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:
The Hachette Book Group—which has pledged to reduce its environmental footprint by increasing its reliance on recycled fiber—has become the first major publisher to sign the Book Industry Treatise on Environmentally Responsible Publishing (Publishers Weekly).
A mythologically inspired encounter in the novel The Kindly Ones (Harper, 2009) has secured this year’s Bad Sex in Fiction Award for American author Jonathan Littell (Literary Review).
The Cliffside Park Public Library in northern New Jersey has been closed after a fire burned through several rooms early yesterday morning (Bergen County Record).
Seattle’s iconic Elliot Bay Book Company—a literary hub since 1973—will likely be forced to either leave its downtown location at Pioneer Square or close altogether when its current lease expires at the end of January (Los Angeles Times).
November has been another record-breaking month for the Kindle, says Amazon (Press Release).
The manual typewriter author Cormac McCarthy has used since 1963 is being auctioned off to raise money for the Santa Fe Institute, a nonprofit research organization (New York Times).
Bloomberg Press, the publishing arm of New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg’s empire, is shutting down on an unspecified date for undisclosed reasons (Publishers Weekly).
Lorem Ipsum Books in Cambridge, Massachusetts, lodged its own quiet protest against the book-pricing wars last week by holding a Black Friday “Anti-Sale” (Publishing Perspectives).
North America’s largest francophone book fair, the Salon du livre de Montréal, drew an estimated 120,000 attendees last week (Words Without Borders).
