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:
With new financing from Borders and other booksellers, e-book distributor Kobo—formerly known as Shortcovers—has been spun off from Canadian retailer Indigo Books & Music (Canadian Press). A partnership with REDgroup Retail will make Kobo offerings available throughout Australia and New Zealand (Bookseller & Publisher).
Elizabeth Alexander’s inauguration poem and John Updike’s final collection were among the best-selling works of contemporary poetry in 2009, as reported by the Poetry Foundation (Huffington Post).
Self-taught artist Matt Kish is illustrating all 552 pages of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick (Flavorwire).
Traditionally regarded with suspicion, literary agents are gradually becoming a part of the publishing process in France (Publishing Perspectives).
Details has released its list of the “Twenty-Five Greatest Generation X Books of All Time.”
The Toronto Women’s Bookstore—one of only twenty-one remaining feminist bookstores worldwide—has put out a call for support to help it stay afloat (Globe and Mail).
In Toledo, Ohio, the owner of Leo’s Book Shop—which is closing after forty-two years—says “both the death of print and the death of downtown” have made it impossible to stay in business (Toledo Blade).
Meanwhile, as Barnes & Noble shutters its last B. Dalton outlets, Laredo, Texas, could soon become the biggest city in the country without a bookstore (Associated Press).
