Shaun Tan’s The Arrival (Lothian) has been selected as one of 10 honour books in Silent Books, a travelling exhibition project run by the International Board of Books for Young People (IBBY). Presented by the Italian arm of IBBY in association with Rome’s Palazzo delle Esposizioni, the Silent Books project has

Screen Australia has announced script development funding for a film adaptation of Susanne Gervay’s book I Am Jack (HarperCollins). Gervay will write the film script for I Am Jack, with director Nadia Tass, producer Stephan Wellink and executive producer David Whealy all signed on to the project. Gervey’s ‘Jack’ series, which also includes Super Jack and Always Jack, is

Amazon announced the launch of Kindle Worlds, a new digital publishing platform for fan fiction, touted as the first legal commercial platform of its kind.

Despite the prevalence of online fan fiction, copyright laws make it illegal to profit from it. Kindle Worlds, however, has acquired licences for three book series from Warner Bros.’ Alloy Entertainment: Gossip Girl, by Cecily von Ziegesar, Pretty Little Liars, by Sara Shepard, and Vampire Diaries, by L.J. Smith. More licences will be announced soon. Royalties will be paid by Amazon to rights holders of the original work, and authors will receive a royalty rate of 35 per cent of net revenue for works of at least 10,000 words.

Concurrently, Amazon launched a pilot program for shorter works (between 5,000 and 10,000 words), which are typically priced under $1. Authors will be paid a 20 per cent royalty rate.

Fan-fiction submissions are being accepted as of today, with the digital storefront to launch in June.

This year's prize has been won by the American author Lydia Davis.    

Trevor Cole

The Canada Council for the Arts has announced the winners of the Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Awards. The seven recipients are mid-career artists who have been recognized in the seven arts practices funded by the Canada Council: writing and publishing, integrated arts, dance, media arts, theatre, visual arts, and music.

Writer Trevor Cole is one this year’s winner. Cole’s third novel, Practical Jean, won the Leacock Medal for Humour in 2011, and his first two novels were both nominated for a Governor General’s Literary Award. Before starting to write fiction, Cole was an editor and journalist with The Globe and Mail.

Other winners include contemporary puppeteer Julie Desrosiers, performer Sandra Laronde, filmmaker Lindsay McIntyre, playwright Donna-Michelle St. Bernard, sculptor and installation artist Reece Terris, and jazz musician Ben Wendel.

Do you have the New York Times Best Seller list memorized? Do you have a passion for books and want to get into the publishing business?

In this episode of “Score That Job,” career expert, author and mediabistro editor Vicki Salemi sat down with Andrea Weinzimer of Hachette Book Group to get the inside dirt on what they’re looking for in a candidate.

Here a few tips — know the industry and know which authors they publish (hint: rhymes with James Patterson, Nicholas Sparks, David Sedaris…). Or just watch the video.

You can view our other MediabistroTV productions on our YouTube Channel.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Ahead of last year’s FutureBook Innovation Workshop, we published our ‘ten challenges to innovation in publishing’.  Nearly one year on, what are the new challenges to publishers when it comes to digital innovation? At the FutureBook Innovation Workshop in Association with The Literary Platform speakers will be demonstrating how they are currently dealing with some of these challenges – but here are some outline thoughts ahead of the event. 

read more

A 40-year-old unpublished Pearl S. Buck manuscript was recently discovered in storage, and Open Road Integrated Media and InkWell Management will team up to publish the book.

The Eternal Wonder will be published on October 22, bringing the Pulitzer & Nobel Prize-winning author’s newly discovered work as a digital book and paperback. Open Road already publishes 28 backlist books by Buck, including The Big Wave and The Good Earth. Here’s more about the book, from the release:

The Eternal Wonder, an Open Road E-riginal, is a personal and passionate fictional exploration of the themes that meant so much to Buck in her life. It tells the coming-of-age story of Randolph Colfax, an extraordinarily gifted young man whose search for meaning and purpose leads him to New York, England, Paris, a mission patrolling the demilitarized zone in Korea that will change his life forever—and, ultimately, to love.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Edweek has created an infographic called, “A Primer on Mobile Apps for Young Students Learning to Read,” which examines trends in educational mobile apps.

The graphic revealed the 70% of the top selling apps in the education category of Apple’s iTunes are aimed at preschool or elementary school kids.

