Book News, In Brief

Illustrator Andy Bigwood won the Best Artwork accolade at this year's British Science Fiction Association Awards ceremony. It was for the cover of disLocations - a collection of nine stories written by some of the UK's best new and established science fiction authors - and depicts a "curved landscape, distorting energies and a damaged planet." Personally, I think it looks like a cheap, print on demand design.
Speaking of which...

The Authors Guild is looking into Amazon.com's new print on demand policy, as they are concerned over its many anti-trust and monopolizing aspects. From their press release: Once Amazon owns the supply chain, it has effective control of much of the "long tail" of publishing. Since Amazon has a firm grip on the retailing of these books (it's uneconomic for physical book stores to stock many of these titles), owning the supply chain would allow it to easily increase its profit margins on these books: it need only insist on buying at a deeper discount -- or it can choose to charge more for its printing of the books -- to increase its profits. Most publishers could do little but grumble and comply.
For more info, hit up the good folk at Publishers Weekly.