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Publishers Marketplace is reporting that the first complete collection of short work by Gordon Lish has sold to Or Books. It’ll be interesting for people to check out Captain Fiction’s own work, given the attention he’s received lately for shaping Raymond Carver’s stories.

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The Oxford Eagle in Oxford, Mississippi is reporting that Barry Hannah passed away today. This is just days before this weekend’s Oxford Conference for the Book dedicated to scholarly discussions and celebrations of Barry’s work. It looks like details are still somewhat sketchy. I’m making some calls to try and find out more. There’s a [...]

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Secretive author John Twelve Hawks has sold the television rights to his Fourth Realm Trilogy to Fox, according to Reuters. No word yet on if the shows writers will have to adopt Twelve Hawks’s habit of using voice scramblers on phone calls.

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Most of you certainly know that my love of guitars rivals my obsession with books. I got an opportunity to explore that love a bit recently for Premier Guitar magazine. The cool folks over there asked me to write an article on the science of tone. Which turned out to be quite a challenge. Like [...]

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This is a website about books and publishing, so you would think all the news regarding a major release would focus on Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol. However, I think there are enough publishing outlets covering that news event so I’m going to indulge in another one of my passions today. My obsession with guitars, [...]

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I was doing some traveling over the weekend so I didn’t previously hear about the passing of Jim Carroll, author of The Basketball Diaries. Here’s a good overview of his life and work.

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The Oxford American has released a list of the best Southern novels of all time. I’m sure they did this slightly tongue-in-cheek because these kinds of lists always generate endless hours of debate. Yet, it’s hard to argue with their choices. Be sure to keep an eye on the magazine’s site, as they will be [...]

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So just in case you didn’t already know this, the Associated Press comes along with an article about Julie Powell and how most bloggers will never achieve that kind of success. It’s easy to look at the attention being focused on the film Julie & Julia and to assume that millions are going to flock [...]

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John Keel, author of The Mothman Prophecies and other books on paranormal subjects, has passed away at 79. Here’s an article from the newspaper in the West Virginia town where the Mothman experiences allegedly took place.

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L.A. Guns guitarist Stacey Blades is signing his debut book, Snake Eyes: Confessions of a Replacement Rockstar tonight at Book Soup in Los Angeles. If you’re in the L.A. area, be sure to stop by the event. You can find more info on the booksigning by clicking here. Or, call the store at 1-800-764-BOOK if [...]

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I was doing some traveling the last couple of weeks. Upon my return, I was saddened to learn that two of my former Square Books colleagues had passed away unexpectedly. Elaine Cremaldi worked the day shift at the bookstore so I didn’t interact with her as much as I would have liked. But I do [...]

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I suppose this would be the appropriate time to cue Etta James’s “At Last.” But it’s in the wrong musical genre for this post and I don’t want to copy a Hoover vaccuum cleaner advertisement. Nonetheless, with a deep sigh of relief and excitement, I’m linking to this news story. Publishers Weekly has the announcement [...]

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Short story master Alice Munro won the Man Booker Prize yesterday. The judges stated, “To read Alice Munro is to learn something every time that you never thought of before.”

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In the New York Times, Motoko Rich examines the problems surrounding pricing e-books in an article entitled “Steal this Book (for $9.99). It’s an interesting look at how the publishing industry needs to balance the consumer’s perception that digital literature needs to be dirt cheap with the economic realities of the costs involved in making [...]

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