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:
British electronics firm Plastic Logic has announced a January 7 launch for their much-speculated-upon “QUE” e-reader (Gadgetell [2]).
Following last week’s news that David Davidar will helm the new Penguin International, Nicole Winstanley has been tapped to replace him as publisher of Penguin Canada (Quill & Quire [3]).
In discussions with the Association of American Publishers at the Frankfurt Book Fair, the Federation of European Publishers has requested that European works be omitted from the still-unresolved Google Book Search settlement (Bookseller [4]).
A contentious panel event last Friday pointed up one of the principal differences between U.S. and European approaches to the book-scanning controversy: “moral rights” (Publishers Weekly [5]).
French publishers are trying to hold their own against Google and Amazon with homegrown responses to digital book distribution (New York Times [6]).
In yet more Frankfurt news, exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer has criticized the international book fair for featuring China as this year’s guest of honor (Reuters [7]).
Best-selling author Kinky Friedman is running—as a Democrat, this time—for governor of Texas in 2010 (Daily Beast [8]).
Life of Pi author Yann Martel has spent the last two years sending unsolicited reading suggestions [9] to Canadian PM Stephen Harper. Sixty-six books later, the fruits of this mostly one-sided literary conversation have been collected in What is Stephen Harper Reading?, out this month from Random House (National Post [10]).