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Workers in Germany are planning a holiday season strike at Amazon’s fulfillment centers; Julie Bosman reports Thomas Pynchon will not attend the National Book Awards; Thin Reads editor Howard Polskin names the eight most influential players in the world of e-book singles; and other news.
Farhad Manjoo ponders the driving force behind Amazon’s rapid expansion; Google’s book-scanning lawsuit was dismissed yesterday by Judge Denny Chin; anthropologist Jamshid Tehrani traced the geographic origins of “Little Red Riding Hood”; and other news.
Amazon has launched a Kindle Store in Australia; Anthony Burgess’s estate has contracted with David Higham Associates to represent the late author’s work; a recent PEN America survey suggests writers are wary of government surveillance; and other news.
Amazon has created a service called Amazon Source to entice independent booksellers to offer e-books and the Kindle; BuzzFeed has hired the Rumpus co-founder Isaac Fitzgerald as its first books editor; Thessaly La Force reports from the New York Public Library’s annual Library Lions Gala; and other news.
MacKenzie Bezos—wife of Amazon’s Jeff Bezos—posted a one-star review of Brad Stone’s The Everything Store; Mariel Hemingway revealed that her family didn’t speak of her grandfather Ernest’s suicide; Dr. George Walkden argues that the opening of Beowulf has been misconstrued for hundreds of years; and other news.
Amazon has launched a Kindle First program that allows readers early access to certain titles; Jason Diamond rounds up ten must-read November books; Salt Publishing’s Linda Bennett offers an author challenge for NaNoWriMo; and other news.
Starting tomorrow, Amazon will collect sales tax in Massachusetts and Connecticut; USA Today reveals what can be gleaned from two decades of its best-seller lists; Salon gathered short and scary stories from twelve authors, including Shani Boianjiu and Mat Johnson; and other news.
A new book reports that Amazon’s stance toward small publishers “was called the Gazelle Project after Mr. Bezos said Amazon ‘should approach these small publishers the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle’”; Hector Tobar looks at how Amazon and other online booksellers are reacting to compaints over pornographic content; Open Culture found an image of Mark Twain with Nikola Tesla; and other news.
Harper Lee has filed a lawsuit against her Alabama hometown’s Monroe County Heritage Museum; Businessweek peers inside the corporate structure of Amazon; Joan Didion was advised by her doctor not to travel to California to receive a PEN lifetime achievement award; and other news.
In light of Alice Munro’s Nobel Prize in literature, the Millions offers a guide to the beloved Canadian author; Bowker announced self-published titles increased 59 percent in 2012; Flavorwire highlights the musings of a teenage F. Scott Fitzgerald; and other news.