We’ve embedded the entire infographic below. Be sure to explore (and share your favorite) inside our growing Recommended Apps for Kids directory.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

• Amazon Publishing reveals Breakthrough Novel Award finalists
• ChiZine accepting terror and supernatural fiction submissions
• Plagiarism controversy hits poetry community again
• Children’s publisher Barefoot Books leaves Amazon
• Association of American Publishers merging with the Association of Educational Publishers

Penguin will pay $75 million in damages and “costs and fees to resolve all antitrust claims relating to eBook pricing”–settling with 33 state attorneys general and consumers in a suit led by Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro.

The suit revolved around allegations of price fixing with the agency model for eBook pricing. The publisher issued a brief statement:

Penguin has also committed to the State Attorneys General to abide by the same injunctive relief as previously agreed in a separate settlement with the Department of Justice. In anticipation of reaching this agreement, Pearson had made a $40m provision for settlement in its 2012 accounts. An incremental charge will be expensed in Pearson’s 2013 statutory accounts as part of the accounting for the Penguin Random House joint-venture.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Amazon Publishing has reached out to fan fiction writers with Kindle Worlds, a platform allowing authors to write fan fiction based on someone else’s work and share royalties with the rights holders.

Warner Bros. Television Group’s Alloy Entertainment division will work with Amazon on the program, letting fans write about Cecily von Ziegesar‘s Gossip Girl, Sara Shepard‘s Pretty Little Liars and L.J. Smith‘s Vampire Diaries. Fan fiction writers can publish their own work about these stories in the Kindle Store. The program launches in June. Here’ more about the payment structure:

Amazon Publishing will pay royalties to both the rights holders of the Worlds and the author. The standard author’s royalty rate (for works of at least 10,000 words) will be 35% of net revenue. As with all titles from Amazon Publishing, Kindle Worlds will base net revenue off of sales price—rather than the lower, industry standard of wholesale price—and royalties will be paid monthly.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Amazon Publishing has introduced a new publishing platform dedicated to fan fiction called Kindle Worlds.

The platform is designed to let writers create fan fiction based on a range of original stories and characters. And using licenses, writers can earn royalties from their work. Amazon has licenses for Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars, and Vampire Diaries, and plans to announce more soon.

Amazon will 35% of net revenue for works at least 10,000 words. Amazon Publishing is also piloting a new program for  short works which run between 5,000 and 10,000 words. These short stories, which are typically priced less than $1, Amazon will pay the royalties for the World’s rights holder and pay authors a digital royalty of 20%. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Nicholas Blincoe on last night's PEN auction, where JK Rowling's first book sold for a record amount.    

Nicholas Blincoe on last night's PEN auction, where JK Rowling's first book sold for a record amount.    

Horror author H. P. Lovecraft meets picture book creator Eric Carle in Ben Mund‘s book, The Very Hungry Cthulhupillar. With 11 days left in the campaign, this Kickstarter project has drawn more than $9,500 from its supporters. We’ve embedded a video about the project above–what do you think?

Here’s more about the project: “Cthulhu has eaten your childhood! We are publishing The Very Hungry Cthulhupillar, a full color, fully-illustrated book in the style of a classic piece of children’s literature—not actually intended for a young audience. A cthulhupillar eats more and more to sate his ravenous appetite … and what shall he become?”

Welcome to our Kickstarter Publishing Project of the Week, a feature exploring how authors and publishers are using the fundraising site to raise money for book projects. If you want to start your own project, check out How To Use Kickstarter to Fund Your Publishing Project.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Here is our quick guide for your BEA preparations: - Our free ebook Buzz Books 2013: Fall/Winter is the biggest galley giveaway you'll see, featuring substantial excerpts from 40 forthcoming book (running about 750 pages in all). It includes work from many featured BEA speakers, such as Amy Tan, Jonathan…

Doubleday reports to us that Dan Brown's INFERNO sold 1 million units in the US and Canada in its first five days on sale, through Saturday, in print and ebook sales combined. The company did not break out the distribution between formats, but the Nielsen Bookscan count would indicate that…

Penguin's hard-to-fathom delay in settling the state and class-action lawsuits over ebook pricing (after settling with the Department of Justice in December 2012) was down to the wire, with the company forced to join in the trial starting June 3. But on Wednesday, it was announced that the publisher has…