Nook sales took a nosedive last quarter, reminding Barnes & Noble executives that their luddite brick-and-mortar business still holds value. Ironically, the most stable route forward for the company right now seems to be sticking with physical rather than digital retail.
Readers who loyally buy print books from hundreds of Barnes & Noble stores may soon have to settle for the Nook. According to a top executive, as much as a third of their stores will be closed over the next 10 years.
Today in books and publishing: Roth's first and last interview in retirement; Penguin is lending library e-books again; new work by Mo Yan gets an English translation; a whole new kind of (dollar) book vendor.
Today in books and publishing: Digital page-turning now belongs to Apple; Roth tells young novelist, "quit while you're ahead"; Google can scan books super fast; R.I.P. Jack Gilbert.
Today in books and publishing: Philip Roth confirms his retirement; Amazon's mysteriously vanishing buy buttons; Kobo expands to Italy, Kindle considers China; cities in literature.
Today in books and publishing: Bertelsmann buys full stake in Random House Mondadori; taking advantage of Amazon's new monthly subscriptions; overdue fees waived for canned goods; Macmillan ceases printing dictionaries.
Today in books and publishing: E-book buyers notified about refunds; de Sade ban struck down in South Korea; California high school bans Stephen King; Ian McEwan likes his books short and sweet.
Today in books and publishing: The woman at the center of the Polanski trial has a book deal; National Book Award finalists are announced; Dennis Lehane corrects a reviewer on a character's race; Amazon ranks authors.
The Casual Vacancy, the first and much-buzzed-about book for adults from “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling, is likely to be Hachette’s top-selling title this fall. Many readers will rush to buy it tomorrow — but thanks to the realities of the ebook price fixing settlement, they’ll be paying an unusually high price for it.
Today in books and publishing: Morrissey springs into action at The Strand; publishers hound authors who took the money and ran; libraries and publishers can't agree on e-books.
Today in books and publishing: E-books are already cheaper; a new Oxford American editor; Hilary Mantel aims for her second Booker Prize; diversity in Top 100 Y.A. novels is lacking.
Just as Amazon's event to announce its new products got underway on Thursday, a federal judge approved a settlement with three major e-book publishers accused of colluding with Amazon's competitors (namely Apple) on prices.
Today in books and publishing: Michiko Kakutani pans Zadie Smith's NW; revisiting Henry James; John Jeremiah Sullivan talks with The Guardian; Apple to sell government e-books.
Today in books and publishing: Nick Horby says Fever Pitch didn't make football middle class; William Gass' gruff acceptance of e-books; Tampa bookstore for sale; Apple won't settle with DOJ.
Today in books and publishing: Science fiction author Harry Harrison dies; the fight over DRM; a look inside the Zeitoun Foundation's books; Google allowed to challenge authors' group status.
Today in books and publishing: Backlist sales are way down; Karl Ove Knausgaard reviewed in The New Yorker; writing on the subway; its hard to be commemorated in London; is the lit world really too nice?
Today in books and publishing: Jacob Silverman thinks there's an epidemic of niceness in book world; Nabokov rhapsodizes about boxing; a start-up that datamines books; teen Rookie editor gets a book deal.
Today in books and publishing: Ireland's "national treasure" Maeve Binchy dies; Y.A. author to write erotica; the Berenstain Bears are drawn into the Chick-fil-A controversy; why e-publishing isn't so promising for self-published writers.
Today in books and publishing: Man Booker longlist announced; unpacking the DOJ's e-books suit; DC delays new Batman comic; titles censored in China sell quick in Hong Kong.
Michael Chabon fans are about to get another little teaser about the writer's much anticipated next novel, Telegraph Avenue, which will be released on September 11.
Today in books and publishing: Joan Rivers dishes with the NYT; the book embroiled in a sexual harassment suit; a new player in e-books; authors say Harlequin owes them.
Today in books and publishing: E-books are now the best-selling format for adult fiction; queering comic books; how Shakespeare inspired South African activists; and blind Chinese dissident gets a book deal.
Today in books and publishing: The world sees the cover for J.K. Rowling's newest work, Tim Kreider's increased sales; a hotel in Britain replaces its Bibles with Kindles; and Richard Costello wins Hemingway lookalike contest on Facebook.
Jen Doll's books column today elicited a discussion of e-books among some readers.
Today in books and publishing: Casey Anthony's lawyer tells his side; E.L. James at Comic-Con; Nora Ephron remembered; fancy home libraries are back.
Today in books and publishing: The e-books of Shakespeare; Richard Russo's homage to print; an e-bookstore for Macmillan's Tor/Forge; Apple's e-book price-fixing trial date set.
