Book News, In Brief

Sophie Dahl has everything a modern publisher is looking for -- a quirky writing anecdote, a pedigree name, and one hell of a dust jacket photo. Oh, and she wrote a novel, too. The AP's puff piece neglects to mention that until the seventh paragraph. (Boobs are distracting.)

From blinking lights to singing advertisements, the magazine industry is doing all it can to stay relevant in the internet age. But will successfully aping the sensory experience of the net cover for the fact that their 'breaking news' is actually days or even (gasp!) weeks old? The International Herald Tribune looks into it.

Oh, Amazon.com, you've done it again. Via Publisher's Weekly: Author Solutions, the Indiana-based parent company of subsidy publishers AuthorHouse and iUniverse, the company has acceded to Amazon.com’s recent demand that publishers’s print-on-demand titles be printed by BookSurge, Amazon.com’s POD subsidiary, if they wish to continue to make these titles available for sale on Amazon.com.