The winners of the 2012 Australian Shadows Awards have been announced. Kirstyn McDermott won the novel category for Perfections (Xoum) and Kaaron Warren won the long fiction category for ‘Sky’ from her collection Through Splintered Walls (Twelfth Planet Press). Through Splintered Walls also won the award for best collection. Martin Livings won the short story

Simon & Schuster, the last of the Big Six multinational publishers to venture into ebook library distribution, will make its entire ebook catalogue available to libraries in New York City. A one-year trial will begin at the end of April at New York and Brooklyn public libraries and by mid-May in Queens. There’s no word on Canadian distribution yet.

S&S did not disclose details about ebook rates, though it stipulated fairly generous conditions compared to other publishers. Unlike HarperCollins, S&S won’t limit the number of times a book may be checked out. However, S&S has stipulated that titles may be checked out only one user at a time.

Unlike Penguin, which instituted a six-month lending delay after titles go on sale in stores and online, new titles will become available for purchase upon publication.

Ebook titles will be available to libraries for a one-year term. Following the lead of Penguin, the one-year expiration date is designed to mimic the shelf life of print books. Titles will also be available for purchase through libraries, presumably to patrons who don’t want to wait on the hold list until the book becomes available.

With more than 50 years of music under his belt, rock ’n’ roll legend Brian Wilson is set to pen an autobiography. According to a press release, the chief songwriter and producer of the Beach Boys “will describe for the first time the epic highs and lows of his life.”

Published by Random House Canada, I Am Brian Wilson will explore Wilson’s relationship with his father, the loss of his mother and brothers, his fears about live performance, and his success leading the Beach Boys into experimental terrain. It will also cover his nervous breakdown and comeback from drug addiction.

Anne Collins, publisher of the Knopf Random Canada Publishing Group, acquired the book in a pre-empt. “That [Wilson] now is ready to tell the story of his life, in which he at last has come through the tragedy, betrayals and illness that so often threatened to dim that genius, is an epic publishing event,” she says in a press release.

“Life’s better than it’s been in the past 20 years,” Wilson adds. “I’m 70 years old and it took me a long time to learn a really simple thing: it’s hard work to be happy.”

Wilson will co-write the memoir with Rolling Stone editor Jason Fine. Random House Canada has scheduled a 2015 release.

Tracy Sherrod will join Amistad as editorial director on April 22. Previously she was the founder and proprietor of Tracy Sherrod Literary Services, representing Karine Steffans, Katori Hall, Kalisha Buckannon, and others (and prior to that she was an editor at Simon & Schuster). Sonya Safro will join Grand Central…

A year after failing to declare a winner in the fiction category last year (bypassing 2007 Granta Best Young American novelist list member Karen Russell's Swamplandia!, now up for an IMPAC; Denis Johson's Train Dreams; and David Foster Wallace's The Pale King), the Pulitzer Prize has gone back to normal, naming Adam Johnson as…

Britain's most promising young writers include a Somali-born Oxford graduate, a Chinese film director, and a debut author who was raised in America, lives in Rome and writes about Africa, according to an influential new poll.    

These are the 20 authors selected by literary magazine Granta for its new Best of Young British Novelists list.    

Every decade since 1983, Granta magazine has published a special edition devoted to 20 rising stars of the literary world. Jon Stock looks at the latest names.    

The writers who made the cut are representative of what is possible with the novel, says Granta judge Gaby Wood.    

The Canadian Library Association has announced the winners of three annual book awards.

Susin Nielsen’s The Reluctant Journal of Henry K. Larsen (Tundra Books) took the 2013 Book of the Year for Children. The jury also selected two Honour Books as runners-up: Cyndi Sand-Everland’s A Tinfoil Sky (Tundra) and Allan Stratton’s The Grave Robber’s Apprentice (HarperCollins Canada).

Martine Leavitt’s My Book of Life by Angel (Groundwood Books) won the Young Adult Book Award, with Kathy Stinson’s What Happened to Ivy (Second Story Press) and Alice Kuipers’ 40 Things I want to Tell You (HarperCollins Canada) named as Honour Books.

You Are Stardust (OwlKids Books), illustrated by Soyeon Kim and written by Elin Kelsey, was awarded the Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon Illustrator’s Award.

Kobo still believes in eInk dedicated readers, reinforced in today's announcement from the London Book Fair: Later this month they will release an oversized eInk reader with a 6.8-inch display (most other readers have screens that are 6 inches or smaller). They say the 265 dpi device "offers 30 percent…

Do you have a friend or family member who was at the Boston marathon today? Or do you have information about someone who is there? Then you’d better go to Google Person Finder.

