Daily book biz round-up: evil mobsters, filthy librarians, and more

Your assortment of book news tidbits:

• Victoria booksellers told to be on lookout for ex-mobster
• Moore, Mantel make Orange Prize shortlist
• Hearty French and Dutch manage to make it to the LBF; Americans, Italians, and Spaniards wuss out
• Proof: librarians even more filthy-minded than once thought
• Kelley bio ain’t no thang to Oprah
• New Stephen King novella goes to Kindle first
• Nielsen to divest itself of The Bookseller

Lady links: this week in women writers

• Vancouver’s Amber Dawn profiled on the Shameless blog about debut novel Sub Rosa published by Arsenal Pulp Press
• Novelist Anne Fleming recommends Jane Rule in Capital Xtra‘s new literary column
• Brooklyn-based, Canadian-born novelist Emily St. John Mandel discusses structure on The Millions
• The Gazette profiles three poets: Kate Hall, Priscila Uppal, and Robyn Sarah
• Susan Carpenter reviews controversial Oprah bio by Kitty Kelley
• New book by beloved Canadian poet Anne Carson reviewed in The Globe and Mail

Daily book biz round-up, April 15

Your daily blast of news goodness:

• Volcano eruption in Iceland grounds flights to U.K. and threatens London Book Fair
• E-book version of new Stephenie Meyer novella more expensive than hardcover
• Your tweets to be preserved forever
• Shandi Mitchell wins Atlantic Book Award
• Erica Jong on Kitty and Oprah
• Chatting with new Parisian Review editor Loren Stein
• Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens planning to have Pope Benedict arrested

Daily book biz round-up, April 12

An assortment of links to kick off your work week:

• No Canadians on IMPAC prize shortlist
• The Bookseller offers its London Book Fair rights preview
• iPad Mini in the works? (Uh, I’ve got an iPad Mini already – it’s called an iPhone)
• Big name celebs refuse to talk to Oprah biographer Kitty Kelley
• That includes John Tesh, who apparently walked out on Oprah in the middle of the night
• Children’s booksellers want more standalone titles
• Mystery Writers of America restores Harlequin to its Approved Publishers list

Daily book biz round-up, April 9

Some links to wind up the week:

• Oprah may bring books back
• iBooks come to iPhone
• Is the Library of America running out of writers?
• iPad now one step closer to heaven
• Newly discovered: Kipling’s dedication page for The Jungle Book
• Colorado judge issues warrant for arrest of teen with $30 library fine; is fired shortly thereafter
  

Eye Weekly launches new book club

When Oprah announced last November that she is calling it quits in 2011, publishers blessed by the mojo of the daytime television doyenne’s eponymous book club started biting their collective nails, wondering where they would get such valuable free publicity in the future.

While it likely won’t boast Oprahesque numbers, the Toronto-based alternative newspaper eye Weekly announced today that it is inaugurating a monthly book club, called Pop Fiction.

Each month, on Mondays, the club will debate a single title, with the book’s author taking part in the final week to respond to our praises, or our criticisms. Over the first few months of the year, expect visits from Canadian greats like Yann Martel and Andrew Kaufman as well as new voices on the international scene, like Eleanor Catton and Kathleen Winter.

(Quillblog is puzzled about the “international” nature of Newfoundland-based writer Winter, but never mind.)

The book club is hosted by author and eye Weekly book columnist Brian Joseph Davis, and features poet and Toronto bookstore staffer Kyle Buckley, blogger and Penguin Canada publicity assistant Bronwyn Kienapple, eye Weekly staff writer Chandler Levack, and editor of the National Post‘s Afterword blog Mark Medley.

The first book on the club’s agenda is Gil Adamson’s Help Me, Jacques Cousteau. Discussion of this title kicks off one week from today.