Today in books and publishing: The ongoing hand-wringing over e-books; the Library of Congress's great reading list; Apple anti-trust suit wrinkles; Alec Baldwin gets mad, gets books.
Today in books and publishing: Armistead Maupin is leaving town; everything is coming up e-books (almost); to burn books or not to burn; the French are still hanging on to their beloved print.
Today in books and publishing: Rielle Hunter's memoir promotion begins in full; The Rock Bottom Remainders author band will break up after a final tour; Winston Churchill e-books; Fifty Shades of Etsy.
Ray Bradbury was right about so many things and spellbinding about so many others that it almost hurts to write this: Ray Bradbury was wrong when it came to reading. But then I also get to tell you this: he changed his mind.
Today in books and publishing: Animating the books in Moonrise Kingdom; Barnes & Noble fights back against the government's e-book settlement; a familiar cover design hits the Vice fiction issue; why we need to read books on the subway.
Today in books and publishing: Target is kicking Amazon out of their stores, the Fifty Shades of Grey parody book boomlet is here, and Steve Coll also has a big, important piece of non-fiction out this week that isn't about Lyndon Johnson
Today in publishing and literature: The difficulties of selling a literary sequel, science fiction is alike all over, and Whitney Houston's mother is looking for a book deal.
Today in books and publishing: The e-book pricing courage of the publishing industry, William Shakespeare turns 448, and John Irving explains why he's not a Hemingway fan.
Today in books: Buzz Bissinger returns to Odessa, how to fix the Pulitzer voting process, and the 'S--- Girls Say' meme is declared book-deal worthy.
Today in books and publishing: J.K. Rowling isn't done with Harry Potter completely, the jurors for the Pulitzer's fiction prize explain why they're not to blame for the lack of a winner, and what DOJ's settlements with three publishers means for the way you buy e-books in the coming months.
Today in books: Lady Gaga's Book Club is a sleeping giant, Apple and Macmillan will not negotiate, and the James Joyce-Kool Keith quote game is hard, but fair.
Apple and a handful of publishers got hit with a price-fixing lawsuit on Wednesday, with the Department of Justice finally snipping the string on the sword of Damocles that's been dangling over the e-book industry for months.
Today in books: Richard Russo is putting his money where his dislike of e-books is, another filmmaker lands a deal to write a filmable series of YA books, and 2012 has been a good year for fans of baseball books.
Today in books and publishing: A possible settlement between some of the Big Six publishers and the Department of Justice, Pottermore sold an estimated $1.5 million in e-books in its first three days, and a depressing look at an Amazon fulfillment center.
Today in publishing and literature: Salman Rushdie is returning to India for a speech later this week, Mario Puzo's estate countersues Paramount over an upcoming sequel to The Godfather, and a history of Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Today in books: The Academy Award-winning actor is going to be offering his own contribution to The Big Lebowski literary canon, a bull market for Katy Perry's memoir, and why you shouldn't feel guilty about putting a novel down unfinished.
Today in books and publishing: Publishers are unsure what they can afford to give up to avoid going to court over alleged price collusion, the Clinton White House does not come off well in a former Secret Service agent's new memoir, and the National Book Critics Circle Awards are announced.
Today in publishing and literature: The much delayed Harry Potter Web site now plans to launch in early April, the Harry Ransom Center acquires T.C. Boyle's papers, and what a possible settlement in the e-book pricing antitrust case means for readers.
The Justice Department's warning to Apple about the company's apparent collusion with publishers on e-book pricing couldn't have been better timed.
Today in publishing and literature: France's great big book digitalization project gets the go-ahead, details about the posthumous collection of David Foster Wallace essays, and Jodi Picoult is writing a tearjerker for kids.
Today in publishing and literature: Random House increases the price libraries have to pay for e-books, a Jose Saramago novel sees the light-of-day 59 years after it was written, and the house where Truman Capote wrote Breakfast at Tiffany's sells for $11 million
Today in publishing and literature: Slate's new book review section goes live, The Day of the Triffids is getting the Sam Raimi treatment, and Japan's publishers set a lofty and impractical goal for e-book production.
Today in books and publishing: Cee Lo Green promises his memoir will help you "discover crazy," Jackie Collins is rewriting an old stand-by and republishing it as an e-book, and familiarity helps make book trailers watchable
Today in publishing and literature: Joyce Carol Oates discusses the "genre writer" label, Courtney Love's former bandmate is trying his hand at a Kurt Cobain memoir, and we're one step closer to getting e-book editions of the Harry Potter books.
Today in publishing and literature: The Oak Park, Illinois house Ernest Hemingway grew up in can be yours for $525,000, Amazon is starting to get the hang of this villain role, and how a good pen name can rejuvenate a writer's career
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