Elena Mechlin has been promoted to literary agent at Pippin Properties, Inc.

Prior to joining the agency in 2009, Mechlin worked at Fulcrum Publishing, Simon & Schuster, and Random House.

Mechlin’s client list includes 2013 Newbery Medal-winning author Katherine Applegate, debut young-adult novelist Jason Reynolds, picture-book author Beth Ferry and illustrator Rob Dunlavey. On submissions, she represents clients who create all types of children’s literature projects from picture books through young-adult.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Do you like to share the books that you are reading with friends? Amazon’s latest iOS app update has a tool that lets you do so.

The new “Book End Actions” feature lets you send a tweet or a Facebook status update when you finish a Kindle book. You can also use this feature to rate the book and write your own review. The app will also recommend other books that might interest you and you can even add these titles to a wish list.

Other features for the Version 3.6 update include multicolor highlights so that you can highlight in four different colors. In addition, a brightness control feature lets you save your brightness setting across device sleeps.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Money is not entirely meaningless, but I am beginning to think it’s less tangible than my Facebook friendships. First Facebook announced that it was issuing its own credit card, then Amazon concocted its own Kindle coins, and now Reddit has announced it will be accepting Bitcoins for premium service. I need an app just to maintain the copious varieties of currencies that have flooded the interwebs.

What exactly can you purchase with Bitcoins? On Reddit, Bitcoins are worth perks and privileges. For $3.99/mo, users can eliminate ads, save comments, and view more comments per page. There are over 200 million USD worth of Bitcoins in circulation, and its value has doubled since the beginning of 2013 from $13.50 to over $27.00 (USD). This trend is likely to continue given the influence of Reddit users on politics and technology.

Naturally, Redditors are already using Bitcoins to fund on-line stripping. Users are posting partially nude photos along with their Bitcoin account where tippers can send Bitcoins to encourage more stripping. This only goes to prove that sex, money, and the internet will be constant no matter which currency you choose.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

• U.S. Department of Justice gives Penguin-Random House merger the all clear
• Minnesota library’s Shelter Deposit Program brings books to the homeless
• Edward Nawotka on foreign publishers Americanizing authors’ names for U.S. distribution
• Facebook founder’s sister, Randi Zuckerberg, signs two-book deal
• Japanese readers “dead set” against ebooks

YesVideo, a company that transfers old video and film stock digitally, has launched an iOS app that lets customers access and view vintage video stock including VHS, Super 8 and 8mm films.

The app lets users access their YesVideo account and stream any videos in their profile from the cloud to any iOS device. Customers can connect their iOS device via AirPlay to an Apple TV or HDTV to stream the files on a bigger screen.

Michael Chang, CEO of YesVideo, explained the idea for the app. “Many of us love to watch family videos together at home – but it may not be our home, but rather, our aunt’s, uncle’s, grandma’s, or friend’s. This new app allows us to watch these memories anywhere in the world,” he stated. And Android edition is expected last this year.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The Legend of Devil’s Creek by Anonymous A is today’s Free eBook of the Day.

The mystery novel involves murders described in old ghost tales. Check it out: “Justin Riddley, recently transferred to the island’s small college, faces growing evidence that one of his new friends and fellow students may be the murderer. John Marshall, redemption-seeking captain of the local police force, leads the frantic murder investigation and struggles to figure out whether the killings are tied to the island’s dark and violent past. Tormented by tragic wartime memories, and more convinced with each day that it is humanity’s fate to destroy itself, Marshall races against both the murderer and the specter of his own mental breakdown.”

Amazon has eBook available for free today and tomorrow only.

For more free eBooks, check out our Free eBook of the Day archive.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Here are some handpicked titles from our Coming Attractions page. Want to include your book? Just read our Share Your New Book with GalleyCat Readers post for all the details.

Drugs, Crime and Violence: From Trafficking to Treatment by Howard Rahtz: “Forty years ago, President Richard Nixon declared a ‘war on drugs.’ Since that time, the country has incarcerated thousands of citizens and spent billions of dollars, and yet the drug problem rolls on.” (August 2012)

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

NYC pet trainer Andrea Arden has partnered with app development company Mighty Mack to introduce a new iOS app for dog owners.

Andrea Arden’s DogFun is a free app designed to be an educational and resourceful tool for dog owners. It includes things like training exercises, ideas for fun activities to do with your four-legged friend, tips on dealing with behavioral problems, as well as tools to help you find help in case of an emergency. The app also taps into your phone’s GPS to help you find pet-friendly locations such as dog runs, parks, pet stores, and vets near where you are located.

The app even includes 175 different quizzes designed to entertain users testing their knowledge of things like history, dog breeds, celebrity dogs, and dog training.

The app is a nice addition to other pet related apps. Where My Dogs At, for instance, lets dog owners search Google Maps for restaurants, hotels, parks, pet stores, vets, and even apartment buildings that welcome man’s best friend based on the user’s location.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

JobAware has created an infographic called, “The Hottest U.S. Job Hubs,” which explores which jobs are popping up in which regions of the country.

According to the graphic, San Francisco is the top city for software jobs and Washington D.C. is the top city for security jobs. THe graphic also revealed the New York has 50 percent more marketing jobs than San Francisco and that job opportunities are on the rise in the big cities in Texas.

We’ve embedded the entire graphic after the jump. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

When I started blogging there wasn’t a relationship between bloggers and publishers. Blogging and blogging about books relatively was new and publishers only sent review books to known media outlets. So trying as a blogger to get review copies from publishers was interesting. That was until some smart publicists realised the potential. 

