The deadline to sign up as a Giver on World Book Night has been extended! You can now sign up through February 6th.
A debut novel by thirty year old Anton DiSclafani went for seven figures to Riverhead this week. Keep an eye out for The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls, which is garnering comparisons to Water for Elephants.
Following news that Houghton Mifflin Harcourt will print and distribute titles from Amazon’s New York publishing house under the imprint New Harvest, Barnes & Noble and Books-A-Million announced they will not stock the online retailer’s titles in their physical stores. Barnes & Noble cited, “…Amazon’s continued push for exclusivity with publishers, agents and the authors they represent…..Their actions have undermined the industry as a whole and have prevented millions of customers from having access to content,” as their reason for the decision. The folks over at MobyLives have an interesting take on the situation, as well as the shifting public and media perception of the infamous online retailer.
Arizona is the latest state to seek sales tax payments from Amazon.
A Wrinkle in Time turns 50!
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest also turns 50!
Polish poet and Nobel Laureate Wislawa Szymborska passed away this week.
Jonathan Franzen discussed his feelings on e-books and the broader impact of new technologies on long term culture at the Hay Festival in Cartagena, Colombia, saying, “When I read a book, I’m handling a specific object in a specific time and place…A screen always feels like we could delete that, change that, move it around. So for a literature-crazed person like me, it’s just not permanent enough.” He went on to discuss US and global politics and economics, saying, “I think the combination of technology and capitalism has given us a world that really feels out of control.”
In some fast deals made this week, Levar Burton achieved ownership of the Twitter handle @ReadingRainbow.
BookPeople 