Book News as of March 9, 2009

Here are some book news I found floating around the net. All text is quotes from the articles. They come from all over the world, not just one country. The 6th article may interest those of you who read author's blogs and the first two should interest those with Kindles. I will post more book news as I so choose.

Read Me a Story, Mr. Roboto
When Amazon's new Kindle debuted a month ago, Jeff Bezos proudly showed off a killer new feature—a robotic voice that can read back any passage from any book, like an automatic audiobook. The company sees the feature as a way for busy readers to catch up on books while driving or making dinner; the publishing industry saw it as lost opportunity for revenue.

Fear the Kindle
It's hard not to love Amazon's new e-book reader. For starters, it's gorgeous. Unlike its bulky predecessor, the redesigned $359 Kindle, which came out this week, is light, thin, and disappears in your hands. If you think there's no way you could ever get used to curling up with an electronic reader, you haven't given the Kindle a chance.

Great Book, Bad Movie
Why does Hollywood take our favorite novels and turn them into crap?
This isn't an original complaint: Liking the book better than the movie is a middlebrow rite of passage. And novels are a constant, renewable source of stories for Hollywood, with ready-built brand appeal—from the kiddie franchises (Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Narnia) to the airport bangers (Da Vinci Code, the Bourne etceteras).

HarperCollins Publishers Launches Online Sales Catalog
HarperCollins Publishers is announcing the development of an interactive, electronic sales catalog, the most advanced catalog available from a major publisher. The catalog will offer booksellers an up-to-the minute online tool enabling them to order books.

Lost Mark Twain Stories to be Published
The title of the collection, Who is Mark Twain? is a reference to Twain's essay Frank Fuller and My First New York Lecture, included in the book. In the essay, Twain relates how – anxious that no one would attend – he plastered New York with advertisements to promote his talk. He later observed two men looking at the ads. One asked, "Who is Mark Twain?", to which the other responded: "God knows – I don't."

Release The Fans
A writer's engagement with readers via blogs and websites creates a real relationship and unleashes the demands – sometimes angry demands – that go with it

Our Guilty Secrets - The Books We Only Say We Read

George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four comes top in a poll of the UK's guilty reading secrets. Asked if they had ever claimed to read a book when they had not, 65% of respondents said yes and 42% said they had falsely claimed to have read Orwell's classic in order to impress. This is followed by Tolstoy's War and Peace (31%), James Joyce's Ulysses (25%) and the Bible (24%).

Cell Phone Stories Writing New Chapter in Print Publishing

Yume-Hotaru's first novel was a best-seller in Japanese bookstores, and he wrote it entirely with his thumbs. The 22-year-old who would rather be identified by his pen name than his real one (Yume-Hotaru means "Dreaming Firefly" in Japanese) started composing the novel on his cell phone in 2007.