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:
The New York Times interviews Jason Merkoski, the leader of the team who built Amazon's first Kindle: “These are major retailers, not your quirky corner bookstores. They’re manned by former management consultants in clean shirts [2] and pressed Dockers, not eccentric book-lovers with beards and cats.”
Digital Book World reports on the partnership between the American Booksellers Association (ABA) and Kobo [3]. Sales, although modest, have steadily grown.
Chilean authorities have exhumed Pablo Neruda [4] to test his remains for signs that he was poisoned by the Pinochet regime [5]. (BBC News)
Scott Turow, bestselling author and president of the Authors Guild, explains how the “global electronic marketplace is rapidly depleting authors’ income streams [6].” (New York Times)
With one hundred and fifty publishers currently releasing e-singles, a new website called Thin Reads has launched [7] to cover this burgeoning market. (paidContent)
Nazi-looted art makes headlines because of the art's high monetary value, yet there is an initiative to return stolen books [8] as well, although finding lost libraries poses a unique challenge. (Bloomberg)
Scholar Anne Margaret Daniel details how F. Scott Fitzgerald reacted to the first film version of The Great Gatsby [9], after he and Zelda arrived in Hollywood in 1927. (Huffington Post)