Book News, In Brief

AbeBooks is selling a signed first edition of Truman Capote's The Thanksgiving Visitor for $1,000. What makes this negligibly newsworthy is the author's inscription: "For Harry Potter with gratitude, Truman Capote."


The LATimes gives false hope to out of work writers everywhere, telling the one-in-a-million tale of how two dads turned the iPhone into a platform for children's books as if it were the easiest thing in the world to do.


McSweeney's is often derided for their occasional lapses into navel-gazing preciousness, but is there any other publisher out there printing piercing, prescient, humor pieces about booksellers going bust? Nope. So props to the precious, yo. Your navel is like a lint laden crystal ball.


Bowker has published the first consumer-focused research report for U.S. Book Industry peeps. Among the stunning reveals are: 57% of book buyers are women, yet they purchase 65% of the books sold; men account for 55% of e-book purchases; and 30% of Gen-X consumers buy their books online. To order the complete $999 report (yeah, right), click here.


John Gilkey wanted to own a first edition of every book on Modern Library’s list of Top 100 novels. Only, he didn't want to buy them. He wanted to steal them. This led the crooked collector around the globe, into jail and across the pages of Allison Hoover Barlett's The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective and a World of Literary Obsession. Ghost Word has a review of The Man (and 5 galley copies to give away!) here.