Barack Obama's income, "propelled largely by sales of his two books," rose to $5.5 million during 2009, up from $2.7 million in 2008, according to the president's tax returns, the Seattle Times reported. The tax forms also showed that he received $225,000 for an abridged version Dreams from My Father, which will be targeted at young readers.
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Three leading publishers in France will "pool their resources for distributing digital books in order to provide booksellers with a one-stop shop," according to the Bookseller.com, which reported that Eden Livres, Eplateforme and Numilog "will bring the single access point on stream partially in mid-June and fully at the beginning of September.... Distributor Epagine will also participate in the venture."
The publishers noted that the increased presence of digital books in France "requires a rapid solution to permit all bookstores to display a single catalogue with all the available digital titles and for customers to have a single shopping basket," the Bookseller wrote. The decision comes in response to a planned October launch of 1001libraires.com--a portal for independent booksellers--by the Syndicat de la Librairie Française, the French booksellers association.
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A Kindle for Android devices app will be available this summer from Amazon.
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Barnes & Noble is featuring a bricks-and-mortar e-book cross-promotion called Fun and Free eBooks. During the next five weeks, customers who bring their Nook or iRex DR800SG--or any device enabled with BN eReader software--to a B&N store will receive a special access code for that week's free e-book.
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Selling an English-Spanish dictionary of automobile parts might not seem like the key to keeping bookstores in business, but for Rainy Day Paperback Exchange, Bethel, Conn., the advantages of marketing online have paid dividends.
"We sold it to a Chrysler dealership in Venezuela. They sent us a note that said 'this is just what we were looking for to train our mechanics,' " owner Nora O'Neill told the Danbury News-Times, which featured several local online booksellers, some with--and others without--bricks-and-mortar locations.
"I miss the contact with the public and the people, but I've gotten used
to this and it's kind of enjoyable," said Robert Feinson, owner of the Old Bookshelf, which is an online-only operation.
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Shaken, the seventh novel in J.A. Konrath's Jacqueline "Jack" Daniels mystery series, will be published by Amazon's publishing imprint, AmazonEncore, which will release a Kindle edition in October followed by a print version in February 2011.
On his blog, Konrath posted the press release, followed by a Q&A for readers in which he explained his reasons for choosing this option rather than a traditional publisher.
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Has the iPad's launch increased the number of pirated e-books? Wired explored the numbers at BitTorrent and reported that the "answer was a resounding 'kinda.' While almost none of Amazon's top 10 appeared on public torrent trackers, six out of 10 books in the business category were available. When TorrentFreak checked the before and after numbers, it found that the number of BitTorrent book downloads grew by an average of 78% in the days after the iPad went on sale. Even so, the numbers were still tiny compared to the traffic in movies and music."
One potential problem is that "where geeks go first, the general public will follow." Wired concluded that blaming the iPad "is stupid, though. If it causes a rise in book piracy, it is only because it is driving demand."
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At the Queens Library branch in Bayside, manga has gained a following among a diverse group of young readers who "come from all over the ethnic patchwork of this neighborhood of modest-to-fancy brick houses and square green lawns: East Asian, South Asian, Caribbean, African-American, Jewish. (Only one speaks Japanese at home.) But at the library, they identify as otaku--Japanese slang for manga aficionados--and their divisions run purely along manga lines," the New York Times wrote.
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Is Scottish publishing an endangered species? HeraldScotland.com reported that "ambitious, challenging and unconventional voices--the type of writing that made Scottish publishing the envy of the globe--are at risk of being sidelined and overlooked as the whole industry is squeezed."
Derek Rodger, head of Argyll Publishing, said he doesn't "want to see the past through rose-tinted glasses, but this is the worst we’ve ever seen it. You ask, how do you sell books now? Well, with great difficulty."
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"Did you know that George W. Bush and Karl Rove used to have a reading contest every year?" asked the Huffington Post in a feature headlined "11 Presidents' Favorite Books."
"Our current sales are funding the changes in your future business models. Don't lock us out. We want the opportunity to trade in these new formats. Bookshops and booksellers are still your most significant route to market and retailing diversity is important to our future.… Google are looking to create a world where they receive protection from being sued, and can only be paid. Or having your cake, eating it and charging everyone for the privilege of the meal. Even as a bookseller, this was not my understanding of copyright.... We should support publishers and authors in keeping their businesses profitable and helping them to reach the widest consumer market. These challenges to intellectual property and rights-holding undermine us all equally."
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"Get Caught Listening," a joint initiative of the 
After meeting for the very first time, author Sherry North and illustrator Marcellus Hall posed with their new book, Because You Are My Daddy (Abrams Books for Young Readers, May 2010). Forty people came out to hear the book read and see illustrations made on Saturday, May 14, at 
Opening lines of a book we want to read: