Hearst Plans Digital Platform, No Sony Readers for Indies, and More

by
Adrian Versteegh
12.4.09

Every day Poets & Writers Magazine scans the headlines—from publishing reports to academic announcements to literary dispatches—for all the news that creative writers need to know. Here are today's stories:

Publisher Hearst will launch a service called Skiff—a digital magazine and newspaper platform—next year, and plans to follow it up by releasing an accompanying e-reader (Wall Street Journal).

Frank McCourt, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Angela’s Ashes, was honored by Congress this week for his contributions to literature and education (Staten Island Advance).

A plan to make Sony e-readers available through independent bookstores in time for the December holidays has fallen through, according to the American Booksellers Association.

Librarians in the U.K. are warning that proposed cuts to the Public Library Subsidy—which provides discounts to libraries on printed government documents—could threaten public access to important information (Bookseller).

Plastic Logic has signed a deal with a host of popular tech magazines to provide content for its upcoming “QUE” e-reader (Press Release).

Less than three weeks after being shut down, two branches of the Colton Public Library in California have reopened with severely limited services (Library Journal).

A first edition of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables (1908) is expected to sell for as much as $25,000 at a Sotheby’s auction next week (CBC).

The Common Language Bookstore in Ann Arbor, Michigan—one of only about fifty LGBT bookstores remaining in the country—is looking to the community for support this weekend with a three-day “Book-a-Palooza” sale (AnnArbor.com).

Amazon has unveiled a “Textbooks Trade-In” program, which allows customers to exchange used textbooks for Amazon gift cards (Press Release).