The tool will help you check up on the whereabouts of a loved one, as well as share information about someone’s location. Here is more from the page: “All data entered will be available to the public and viewable and usable by anyone. Google does not review or verify the accuracy of this data.”

If you have collected information on your site and you’d like to combine it with Google’s data, you can download and upload data from Google Person Finder. Follow this link to find out more.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Following on Avon Impulse and Harper Teen Impulse in the US, Harper UK will launch a digital first women's fiction and romance imprint in May. Harper Impulse, an imprint of their Harper Fiction division, aims "to find, publish and break new talent from debut authors, and import the hottest trends…

Kobo has introduced a new high resolution eInk eReader called the Kobo Aura HD, offering a $169.99 answer to Amazon’s $179.99 Kindle Paperwhite 3G. Like other Kobo devices, the new device lets readers access ePUB titles a format not available on Kindle devices.

The new eInk device from Kobo has a 6.8″ screen which boasts a 265 dpi resolution, slightly more than the Kindle Paperwhite which has 212 ppi on a 6.7″ display. The new Kobo weighs slightly more than the Amazon device at 8.5 oz, compared with the 7.8 oz. Kindle.

The Kobo device has a 1GHz processor and claims to turn pages 25 percent faster than other devices. The new eReader comes with 4GB of storage though, owners can expand this up to 32GB. The Kindle has 2G and access to the Amazon Cloud.

Kobo claims that the new device’s battery life can last up to two months. It comes in a few colors including: ivory, espresso and onyx. The device goes on presale tomorrow on Kobo.com and through select retailers. continued…

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• Dustin Kurtz’s case against Vintage Books’ American Men of Letters competition
• Yoko Ono publishes book of “instructional poetry”
• One of 11 copies of first book printed in the U.S. goes to auction
• The politics and history behind Russia’s literary prizes

For the first time in ten years, Granta has revealed its list of the Best of Young British Novelists. Below, we’ve linked to free samples of all 20 novelists.

The winners were chosen from among 150 novelists by a panel of judges: John Freeman, Ellah Allfrey, Romesh Gunesekera, Stuart Kelly, A.L. Kennedy, Sigrid Rausing and Gaby Wood. Here’s more from the release:

At a celebration to be held at the British Council, on the evening of 15 April 2013, Granta will announce its once-in-a-decade selection of the twenty best British novelists aged under forty. Granta’s first generation-defining list of writers was published in 1983 and set the bar for the following decades.

continued…

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Grosset & Dunlap, an imprint of Penguin Young Readers Group, has partnered with Sassy, a children’s product development company, to introduce a new series of interactive eBooks for babies.

The series of books is based on  Sassy’s “Inspiring the Senses” series a line of books designed to teach young babies about patterns, colors, textures, words and designs through reading. There are various levels based on the child’s age and comprehension level. The new line from Grosset & Dunlap will launch with four books this coming fall.

Each book will focus on a different stage of development. There is one for newborns, one for slightly older babies, one for six month olds and one for slightly older toddlers.

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The UK’s Office of Fair Trading (OFT) is launching an investigation to determine whether apps targeting children are in violation of consumer protection laws. Game apps for children often have in-app purchases, and children are easy targets to the monetizing scheme.

The OFT investigation is exploring whether these games are misleading, commercially aggressive or otherwise unfair. In particular, the OFT is looking into whether these games include ‘direct exhortations’ to children — a strong encouragement to make a purchase, or to do something that will necessitate making a purchase, or to persuade their parents or other adults to make a purchase for them. This is unlawful under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008.

The investigation is expected to take 6 months wherein OFT officials are expected to interview game makers, start-up leaders, and even parents – like Sharon Kitchens whose son spent $2500 in in-app purchases within 10 minutes without adult supervision. The OFT is specific in expressing its desire to allow in-app purchases to remain legal, but will seek relevant protective measures to ensure that consumers are aware of the implications of playing apps with hidden expenses. It is likely that the UK will require app stores and apps to have better disclaimers.

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How many readers remember the old school joy of turning a full page of handwritten notes and running your hands along the bumpy underside of the page?

One Reddit user snapped a photograph (embedded above) of a recently finished page of notes, writing “does anyone else feel oddly satisfied by turning the page after writing for a while to see this?” So far, that photograph has been viewed nearly 38,000 times online.

If that picture made you happy, check out our What Is Your Favorite Kind of Pen? post and our Ballpoint Pen Fan Fiction collection.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.