishing machine and no doubt by her own ambition should have fallen into this trap so early in her career. I hope she can recover from it," said Rushdie.

Imitation may be the best form of flattery, but Rushdie is clearly not impressed. In Rushdie's novel, Haroun enters a bus depot and passes by several posters written on the walls surrounding the depot's courtyard. Likewise, in Viswanathan's novel,Opal helps another student place posters on a wall that discourage drug and alcohol use. The poster in Rushdie's novel reads: "If from speed you get your thrill / take precaution-make your will." The poster in Kaavya's reads: "If from drink you get your thrill, take precaution-write your will."

Another one from Rushdie goes: "All the dangerous overtakers / end up safe as undertaker's." It is matched by Kaavya's, "All the dangerous drug abusers end up safe as total losers." For now the distributors of the novel have recalled all editions from the shelves and have said that future printings of her novel will be revised 'to eliminate any inappropriate similarities' to McCafferty's novels. But at the rate at which more similarities are cropping up, it seems Viswanathan may have to begin from scratch to revise her book of "internalisations", as it were.

DreamWorks is backpedaling away from Opal. Daily Variety reports DreamWorks hasn't formally announced that their previously announced film adaptation of Kaavya Viswanathan's novel How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life has been scrapped, but all indications are that the project is dead, a victim of a plagiarism scandal that has rocked the publishing world.

The novel was written by a Harvard sophomore, a selling point for publisher Little Brown and Company when promoting the novel, but just as the book came out, so did reports that Opal had 40 different blatant similarities to Megan McCafferty's novels Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings. Little Brown and Company has gone so far as to withdraw the book from publication and call back all copies from booksellers.

DreamWorks had already commissioned and had just received an adaptation of the book into a screenplay by Kara Holden. When the scandal broke, there was some discussion that DreamWorks would acquire the rights to the plagiarized novels, but now it appears that the studio is simply going to bail out on the project altogether.

Warner Bros. was recently burned in the same way with their adaptation of the memoir A Million Little Pieces by James Frey; a true life story that turned out to be not so particularly true.

The standard rundown of plagiarism excuses includes accidental copying, occupational or personal stress, and even mental illness, as in the case of former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair. I reject those excuses, too, and counter with a more plausible set of explanations that rely on neither psychobabble nor the DSM-IV.

Ambition Often Exceeds Talent: I know of very few examples in which an exceptional writer got caught plagiarizing. Sometimes writers accept jobs or assignments beyond their talents. When the deadline whistle blows, they find themselves facing this cost-benefit quandary: Shall I tell the truth and bail, damaging my career for sure, or shall I steal copy and only risk damaging my career?

Writing Is Hard Work: A corollary to ambition exceeding talent. Even prolific writers, who can toss off a thousand words an hour, complain about the difficulty of writing. Writing well is a difficult enterprise. So is writing poorly. With so many examples of good writing out there to "borrow," why suffer only to write poorly?

*****

Force of Habit: If nobody catches you running stop lights in college or tickets you for doing the same at your first newspaper job, you eventually stop paying attention. One day, red, yellow, and green all mean "go."

Contempt for the Business: Show me the writer who calls himself and everybody he works with a "hack," and I'll show you a potential plagiarist.

Kaavya Viswanathan's How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life contains more than a half-dozen passages in which the language closely echoes Sloppy Firsts, published by a division of Random House Inc., including one 14-word sequence that appears in both books. Late last week, Random House sent a letter raising concerns about the similarities to lawyers for Little, Brown and Co., the publishers of Opal Mehta, a spokesman for Random House said yesterday.

"After reading the book in question, and finding passages, characters, and plot points in common, I do hope this can be resolved in a manner that is fair to all of the parties involved," Megan McCafferty, the author of Sloppy Firsts, said in an e-mail yesterday. "I am so grateful for the diligence and support of Random House's legal counsel." McCafferty declined a request for an interview. Her agent, Joanna Pulcini, said a fan pointed out the similarities in an e-mail to McCafferty about two weeks ago.

*****

Viswanathan's book, the tale of a studious Indian-American girl's quest for social success, was published this month and climbed to number 32 on the New York Times bestseller list for hardcover fiction this week. In an interview with the Globe in February, Viswanathan said she rushed to get the book done during the last few months of her freshman year at Harvard, knocking off 50 pages every two weeks.

*****

Born in Chennai, India, Viswanathan lived in England for about a decade before moving to the United States. Her high school college counselor, also a published author, recognized her budding literary talent and helped her get an agent. The agent steered Viswanathan toward a company that helps young writers package book ideas; editors there helped her conceptualize the novel. "There was more shaping to this book than we usually do," Asya Muchnick, Viswanathan's editor, told the Globe in the February interview. Viswanathan was just 17 when she signed her two-book contract, which was worth approximately $500,000, according to the New York Sun.

