Every day Poets & Writers Magazine scans the headlines—from publishing reports to academic announcements to literary dispatches—for all the news that creative writers need to know. Here are today's stories:
According to a joint report from the Association of American Publishers and the Book Industry Study Group, sales from e-books more than doubled from 2010 to 2011, to over two billion dollars in net revenue. (GalleyCat)
Meanwhile, NPR asks, "Will your children inherit your e-books?"
Educational publishing company Pearson announced today it will purchase self-publisher Author Solutions for over one hundred million dollars in cash. (Pearson also owns the Penguin Group.)
Knopf reports sales of Cheryl Strayed's Wild spiked after Oprah Winfrey announced the revival of her book club, choosing Wild as its first title—from eighty-five thousand copies before the announcement, to two hundred and seventy thousand. Strayed's memoir has been a New York Times best seller for twelve weeks, and is now number one in hardcover nonfiction. (USA Today)
The A.V. Club laments how the frenzy over the best-selling Fifty Shades… series may ruin the classics.
"I've read the story carefully and, Frances, I'm afraid the price for doing professional work is a good deal higher than you are prepared to pay at present." In 1938, F. Scott Fitzgerald responded to a story sent to him by Frances Turnbull, a family friend and sophomore in college. (Letters of Note)
If you'd like to own a purse that looks like you're carrying a copy of Catcher in the Rye or Lolita, now you can. (Los Angeles Times)
For those of you in the New York City region this weekend, the Poetry Society of New York is throwing its second annual poetry festival on Governor's Island; and Slice magazine is hosting a two-day conference for writers, which takes place in Brooklyn, New York.