Forget Oprah, now it’s the Tiger Effect

A formerly obscure title, Get a Grip on Physics by U.K. professor John Gribbin, has experienced an increase in sales after a photo of Tiger Woods’ car accident revealed the book lying among the wreckage.

According to The Independent, the book has jumped to 2,268th on the Amazon bestsellers list from 396,224th the previous day.

From the article:

“This is one of my older and lesser known books – a guide to new physics for non-scientists. I can only guess that Tiger has been interested in the various stories about the Large Hadron Collider, and wanted to learn more. Several of my books have been doing better than usual this year,” Dr. Gribbin said yesterday.

The National Post has compiled reader comments from Gribbin’s Amazon page relating to Woods’ accident, such as:

“Just a warning, that although this book really does help you get a grip on physics, it should not be read while driving, especially at 2:30 am” 

The 2003 book is now out of print, and although Dr. Gribbin is delighted that people are reading his books, he wishes they were reading one that is in print.

Bookmarks: Going Rogue mistakes, aliens and werewolves, Xbox Bibles, and more

A few bookish links from around the Web:

• Sarah Palin’s much-anticipated memoir hits shelves today. Palin tells Oprah in an unused clip from yesterday’s interview that “logistically speaking, practically speaking, it wasn’t a real difficult exercise to write the book” (via GalleyCat) 
• The Associated Press has compiled a list of the errors found in Going Rogue
• Stephenie Meyer, author of the wildly popular Twilight empire series, also sat on Oprah’s couch in a rare public appearance last Friday. In an unused clip (via Entertainment Weekly), Meyer admits to being “a little burned out by vampires” and says that she “may go spend some time with … aliens.” 
• For those of you sick of everything vampire, Bookgasm offers a werewolf alternative in David Wellington’s Frostbite 
• The New Oxford American Dictionary‘s Word of the Year is “unfriend,” which is defined as: “to remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook.”  Runners-up for the title included “hashtag,” “sexting,” “teabagger,” and “tramp stamp”
• The future is digital: the National Post reports that students at Toronto’s Blyth Academy will all receive a Sony Reader to replace those stuffy old textbooks of yore 
• How would you like your Bible?  Handwritten or on your Xbox? 

Who will win the Nobel?

It’s not quite the biggest reward that can be given to a writer (that would be inclusion in Oprah’s Book Club, or maybe Richard and Judy’s), but the Nobel Prize for Literature is nothing to sneeze at – just look what it has done for last year’s winner, J.M.G. Le Clézio (who?). The prize is to be handed out tomorrow, and the international book media abounds with speculation. That the head of the prize  recently remarked that the Nobel has been too “Eurocentric” in its picks has caused some to believe this is America’s year, with maybe Philip Roth or Joyce Carol Oates heading to Stockholm.

As far as the oddsmakers are concerned, however, the prize is most likely to go to Israeli writer Amos Oz. According to the odds posted at Ladbrokes.com, Oz has a 3-1 chance of walking away with it, the same German author Herta Müller (who?).

Alice Munro is farther down the list at 25-1, the same odds as Bob Dylan(?). Atwood is 40-1, and Ondaatje is 50-1.

Whoever wins, the odds of someone posting, within 24 hours of the announcement, a video mashup on YouTube featuring Kanye West interrupting the ceremony in Stockholm are about 2-1.

Bookmarks: Oprah, Dan Brown, Google, and more – it’s a big news day in the book biz

Sundry links from around the Web:

• Did Ingram accidentally leak the next Oprah book club pick? (By the way, it’s Uwem Akpan’s short story collection Say You’re One of Them)
• Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol sells 1 million copies in a day – but what’s really impressive is that the Kindle edition is outselling the print version on Amazon
• Espresso Book Machine lands a lucrative contract to print Google’s public domain books
• HuffPo partners with The New York Review of Books
• Australian ministers debate the (de)merits of parallel importation (it’s more interesting than it sounds, at least if you’re an Australian publisher fearing the market for domestic books could be decimated)