All of this is a reaction against over-socialization, or maybe an over-feminization of the culture," said Jeremie Ruby-Strauss, Mr. Max's editor at Kensington and a point man for the genre. "I think all of these books are about men searching for a model other than what they're being told to do, something more rebellious, less cautious and less concerned with external approval."

Though sales aren't at chick lit levels, there have been some early successes. On March 28 a writer known simply as Maddox — he is the author of the Web site The Best Page in the Universe, which shares a mostly male readership with Mr. Max — sent a notice to those on his e-mail list that his book, "The Alphabet of Manliness," would be published in June by Kensington. Within hours the book soared past "The Da Vinci Code" and "Freakonomics" to No. 1 on Amazon.com's best-seller list, pulling Mr. Max's book with it into the low double digits. Maddox, whose real name is George Ouzounian, said he has presold over 7,000 copies of "The Alphabet of Manliness," through the Amazon link on his site, an all but unheard of run by a first-time author.

Many of the books in the fratire genre began online, either organically or out of necessity because mainstream publishers would have nothing to do with them. Mr. Max said that despite receiving approximately 60,000 visitors daily at TuckerMax.com, he got "zero interest" when he initially pitched his book. "Bro, when I say 'zero interest,' I mean zero," he said, taking another slug of beer.

Frank Kelly Rich, the 42-year-old editor of Modern Drunkard magazine and the author of the book "The Modern Drunkard," said that it took the Web to help fratire get around the hang-ups of mainstream publishing houses that professed to be searching for the male equivalent of chick lit, but which were frightened when they actually saw what it looked like.

Plain old courtship just doesn't seem to cut it anymore. At least not with readers of romance novels. More women want more fiction about what's going on between the sheets, book publishers say.

"If you had said five years ago, 'erotic, hot, sexy romances,' people would have said 'What, are you crazy?' " says Kensington editor in chief John Scognamiglio. "Publishing goes in cycles. Erotica now seems to be the new hot thing." Kensington introduced its erotica line, Aphrodisia, in January. Harlequin's Spice imprint hits stores in May, and HarperCollins will publish the first two titles in its Avon Red line in June. Berkley was a pioneer with its Heat line last May.

"Over the past few years, romances have gotten sexier," says Liate Stehlik of Avon Red, "And with the advent of Sex and the City and more sex in movies and online, there's a sexual aspect to all forms of entertainment that women are feeling more entitled to than they have in the past."

*****

But that doesn't mean customers fit a stereotype. "They really appeal to a wide variety of women - 18- and 19-year-olds as well as women into their 50s and 60s," Harlequin's Susan Pezzack says.

It is no secret that authors write some of the very best blogs. Our editors have compiled a list of author blogs that they believe are truly outstanding. Although the styles and subject matter of the author blogs vary widely, they all share two important qualities: they are all frequently updated and interesting to read.

The films are expected to be exclusively for television and home video. "People do like the film versions of things," Steel told The Associated Press on Thursday. "I thought this was a nice way to get my books back into the marketplace."

"Danielle Steel is one of the world's great literary brands, and New Line Home Entertainment is proud to be in business with such a cultural icon," Kevin Kasha, New Line Home Entertainment's senior vice president of acquisitions and programming, said in a statement. Steel, 58, has published more than 60 books and her latest, Toxic Bachelors, just came out. She has another book due in February and has a line of perfume coming out next fall. "And I'm starting a new book today," she said

Time: You mentioned Bridget Jones. What's the distinction between chicklit and romance?

Susan Elizabeth Phillips: In my own work, I don't make any distinction at all. People say, what do you write? I say, I write romance, women's fiction, chicklit. I think it all fits very comfortably under the same umbrella. Basically, I write books for women—books about relationships, books that make you laugh and sometimes make you cry a little.

Time: What has to be in a book for it to be considered a romance?

Susan Elizabeth Phillips: The love story between the hero and the heroine has to be at the center of the book. I think that's pretty true in my books. I usually write a secondary love story, with maybe nontraditional characters. Sometimes I write older characters. I'm interested in female friendships, and family relationships. So I don't write the traditional romance, where you just have the hero and the heroine's love story. I like intertwining relationships.

"Sex and the City" author Candace Bushnell is in talks to turn her new book "Lipstick Jungle," the story of three successful career women in New York, into a television series. "I haven't signed any deals yet but there's a lot of interest," Bushnell told Reuters. "Nothing's been finalized but hopefully it will be in the next couple of weeks."

In an interview ahead of the September 6 publication of her latest novel, Bushnell said it was too early to discuss who might play the three main characters -- a film producer, a fashion designer and a magazine executive. Bushnell said Lipstick Jungle was a "pretty philosophical kind of book" about what happens when women like the thirty-something women of "Sex and the City" get into their forties and experience real success in their careers.