Now publishers see the benefit of having engaged readers on their side. Readers who spend hours and hours of free time every week talking about books.

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Zach Weiner, creator of the Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (SMBC) web comic, drew six hours of free cartoons on Reddit to promote his new book.

Here’s the original post, it drew thousands of comments on the popular site: “I have a new book coming out, and so… for the next 6 hours, I’ll draw whatever you want … I did this a while back and was doing full color art. This time I’m gonna do quicker sketches so I can try to get to more people’s requests. A humble request: So I can get to more people, please keep it simple! No Jesus riding a pterodactyl who is also Batman and Batman is a jedi but he’s on fire and wearing Dr. Who’s scarf, which is also Batman.”

So far, the comic creator has raised more than $231,000 on Kickstarter for a new book of comics called SCIENCE: Ruining Everything Since 1543.

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Novelist Wendy Wax will publish what appears to be the first novel featuring fans of the hit British television show, Downton Abbey.

As the show winds down its third season, While We Were Watching Downton Abbey follows the lives of a few friends in Atlanta who are devoted to the show. You can read a free excerpt of the novel online. Berkley Books will publish the book as a $15 trade paperback original on April 2nd. Here’s more about the book:

In her novel, Wax introduces three women who live in a historic Atlanta apartment building and the residence’s concierge who decides to build camaraderie by hosting weekly screenings of Downton Abbey leading up to the start of the third season.  Each of the four is at a crossroads, and what happens to them is familiar to many Downton fans.  They find themselves connecting with the addictive drama, and-even more unexpectedly, with each other.  For them, it is a season of surprises as they forge bonds that will sustain them through life’s hardest moments–all reflected in the unfolding plot, humor and convergent lives of Downton Abbey.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Do you get upset when a website constantly asks you if you want to download the app version of the site?

A new xkcd comic tackled the issue (embedded above), showing one of the major problems facing both app creators and app users.

If you want to make sure your site is mobile-friendly without building an app, check out our How To Make Your Page Mobile Friendly post.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

We would all not survive the year 2012. But, since you're reading this, the opposite is true. Of course, The Mayan calendar with its predictions inflated to mythical proportions, was pure nonsense. That I use this moment however to prelude my plea, is because I did expect last year to be the beginning of the end for the book as we knew it. That was however not quite the case. It has no doubt that our industry suffered a severe blow by the bankruptcy of one of the big Dutch distributors: Libridis. One that has had (or will have) a huge impact on some of the Dutch publishers.

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Ronan, a brave child who battled an incurable genetic disease, has passed away. His mother, Emily Rapp, wrote about her life with Ronan in the upcoming memoir, The Still Point of the Turning World.

Ronan was diagnosed with Tay-Sachs disease when he was only nine months old. His mother captured their experiences as the family took this unimaginable journey together with Ronan, nicknamed “little seal.”  His family posted this note: 

Ronan passed away peacefully on Thursday, Feb. 15th at about 3:30 am in Santa Fe.  He was surrounded by friends and family. If you would like to make a donation in Ronan’s memory, please do so at the National Tay-Sachs and Allied Diseases Association, who have been a huge support to Emily and her family.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The updated version of Amazon’s Kindle app for iOS devices has added support for Facebook and Twitter. You can now get social from inside your digital book.

AppNewser has all the details:

The new “Book End Actions” feature lets you send a tweet or a Facebook status update when you finish a Kindle book. You can also use this feature to rate the book and write your own review. The app will also recommend other books that might interest you and you can even add these titles to a wish list. Other features for the Version 3.6 update include multicolor highlights so that you can highlight in four different colors. In addition, a brightness control feature lets you save your brightness setting across device sleeps.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The novel that inspired Bruce Willis‘ greatest action movie is back in print. The novel arrives just in time for the release of A Good Day to Die Hard, the fifth film in the Die Hard franchise.

Nothing Lasts Forever, a novel by the late author Roderick Thorp, was adapted into the first Die Hard film. The thriller came out in 1979, but Graymalkin Media has brought the book back to life.

The site includes a list of 42 plot points from the novel that ended up in the first movie. We caught up with Graymalkin’s David Zindel, finding out how he ended up reviving this classic thriller.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

CBS reported fourth quarter earnings after the close of the market on Thursday, with Simon & Schuster recording a 6 percent decrease in sales, down $14 million to $215 million. Consistent with their recent pattern, however, profits rose even with lower sales. Adjusted OIBDA still rose $3 million (or 11…

Do you have $12,000 and dream of owning a small-town bookstore?

Less than two years after opening, Backbeat Books, Music & Gifts in Perth, Ontario, is up for sale. Due to undisclosed health reasons, John Pigeau, who owns the bookshop with his wife, Erin Daley, is hoping to find a buyer before the end of April, otherwise they will be forced to liquidate.

The shop sells new and used books, music, vintage merchandise, and gift items created by local artists. Record sales, in particular, are doing well. “The people who buy [the store] will have a niche market in Perth for vinyl junkies,” Pigeau says.

Backbeat has also gained a reputation for its First Edition Reading Series, which has brought a variety of authors to the Ottawa Valley, including Helen Humphreys, Roy MacSkimming, Tanis Rideout, Grace O’Connell, and bill bissett. Pigeau says Margaret Atwood is scheduled to read later this year.

“I will dearly miss our little shop,” says Pigeau. “I hope someone with a passion for books and music will come along and save it. Many good folks in Perth love it, as do many authors who have visited and read in the shop.”