Book News, In Brief

Eff your stupid promo bookmarks. This guy's found a flashier way to hype his book. Via UPI.com: A businessman in Indonesia said he let about $10,700 fall to the ground from an airplane Sunday as a publicity stunt for his latest book about marketing. Tung Desem Waringin, 42, let the money fly over the Indonesian city of Serang, about 40 miles west of Jakarta, CNN reported Sunday. The money-drop was aimed at creating a buzz about Waringin's latest book Marketing Revolution.

You know the book industry is doing wrong by its readers when an author makes headlines simply for writing about "difficult, real issues." Click here to "keep it real" with author Marilyn Reynolds and The Pantagraph.com.

Ah, the Kindle. To paraphrase Ice Cube, it's the e-book you love to hate. Via The NYTimes: Excitement about the Kindle...worries some publishing executives, who fear Amazon’s still-growing power as a bookseller. Those executives note that Amazon currently sells most of its Kindle books to customers for a price well below what it pays publishers, and they anticipate that it will not be long before Amazon begins using the Kindle’s popularity as a lever to demand that publishers cut prices.

Nerd game! The Star Tribune tackles common writing mistakes, turning the article itself into one big quiz.

BookExpo America is this country's largest, most blogged about book trade show. Too bad it's not living up to its own hype. Via The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: It's too early to sum up the country's largest book trade show, wrapping up Sunday in sunny, cool Los Angeles, but the purely anecdotal report is: There's nothing to get excited about this year.