"I see it more as a TV show than a movie," Bushnell said. "One of the things that's really hard with movies these days is that it's almost impossible to have forty-something women." "There are probably three parts a year for a women of over 40 and happily on TV there are many more opportunities," said the author, who is 46 and who originally wrote Sex and the City as a newspaper column in 1994. "There's a lot of interest in Lipstick Jungle becoming a TV series but it's just a little bit too soon, in a couple of weeks I could tell you all about it," she added.

Plummer says he recently discovered he is gay. This can't help but fuel anxiety over the "down low" phenomenon -- black men who date or marry women while secretly having sex with men.

From the divorce filings, we can gather that McMillan, 53, is feeling some understandable anger. She has kicked Plummer, 30, out of her San Francisco area house, intends to enforce a prenuptial agreement that gives him essentially nothing and throws in the allegation that he embezzled $200,000 from her accounts. A judge awarded Plummer $2,000 a month in spousal support, despite the prenup, but that's just provisional and might not last.

McMillan's fiction describes a catalogue of slick, predatory, no-good players. In the movie version of Waiting to Exhale" think of the preening bad boys who obliterate Lela Rochon's self-esteem. Or the smooth-talking married man who strings along poor Whitney Houston. Or the smug, wealthy cad who cheats on Angela Bassett, and unforgettably gets his car torched in return.

Is Plummer just a type of player that the sharp-eyed McMillan somehow missed? And anyhow, by the time they married he was 24. In his mid-twenties, he still didn't have the slightest inkling that he liked guys? Then he moves to the San Francisco area, not exactly Taliban territory when it comes to gay sexuality, and doesn't feel a tingle? So yes, I'm skeptical of Plummer -- I think this might, indeed, be a "down low" scenario.

• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling (Arthur A Levine Books), the most anticipated book release of the summer.
  
  
• Hero, Come Back (Avon Books), a collection of three wonderful historical romances from bestselling authors Stephanie Lauren, Christina Dood and Elizabeth Boyle.
  
  
• 78 Reasons Why Your Book May Never Be Published & 14 Reasons Why it Just Might by Pat Walsh (Penguin), the lively and plainspoken guide to getting published.
  
  
• Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim (Back Bay Books), the hilarious, bestselling book of essays from David Sedaris.

1. The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Publication date: 1848, Score: 74

2. Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler, Publication date: 1925-26, Score: 41

3. Quotations from Chairman Mao by Mao Zedong, Publication date: 1966, Score: 38

4. The Kinsey Report by Alfred Kinsey, Publication date: 1948, Score: 37

5. Democracy and Education by John Dewey, Publication date: 1916, Score: 36

6. Das Kapital by Karl Marx, Publication date: 1867-1894, Score: 31

7. The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan, Publication date: 1963, Score: 30

8. The Course of Positive Philosophy by Auguste Comte, Publication date: 1830-1842, Score: 28

9. Beyond Good and Evil by Freidrich Nietzsche, Publication date: 1886, Score: 28

10. General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money by John Maynard Keynes, Publication date: 1936, Score: 23

Crowe and his wife, Danielle, joined Lara Flynn Boyle, Rita Wilson, Thora Birch and other examples of the Hollywood types Gigi thinly veils in her book. "I can either punish people or I can reward them," the author told us. "If they're mean to me, I can do little mean things to them! However, this particularly nice fellow who is a very well-known Hollywood guy, I made him into a character and I gave him a particularly large member - it's sort of a gift! And that's the best part about being a writer."

P.S. Guests were treated to what had to be the quintessential L.A. goodie bag. Among the gifts: Ugg boots, $100 off Botox treatment, and a free 20-minute reading by Kenn Woodard about what steps you can take toward holistic happiness.

It's the announcement you've been waiting for! Oprah's Book Club is back! Set your TiVos and VCRs for Friday, June 3. After Oprah sits down with Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell, the stars of the new comedy Bewitched, she'll announce her big summer selection.

You don't want to miss it, there's lots of surprises in store for this summer—it's Oprah's Book Club like you've never seen it!

• Autographed Advance Reading Copy of Creepers (CD Books), the spine-tingling upcoming thriller from multiple New York Times bestselling author David Morrell.
  
  
• Autographed copy of Forced Mate by Rowena Cherry (Dorchester), the steamy futuristic romance novel which was a finalist for Best Futuristic Romance at the PEARL Awards.
  
  
• Set of two books: Sandstorm by James Rollins (Avon) with the new lenticular special edition cover and Map of Bones by James Rollins (William Morrow). These two exciting thrillers from the New York Times bestselling author are the perfect summer reading for fans of Dan Brown and Michael Crichton.
  
  
• Advance Reading Copy of the upcoming mystery Relics by Mary Anna Evans (Poisoned Pen Press), in which an archeologist finds more than she bargained for while investigating a centuries-old ethnic group which seems to have strange immunity to most modern diseases, including AIDS.