Bad news for freedom-loving folks everywhere. Politico reports that the Feds have been spying on New York Times reporter James Risen in the hopes of uncovering his sources for his 2006 book, State of War: Federal investigators trying to find out who leaked information about…
The folks at Rupert Murdoch‘s book-publishing arm, HarperCollins, have decided that, when it comes to ebooks, America’s libraries are practicing a kind of benign piracy. At least, that’s the way Library Journal sees it, in a report by Josh Hadro about “the first significant revision…
Last night I committed a crime: I stole 12 of Kurt Vonnegut‘s novels. After reading David Carnoy‘s recent article about the vast ease and availability of pirated eBooks I wanted to see how easy it really was. It was incredibly easy. The quality was very…
Everyone’s heard about or remembers John and Yoko‘s bed-in for peace in which they used the occasion of their honeymoon to draw attention to the anti-war movement against Vietnam. If not, in a nutshell here’s what they did: for two weeks during their honeymoon —…
100 year old book club!!! Mystery Writers of America elect a new president The future of long-form journalism? Will the Kindle be free by the end of the year? The books behind the Oscars Japans book publishers send angry letter to digitizers Why we write…
The American Bookseller Association announced this week that 25 new independent bookshops have recently opened throughout the United States, according to a report in Bookselling This Week: Twenty-five ABA member bookstores opened in 2010, with several filling voids left by the closing of chain stores.…
Shelf Awareness yesterday pointed us to this story in The Bookseller by Lisa Campbell about booksellers in Cairo’s Tahrir Square beginning to open up shop again as the city gets back to a new sort of normal. For weeks during the demonstrations, the American University of…
As we reported last month on MobyLives, World Book Night is set to take place in London on 5th March. The stage is being set for what looks like a spectacular evening in Trafalgar Square, with recent announcements including author readings from the likes of…
Yony Leyser‘s new documentary on William Burroughs aired on PBS this Tuesday. Carolyn Kellogg has more about the unlikely project. One striking thing about the trailer (below) is the sheer number of musicians pictured with or speaking about Burroughs. It’s not writers or poets who…
eBooks in Russia The eReader is not the enemy Germany’s best book sites Barnes and Noble opens its doors for self-published writers Genre reader? These literary novels are for you John le Carre donates archive to library History of the interactive book Books that rocked…
***Now available for download in the App Store*** The Hollywood Economist: The Hidden Financial Reality Behind the Movies by Edward Jay Epstein Hollywood meets Freakonomics In The Hollywood Economist, veteran investigative reporter Edward Jay Epstein goes undercover to find the answer to a puzzling question:…
The bookstore I co-founded and built from the acquisition of a single rare book is closing at the end of March. Wolfgang Books has been a mainstay of the Philadelphia area for the last five years. It has won four consecutive “Philadelphia Hot List –…
Of the many remarkable things to witness during the recent revolution in Egypt, perhaps what tipped the scales in favor of the opposition was something not entirely visible in Tahrir Square. In addition to Egypt’s youth lashing out at Mubarak for stagnating the economy and…
We all know the story of Kafka and Brod. Kafka, the tragic genius whose prophetic writings foretold the essential paradoxes and madnesses of the 20th-century and, so far, the 21st. Brod, the prolific fool, a man who history remembers not for his own art, but…
Not content to rest on its heels following Borders‘ bankruptcy, Barnes and Noble is embarking on a new branding effort. AdAge reports the retailer has dumped their previous creative agency, SoHo’s Merkley and Partners, and will now tap Boston-based Mullen, whose client roster includes JetBlue, Zappos,…
Giving away ebooks has become a popular tactic for big-house marketers who operate on the theory that it somehow spurs sales. But indie publisher Doug Seibold, of Agate Publishing, is giving away one of his lead titles for another reason: because he’s afraid people won’t…
Another big city newspaper has blasted Amazon.com for dodging paying sales taxes in Texas — this one in Texas. As MobyLives noted earlier, Amazon’s hometown newspaper, the Seattle Times, recently took the company to task for firing its employees and abandoning its business in Texas…
According to this report by Michael Kelley in Library Journal, Texas librarians seem to have caught the democracy bug. Last Wednesday they showed up in Austin to protest their displeasure at the proposed cuts threatening to gut the Texas library system. According to Pat Smith,…
When Google launched its long awaited Ebookstore in December, part of the hype and hope was that it would allow indie bookstores to take advantage of the digital revolution. At the L Magazine, Mark Asch interviews Jessica Stockton of Greenlight Books about how it’s going…
A cache of books from Thomas Jefferson‘s collection, languishing in obscurity in the rare books collection at Washington University in St. Louis, has just been discovered. An Associated Press report explains, Dozens of Thomas Jefferson’s books, some including handwritten notes from the nation’s third president,…
Nebula Award Nominees Announced Indie’s having some success selling e-Books Nothing lasts forever: Dewey Decimal System So far in 2011 print book sales down 15% Fittingly two authors of conflicting Sarah Palin biographies bicker NY Times starts weekly online review of children’s books Japanese publishers…
Long-simmering outrage over Apple‘s heavy-handed censoring of, and extortionate fees for, iPad and iPhone app content seems to have exploded in the wake of the company’s announcement last week (see the earlier MobyLives report) that it was demanding an additional 30% fee for content sold…
An anxiety prevalent in the analysis of the current democracy movements taking hold of the Middle East is the question regarding Islam’s role in the nascent governments. Will it be dominant? Will it take a backseat? Will the religious elements, like those during the Iranian Revolution…
It seems that the endlessly unfolding WikiLeaks stories in the media divide into two categories: 1. the shocking revelations of the diplomatic cables and their dramatic consequences on world political affairs, and 2. the bad behaviors of Julian Assange. The headline of Bill Keller‘s extensive New…
I’m not usually in favour of giving attention to organisations that preach hatred and intolerance — I usually go with the school of thought that giving them too much attention is like giving attention to a misbehaving five-year-old. The more attention you give him, the…
Rebooting the Cairo Book Fair Book lovers fear dim future for notes in the margins David Foster Wallace documentary Most borrowed library books of 2010 in the UK Penguin celebrates 50 years of Modern Classics Yep – it’s definitely happening…. in 3D How Borders “lost…
MobyLives is off today, in observance of the Presidents’ Day holiday, because of course we honor our presidents. Well, not the last one — I mean,we did publish a book about impeaching the bastard. Then there was his father! And of course, let’s not forget…
Amazon.com‘s hometown newspaper, The Seattle Times, which has its offices across the street from Amazon headquarters, has posted a firmly-worded editorial castigating the behemoth bookseller for “the company’s campaign to dodge the payment of state sales tax all across America.” After pointing out that “The…
Sorry, Leo, it’s true. How could this not be better than the supposed 3D monstrosity Baz Lurhmann is scheduled to bring us some time next year? (I know, that’s unfair, not a single frame has even been shot yet. The idea is only being “workshopped.”…
After taking a swipe at “pretentious” New York, the LAist gives a shout-out to the under-heralded Los Angeles literary scene with a list of the city’s best literary journals. “From the darkly nuanced Black Clock to the quick-witted Swink and ‘slow-lit’ bent of Slake, LA holds its…
